Altoni's First Chapter on Breaking Guards

Pushing vs. Beating and Use of Your Off Hand

Chapter Fourteen: Breaking Guards, Part I

Since it is more natural to guard yourself than it is to strike others, defense should be the primary consideration of those who wish to handle arms with prudence. In this way you can minimize the influence of chance. You will do this against all types of attacks your enemy might make, and not just true attacks, but also against feints.

The same principle of first keeping yourself applies not only in defense but when making strikes. Whether you are making a mandritto, a roverso, one of the other blows, and especially a thrust you must heed what actions your opponent might take that both defend themselves as well as threaten you. For example, if your opponent is in a guard, you must first break it before you can safely attack your opponent. Therefore, you must know how to break the enemy’s guard.

So if your opponent comes to you in the middle guard, the one we previously called the Iron Gate, you can push his sword either to the right side or to the left, or raise it or lower it. In this we speak of the unaccompanied sword, a most common weapon. It can be easily understood that this rule applies to other arms as well and when we speak of pushing aside the enemy’s sword we mean with your sword and not with your left hand.