Secrets of the Sword

“You may see one of these pupils taking his lesson. He is a magnificent spectacle; his hand perfectly correct, a grand lunge, his action smooth and free; he follows his master’s blade through a cunning series of feints and false attacks, ripostes and counter-ripostes, his parry is never beaten; not a fault, not a single mistake; he is an animated illustration of his master’s treatise, which the author with pardonable pride displays before you.

“Now in the assault pupils of this type are far from maintaining their superiority. Their mechanical agility is paralysed, when it is no longer set in motion by the accustomed spring. They know too little and at the same time they know too much. They find out that the assault is not the same thing as the lesson. Their opponent’s blade does not accommodate itself to theirs with the precision to which they are accustomed; the touch of the steel no longer conveys those delicate hints, to which they formerly responded with such alacrity, and of course they lose their bearings. They have not acquired the sort of defence which is ready for anything, alike for well directed thrusts and for more eccentric methods of attack, and they look in vain for a succession of passes strictly correlated in a systematic order.

“Instead of marching with a swing along the broad highway to which they are accustomed, they find themselves lost in a wild and difficult country without a guide and without confidence. Habit will perhaps enable them to maintain some smartness of appearance, but they make few hits, and in spite of their science and the skill, which they undoubtedly possess up to a certain point, they are continually beaten by fencers, who are less scholarly perhaps, but who have been better entered than they to the actual combat, the manifold emergencies of practical fighting, and who have learnt that strange language, by which the sword contrives to reveal the most delicate shades of meaning.

“I have seen this happen so often, that I have taken some trouble to study the question, and I am convinced that if these same pupils had been at less pains to make themselves pedantically perfect in the peaceful and philosophic practice of the lesson, and had been made familiar at an early stage with the changing incidents of the assault, they would have been equally well disciplined, and at the same time really dangerous fencers. Of course I freely admit that exceptions may sometimes be found, but they are the exceptions which prove the rule.

VIII

“We have now reached a point from which we may survey the thrilling spectacle of the assault, as fencers call the mimic combat, in which desperate and brutal fighting is controlled by skill, the hazardous duel, full of fire and fury, between two combatants, who summon to their aid all that they know or all that they think they know.

“I can say with literal truth, that I have never taken a foil in my hand for a serious assault without feeling a real tremor, and most fencers have experienced and indeed are generally conscious of the same sensation.

“You have listened so kindly to my rough attempt to put together an extemporary course of instruction, that I can confidently claim your attention now; for we are about to find in this great arena the rival systems face to face. I shall put before you and examine at no great length the various situations which are likely to occur.

“Our imaginary pupil has now become a fencer. He will no longer lunge merely at the master’s pad, henceforward he will cover his manly face with a mask. Shall we follow him in his career?”

“We will”; replied my host in tragic tones. “The standard of revolt is raised. Lead on, and we will follow you.”

“‘Tis well,” I answered in the same spirit. “The tryst is here, at the same hour, – to-morrow.”

The Fourth Evening

I

The next day I continued my discourse thus: —

“In the assault with its incessant alarms and perilous crises, in encountering the wiles and avoiding the snares of the enemy, those who use the sword find their ‘crowded hour of glorious life,’ the hour crowded with illusions and disenchantments, the rubs of fortune, the ups and downs of victory or defeat.

“What legions of cunning counsels and crafty wiles, from the deep-laid stratagem down to the sudden surprise, one finds marshalled in the text-books, and how unmanageable and superfluous they generally are. All that the Spartan mother said to her son when he was setting out for the wars was: – ‘Be bold, be resolute, be cautious.’ Do not her words contain the whole? For all fighting, whether at long range or at close quarters, is very much alike, from schoolboys’ games to the most elaborate military operations; and all the advice of the world may be summed up in the eternal law of attack and defence, which is stated in these four words: – cunning, caution, energy, audacity.

