Dear All, may I share the following: the earliest
mention of a parry in my research so far was in
Tacitus, when he mentions that the Britons parried the
Roman missiles with their long swords; Anna Comnena
mentions that her father the Emperor Alexius was
attacked by a lancer and parried the thrust with his
sword(being without a shield that day); In Geoffrey of
Monmouth we learn that the Giant of Mont St. Michel,
having no shield, parried a head-cut by his opponent
Arthur(Geoffrey uses the word "interposuerat" which
could hardly mean a countercut; From Malory we hear
that Launcelot, having removed armor and weapons to
climb a tree (for a lady, of course) and being
attacked on descending by a fully equipped knight,
used a tree-branch and "put aside" the knight's blow.
For a later example, there was young Jean de Mergey, a
mid-16th-century gentleman, who mentions that unhorsed
man of his company,under attack attacked by two
footmen with swords, (paroit) the blows of the swords
with his armored arms.





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