however, being at the time excited and busy on the question
of the union of Scotland and England, the bill never became act.
To resume: since it began to be practised as a regulated art one may say broadly that sword play has already passed through four main phases. The first belongs to the early Tudor days of sword and buckler encounters, whereof, if the best theoretical treatises appeared in Italy, the sturdiest practical exponents were most probably found in the British Isles. Then came the age of the rapier, coeval with the general disuse of the buckler. There may be discerned the dawn of fencing proper, which will fully arise when, in Caroline times, the outrageous length of the tucke will at last be sufficiently reduced no longer to require the dagger as a helpmate. The third was the age of the small-sword. With its light, elegant and deadly practice we enter a new atmosphere, so to speak, on fencing ground. Suppleness of wrist and precision of fingering replace the ramping and traversing, the heavy forcing play, of the Elizabethan. If the rapier age was well exemplified by Vincent Saviolo, this one was typified, albeit perhaps at a time when it was already somewhat on the wane, by the admirable Angelo Tremamondo Malevolti.
In the early days of the small-sword age men still fenced in play as they fought in earnest. But presently there appeared on the scene (during the last years of the 18th century) an implement destined to revolutionize the art and hopelessly to divide the practice of the school from that of the field: that was the fencing mask. Before this invention, small-sword play in the master’s room was perforce comparatively cautious, correct, sure and above all deliberate. The long, excited, argumentative phrases of modern assaults were unknown; and so was the almost inevitably consequent scrimmage. But under the protection of the fencing mask a new school of foil-play was evolved, one in which swiftness and inveteracy of attack and parry, of riposte, remise, counter-riposte and reprise, assumed an all-important character. With the new style began to assert itself that utter recklessness of “chance hits” which in our days so markedly differentiates foil-practice from actual duelling. And this brings us to the fourth phase, the fencing art, to what may be called the age of the foil.
If anything were required to demonstrate that foil-play has nowadays passed into the state of what may be called fine art in athleticism, it would be found in the rise of the method which French masters particularize as le jeu du terrain, as duelling play in fact; a play which differs as completely from academic foil-fencing as cross-country riding in an unknown district from the haute école of horsemanship in the manège. By fencing, nowadays, that is by foil-play, we have come to mean not simply fighting for hits, but a strictly regulated game which, being quite conventional, does not take accidental hits into consideration at all. This game requires for its perfect display a combination of artificial circumstances, such as even floors, featherweight weapons, and an unconditional acceptance of a number of traditional conventions. Now, for the more utilitarian purposes of duelling, the major part of the foil fencer’s special achievement and brilliancy has to be uncompromisingly sacrificed in the presence of the brutal fact that thrusts in the face, or below the waist, do count, insomuch as they may kill; that accidental hits in the arm or the leg cannot be disregarded, for they may, and generally do, put a premature stop to the bout. The “rub on the green” must be accepted, perforce, and indeed often plays as important a part in the issue of the game as the player’s skill. The fact, however, that in earnest encounters all conventionalities which determine the value of a hit vanish, does not in any way justify the notion, prevalent among many, that a successful hit justifies any method of planting the same; and that the mere discarding of all convention in practical sword-play is sufficient to convert a bad fencer into a dangerous duellist.
It is the recognition of this fact (which, oddly enough, only came to be generally admitted, and not without reluctance, by the masters of the art during the last quarter of the 19th century) which has led to the elaboration of the modified system of small-sword fence now known as épée play. The new system, after passing through various rather extravagant phases of its own, gradually returned to the main principle of sound foil-play, but shorn of all futile conventions as to the relative values of hits. In épée play a hit is a hit, whether correctly delivered or reckless, whether intentional or the result of mere chance, and must, at the cost of much caution and patience, be guarded against.
Per contra the elaboration by the devotees of the épée of a really practical system of fence, that is, one applicable to trials in earnest, has reacted upon the teaching of foil-play by the best masters of the present day—a teaching which, without ceasing to be academical up to a certain point, takes now cognisance of the necessity of defending every part of the body as sedulously as the target of the breast, and, moreover, of warding the many possibilities of chance hits in contretemps.
In both plays—in the highly refined, complicated and brilliant fence of the first-class “foil,” as well as in the simpler and more cautious operations of the practised duellist—the one golden rule remains, that one so quaintly expressed by M. Jourdain’s maître d’armes in Molière’s comedy: “Tout le secret des armes ne consiste qu’en deux choses, à donner et à ne point recevoir.”
The point most usually lost sight of by sanguine and self-reliant scorners of conventionalities is that, although with the sword it may be comparatively easy at any time “to give,” it is by no means easy to make sure of “giving without receiving.” The mutual simultaneous hit—the coup-double—is, in fact, the dread pitfall of all sword-play. For this reason, in courteous bouts, a hit has no real value, not only when it is actually cancelled by a counter, but when it is delivered in such a way as to admit of a counter. In short, the experience of ages and the careful consideration of probabilities have given birth to the various make-believes and restrictions that go to make sound foil-play. These restrictions are destined to act in the same direction as the warning presence of a sharp point instead of a button; and thus, as far as possible, to prevent those mutual hits—the contretemps of the old masters—which mar the greater number of assaults. The proper observance of those conventions, other things being equal, distinguishes the good from the indifferent swordsman, the man who uses his head from him who rushes blindly where angels fear to tread. So much for foil-play.
In modern sword-play, on the other hand, is seen the usual tendency of arts which have reached their climax of complication to return to comparative simplicity. With reference to actual duelling, it is a recognized thing that it would be the height of folly to attempt, sword in hand, the complex attacks, the full-length lunges, the neat but somewhat weak parries of the foil; so much so, that many have been led to assert that, for its ultimate practical purpose (which logically is that of duelling), the refined art of the foil, requiring so many years of assiduous and methodical work, is next to useless. It is alleged, as a proof, that many successful duellists have happened to be indifferent performers on the fencing floor. Some even maintain that a few weeks’ special work in that restricted—very restricted—play, which alone can be considered safe on the field of honour, will produce as good a practical swordsman as any who have walked the schools for years. Nothing can be further from the truth: were it but on the ground that the greater includes the less; that the foil-fencer of standing who can perform with ease and accuracy all the intricate movements of the assault, who has trained his hand and eye to the lightning speed of the well-handled foil, must logically prove more than a match for the more purely practical but less trained devotees of the épée de combat. The only difference for him in the two plays is that the latter is incomparably slower in action, simpler; that it demands above all things patience and caution; and especially that, instead of protecting his breast only, the épée fencer must beware of the wily attack, or the chance hit, at every part of his body, especially at his sword-hand.
The difference which still exists between the French and Italian schools of small-sword fence—by no means so wide, in point of theory, as popularly supposed—is mainly due to the dissimilarity of the weapons favoured by the two countries. The quillons, which are retained to this day in the Italian