“Deceive your enemy: seize the critical moment to attack him, that is the secret of fighting. Cultivate the mistrust which suspects the hidden snare, the caution which frustrates his plots, combined with the energy and audacity which surmount difficulties; try to encourage in your enemy a spirit of wanton confidence; turn a strong position which you cannot carry by a direct attack; threaten one point when you mean to concentrate your whole strength on another; draw your adversary by a show of weakness to attack you in your strongest position; keep your plans secret; mask your approaches; and then by the sudden impetuosity of your attack take him unawares, and if you cannot secure a victory, contrive a safe retreat. Such from the earliest times have been the methods of the greatest commanders.

“The tactics of the field of battle and the tactics of hand-to-hand fighting are identical, for the simple reason that skill, or strategy, or science, call it what you will, are but different names to express the same idea. These are the sage counsels; the rest belongs to inspiration, the inward monitor which in moments of danger warns us with tenfold insistence, and guides us right.

“Too much stress is laid on education, too little on individual intelligence. The lessons are supposed to have trained and directed this intelligence. But if your pupil is so wanting in intelligence that he cannot enter into the spirit of the game, if he can never rise to the occasion, and never strike out a line of his own, what can you expect? You may advise for ever, but his mind will not respond, he will only listen and forget.

“It is here that the two schools begin to part company. I have already given you a general view of the points in which they differ, and we need not now recur to the consideration of general principles, with which you are already acquainted.

II

“If we could return to the past, and witness an exhibition of sword-play as it was understood by the professors of only fifty years ago, what a contrast we should find with the style of our own day, even with our most severely classical style. Our methods would certainly be called revolutionary.

“It was usual not so very long since to display upon the bosom a fair red heart, stitched to the fencing jacket, to show plainly for all eyes to see the spot where hits should be placed. Attacks, parries and ripostes were restricted by convention to a very narrow circle. Any hit that went wide of the mark was accounted execrable and received with the most profound contempt. Modern fencing is inclined to be somewhat less fastidious. Hits in the low line are generally acknowledged. But a hit below the belt! ‘You really do not expect me to follow your point down there!’ is still the attitude of most fencers. ‘Call it a hit if you like, but really it is not fencing. A school of arms, you know, is not a school of surgery, you might leave those base regions to the medical students.’

“You smile, but I assure you that they mean it seriously, without the least sarcasm. It is quite true that any wound in that despised region would be mortal almost to a certainty. That is a detail; and they forget that a sword, though it may be a civil and gentlemanly implement, is still a lethal weapon. It really is very strange to admit that it is wrong to disregard the deadly character of the point when aimed in one direction, but to claim that it is right to disregard it when aimed in another. Yet most men cling to this error with the utmost pertinacity.

“That you should despise a hit in the leg or fore-arm I can well understand. By all means concentrate your whole attention on the protection of the parts of the body which contain the vital organs. But not to use your utmost care, your surest parries, your most anxious precautions to defend the trunk, – high lines and low, – always has been and is still a delusion, a delusion which those who attempt to draw an impossible distinction between the assaults of foil-play and real fighting with sharp swords, vainly ask us to accept as an unassailable article of faith.

“There is a real distinction, for after all foil-play can only be an imperfect representation of real fighting. Our object should be to make the resemblance as perfect as possible, and so minimise the chances on which the ignorant and brutal too confidently rely.

“Let them see that you both know the correct answer to a correct combination, and that you are equally prepared to deal with the wild and disorderly antics of an untutored point.

III

“You may often hear men say: – ‘I do that in the fencing room, I should be very sorry to attempt it in a serious fight.’

“Then why attempt it at all? If your judgment tells you that the stroke is good, it is good for all occasions. If it is bad it cannot be justified in any case.

“Always bear in mind that you must pay attention to all thrusts which might prove fatal in a serious encounter, and then if some day you have the misfortune to find a real sword in your hand, you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you are fore-armed by habit against known and familiar dangers. I cannot emphasise this point too strongly.

“In short, the refusal to acknowledge hits however low is a dangerous and a gratuitous mistake. Why should a thrust aimed in that direction not be of its kind as brilliant and meritorious as another? Why should it be boycotted? Is there any reason for this mysterious taboo?”

“The old master who used to teach us fencing at school,” remarked my host, “would fall foul of you with a vengeance, if he heard you talk like that.”

“I do not mean for a moment,” I replied, “that I have any preference for hits in the low line, but rather that I am more afraid of them, because I have fenced too often with fencers good and bad not to know how necessary it is to be on one’s guard against the dangers of wild play.

