Wonderful Toys

We do get some wonderful toys to play with. The last section of Captain Alfred Hutton’s treatise on the sabre is techniques for use against the musket and bayonet. Everyone needs to know how to deal with a crazed foreigner with a bayonet, so we had a look at that one the other day. But how do you train to deal with a musketeer? Well, you get yourself a fencing musket, obviously.

Wait… a what?

Yes, a fencing musket. Basically it’s a mockup of a musket with a spring-loaded ‘bayonet’ on the end. It’s blunt but you still know about it when it hits you. Of course, that’s the point… you don’t want to get hit. So now you have one guy with a saber and the other with a long pointy thing, both trying to do each other in. The trick is to get past the point of the bayonet, in close where the sword can cut and the bayonet can’t stab. Simple.

Well, not really. Because the other end of the musket is really heavy and if you’re a bit careless you’re going to get it right in the face.  Not that anything like that happened to me, of course….