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Formal Combat & Rough ‘n’ Tumble Equalizers: Macro to Micro by Mark Hatmaker


The following missive can be applied to not merely frontier trade-knife, bowie knife, tomahawk, foils, sabers, epees, but also to “schooled” unarmed combat and precision military maneuvers.

The informed among us are already quite familiar with the fact that some of the best troops from Europe fought in Early America. These crack troops were schooled by some of the best military minds that Great Britain and the Continent had to offer, and yet they encountered more persistent and baffling resistance than they expected and/or had confronted in warfare in the Old World.

The early colonists [some were schooled in the European military tradition, many were not] took their cue from what they encountered in the Indigenous Tribes of this new land. This new warfare if it can be encapsulated at all might be expressed in a proverb originating in the Northeastern tribes that can be loosely translated as

Advance like foxes, fight like catamounts [panthers], and fly like birds.”

For an observation of this style of combat from a well-tutored Continental mind. This is Lieutenant-General John “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne on the rabble that was encountered during the American Revolution.

“It is not to be expected that the rebel Americans will risk a general combat or a pitched battle, or even stand at all, except behind intrenchments as at Boston. Accustomed to felling of timber and to grubbing up trees, they are very ready at earthworks and palisading, and will cover and intrench themselves wherever they are for a short time left unmolested with surprising alacrity…Composed as the American army is, together with the strength of the country, full of woods, swamps, stone walls, and other inclosures and hiding places, it may be said of it that every private man will in action be his own general, who will turn every tree and bush into a kind of temporary fortress, and from whence, he has fired his shot with all deliberation, coolness, and uncertainty which hidden safety inspires, he will skip as it were to the next, and so on for a long time till dislodged either by cannon or by a resolute attack of light infantry.”

I wager I break no new ground in stating that this new warfare altered how the game was played. We all likely would nod our heads in agreement and state candidly that the schooled and structured fighting way of the Old World dissolved into shambles when encountering the ways of the New World on its own ground and with its own rules of engagement.

Where I may now, initially, lose some of my “You got that right, Mark!” cadre is with the next observation.

What holds on the large stage also holds true for the small.

Or the Macro is the Micro and vice versa.

By this I mean, that often we laugh at rank and file battle formations and regimented tactics against the colonists and Indian Tribes as we all see the folly in such things and then, many of us who are old school combat enthusiasts have no problem turning right around and picking up a sword, a knife, a tomahawk, or other such implement of war and putting them through Old World regimentation paces and declaring that “This is how it was done here in the early days.”

What happened to that opinion we shared a mere few paragraphs ago that the schooled and structured fighting way of the Old World dissolves into shambles when encountering the ways of the New World on its own ground and with its own rules of engagement.

Some will persist, “But Mark, that’s different?”

Really? How?

Well, a blade is a blade and there are only so many ways to move the body.”

Fair enough. And troops are men and women on two legs and there are only so many ways to maneuver them against an opposing force as we agreed to mere moments ago.

Now, yes, there were indeed skilled fencers, skilled swordsmen, facile wielders of Old School cutlery; staves, and cudgels of all types in the vast Melting Pot of the early Continental United states and Canada. New Orleans was rife with salle d’armes, we have like academies in New York and talented and tutored men of blade, staff, cudgel and other like items spread throughout the New World offering their instruction and services but…and I repeat the lesson of Burgoyne and others when encountering the new ways---just because we see the same implements of war does not mean we are seeing the same tactical or strategic approaches.

I offer this observation from a fellow in the early days of the Louisiana Territory.

During the long idle hours of the afternoon it was his custom to banter me for a bout at swords, and Levert generally acted as our master of the lists. At first he was much my superior with the foils, for during his days with the Embassy at Madrid, and in the schools at Paris, he had learned those hundreds of showy and fancy little tricks of which we in the forests knew nothing. However, I doubted not that on the field our rougher ways and sterner methods would



count for quite as much.

Let us not forget, the macro and micro turned out to be quite similar in regard to combat [armed and unarmed] in the early days of the American Continent. The weapons may be the same, or similar enough in appearance but regimented formation, and “showy and fancy tricks” found their limits outside the strict parameters of their game.

The rough ‘n’ tumble world was and is an altogether different animal let us not make the mistake of marching rank and file in our redcoats and adhering to “across the pond” protocols when what came out of the forests, was gleaned from the prairies, learned in the mountains put a rawhide bow on pretty toys from across the sea.


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