“For instance, those who make a practice of straightening their arm as they retire nearly always drop their hand, and the point of their weapon, whether they wish it or no, is necessarily directed towards the low line. It is equally inevitable that the same part should be threatened by those who rightly or wrongly reverse the lunge by throwing the left foot back on your attack, at the same time stooping forwards, so as to let your point pass over their head; and ignorant fencers nearly always hit you there, quite innocently and unintentionally.

“You should therefore guard that part of the body as strictly as you guard the chest, and, by a parity of reasoning, when you meet an adversary who neglects to protect the low line annoy him in that region frequently.

IV

“It often happens that things that are most neglected in one age become the ruling fashions of the next, just as things once highly honoured may often fall into complete discredit.

“Take this instance. In an old and dusty folio, entitled ‘Académie de l’Espée[2 - Académie de l’Espée, by Gerard Thibault, Antwerp, 1628.],’ which I discovered yesterday banished to the darkest corner of the library, I found several pages entirely devoted to the art ‘of delivering a stroke with the point at the right eye.’ The point is specified because in those days cuts and thrusts were held in equal favour.

“What do you say to a thrust in the eye? And yet if you will consult my folio you will find a collection of plates illustrating all the passes by which this brilliant stroke may be brought off.

“You know what is thought now-a-days of a hit in the face, that is to say on the mask; we are taught, – again quite wrongly, – not to take the smallest notice of it. And this leads me to hope that some day we may yet see a revolution, by which the vulgar belly will claim its rights and in its turn drive out the lordly bosom. It will be rated too highly then, as it is too much degraded now. But when did revolutions ever know where to stop?

“For the assault the one thing needful is self-reliance. Trust to your own resources, and do not imagine that you have to repeat word for word the lesson that you have got by heart from your book, but rather look for inspiration to the resources of your native wit.

V

“If any one came to me for advice, the course I should recommend, not as a hard and fast rule, but in a general way, would be something of this sort: – Act as much as possible on the defensive, keep out of distance, in order to prevent your opponent from attacking you without shifting his position, and in order to compel him to advance on your point, the most dangerous thing he can do, and without a doubt the most difficult art to acquire. If you make up your mind to stand your ground whatever happens, and to attack always in exact measure, instead of retiring and advancing with quick and irregular movements, and instead of trying to surprise and overwhelm your adversary with combinations for which he is unprepared, you are to my mind simply acting without the least judgment, or rather you are making a perverse blunder.

“Then I should go on to say, always supposing that I was asked for my opinion: – Make a practice of stepping back as you form the parry, if only half a pace. There is everything to be gained by it, and there is no objection to it that I can see, unless it be the strong objection that your opponent will feel to being considerably embarrassed on every possible occasion.

“The advantages, on the other hand, are manifold. By stepping back you increase the effectiveness of the parry, because by withdrawing the body you, in a sense, double the rapidity of the hand. If the attack has been delivered with sufficient rapidity to beat the parry, by retiring you parry twice, the first time with your blade, with which you try to find your adversary’s weapon, the second time by removing the body to a greater distance, with the result that the point, which would have hit you if you had stood your ground, does not reach your chest.

“By employing this manœuvre against simple attacks you counteract rapidity of execution, and by employing it against composite attacks or against feints you encounter the last movement forcibly. It is also of service in screening one from attacks made by drawing back the arm, for it often happens if you stand your ground, that your hand starts too soon, and your sword encounters nothing but empty air. It has the further advantage of increasing the fencer’s confidence in himself.

“Do not imagine that it hinders the riposte. It renders it easier and more certain. Nearly always, when a fencer has lunged right out, and – as often happens – does not recover immediately, the two opponents are so close together that it is very difficult to get in the riposte without shortening the arm, and so giving an opportunity for a remise.

“The parry and riposte without breaking ground are certainly of value, I do not dispute that, but against the fencers of all sorts, whom you have to meet, and who offer all sorts and kinds of difficulty, they should not be employed except occasionally, and only when they are almost certain to succeed. To my mind it would be dangerous and unreasonable to adopt them as the systematic basis of your play.

VI