 The Classical View of Swordsmanship Becoming Sport
By John Clements
ARMA Director
In 1898, Captain Cyril G. R. Matthey, a volunteer in the London rifle brigade
and fencing enthusiast, delivered a biting indictment of the martial value
of then modern fencing practices by stating bluntly: “The method of instruction
as at present… is so closely allied to the dueling system as to be practically
indistinguishable from it and… has seen fit not only to neglect all instruction
respecting either the attack or defence of the lower limbs, but has actually
gone so far as absolutely to prohibit the attack and defence of any part
of the body below the hip.” In his introduction to his reprint of master
George Silver’s works on the art of defence, which he had then rediscovered
and brought to attention, Captain Matthey forcefully and unequivocally declared
of fencing at the time: “I suggest that sword fighting is not taught and
that it ought to be. Fencing should be encouraged to the utmost, but fighting
should be regarded, as a distinct subject, and of much greater importance
in the majority of cases.” (Matthey, p. xviii).
Matthey felt so strongly that fencing in his time, or at least the quality
within the British military which was formulated by continental teachers,
was no longer a martial art that he suggested: “Why not, having decided
upon the pattern of a regulation sword, have drawn up, or have caused to
be drawn up, by one of our well-known swordsmen... a simple, common-sense
method of swordfighting suitable for service requirements... That
such a system can be drawn up, and that there are those who are thoroughly
qualified to do it well, there is no doubt.” (p. xiii) That last was undoubtedly
a reference to the Kernoozer’s Club of Alfred Hutton and Egerton
Castle —the grandfathers of today’s historical fencing studies.
Arguing for creation of a “modern” self-defence method of military “sword-fighting”
(in contrast to just classroom and parade-ground fencing), Captain Matthey
stressed the necessity: “to dismiss all that to any unnecessary extent savours
of the dueling school, and then to teach the smallest number and the simplest
of parries that will protect a man from head to foot, and the correct and
quickest way of delivering a cut or thrust, coupled with the careful instruction
in the judicious use of the left hand in defence, which is now and has long
been totally ignored.” (p. xiii)
In an indictment of how much Victorian swordsmanship had declined from the
pragmatic and sophisticated martial skills of the Renaissance, he reasonably
concluded that Silver’s method “can be still used with great effect, almost
without modification, to suit our modern sword.” (p. xvii) In directing
the British infantry officer to realistically prepare himself for the possibility
of facing natives armed with serious cutting blades —something they had
been doing with regularity for decades— Matthey urged a study of the combat
tips found in George Silver’s late 16th century works. He advised, “to thoroughly
master the simplicities of sword fighting, and on no account to try to persuade
himself that an intricate and possibly faulty dueling school will keep his
skin whole in hand-to-hand fighting, unless he be already an expert fencer.”
(p. xix)
 Captain
Matthey stated forcefully his disdain for the “complicated parries and movements,
which even if practicable with feather-weight dueling sabre, and in the
fencing room, become utterly impossible with the regulation sword, and in
a fight of the “rough and tumble” order. Such is easily experienced today
in practicing Renaissance cut-and-thrust styles with accurate reproduction
training weapons and engaging in earnest free-play. The British saber method
had been long adopted from Italian styles, and Matthey went on to say, “Given
the present infantry regulation sword of sufficient weight and strength
to render it as really serviceable weapon, it would be impossible for any
man to put into practice the principles which he is now supposed to be taught.”
(p. xii) Matthey was not talking about the increasingly vanishing private
duel to “first blood” with its associated frequent etiquette and urbane
ritual, but the battlefield encounters of British soldiers against what
he called “savage native contingents.” Matthey even believed Silver’s Elizabethan
teachings would have been of value to officers fighting in the Boer War,
if any place, certainly one where they would have proved their close-combat
utility.
The esteemed swordsman-historian, Captain Alfred Hutton, himself declared
it most accurately when, in his 1898 text on sabre, bayonet, and arm seizes,
The Swordsman - A Manual of Fence and the Defense Against an Uncivilised
Enemy, he similarly stated, “Those old masters taught fighting,
we teach nothing but fencing nowadays.” (p. 129). These sentiments
are of course very nearly the same again as George Silver’s centuries before
in his critique that the dueling style of the rapier did not prepare Englishmen
for the needs of the battlefield. Hutton’s work ends by stressing the need
among British colonial soldiers for realistic fighting skills for facing
an “uncivilised enemy.”
In his introduction to Captain Alfred Hutton’s acclaimed 1901 work, The
Sword and The Centuries, Colonel Matthey declared the old rapier and
foyning fence “the most picturesque and most deadly form of fence ever attained.”
(Hutton, p. xv) How he figured it could be deadlier than swiftly lobbing
off someone’s limbs with a bastard-sword or shearing completely through
their collar and rib cage with a great-sword or war-sword is not explained.
Yet, it is consistent with the view that developed in later foyning fences
and the pride and prejudice of his times, and we must look at it in light
solely of the idea of single combat man-to-man.
Matthey further argued that, “our officers generally would learn properly
to understand, and to form a more correct estimate of the value of the weapons
they wear as a fighting arm, than with certain almost rare exceptions is
at present the case.” (p. xiv) But Matthey was certainly no opponent of
traditional fencing, indeed, for he wrote: “As a means simply of promoting
health, and as a recreation, fencing of the classic schools, whether French
or Italian, cannot be too highly commended, and with simply such objects
as these in view all the stringent etiquette of the duel and the extreme
niceties of the art of fence should be strongly insisted upon in the fencing
room.” (p. xi)
 Profoundly,
Matthey further declared, “The fact that so little distinction is
now made
between the swordsmanship of the duelist and that of the soldier
must be
incomprehensible to the majority of fencers who have given any
consideration
to the matter as thus defined. Fencing as now taught throughout
Europe is
made, and always has been, entirely subservient to ‘the duel’,
with all
its attendant etiquette. This distinction is demonstrated by
almost any
work (whether of ancient or modern date) upon the art of
sword-fencing,
and it is moreover a rule to which there are few exceptions.”
(Matthey,
p. x-xi) In his 1590 military discourse on weapons, Sir John
Smythe had also complained of the unsuitability of rapier blades for
the battlefield. noting how being too narrow and hard of temper that
with any blow upon armour they did “presently breake, and so become
unprofitable.”
Again, we may note that if Matthey
made such observations about the relation of sport saber fencing to the
real thing back then, at a time when actual weapons were still being issued
and experienced soldiers still fencing, it is no difficulty to imagine how
greater that gulf is now more than a hundred and twenty years later.
While modern sport fencing, or its “classical” fencing precursor, are each
highly athletic and tactical games which anyone interested in historical
fencing should participate in at sometime, they are not martial arts. They
are recreational. They are not concerned with and do not claim to teach
self-defense. They neither use nor study actual historical weaponry as used
in battle, street, or duel. They are not focused upon prowess in armed and
unarmed fighting technqiues, but on scoring points in contest bouts. Well
over a century ago they transitioned away from any actual concern with real
fighting with real weapons and they have never looked back. They are not
concerned with understanding actual close-combat methods of the past. No
one today can seriously argue that sport fencing —with all its artificial
restrictions on contact, force, leverage, target areas, spacing, and movement—
is even a form of “historical swordsmanship.” No modern source on the sport
dares assert now that it is a “martial art” form or that it is ever approached
from that perspective.
For further evidence of how 19th century authorities distinguished the reality
of military fencing needs, as well as fencing for the duel in contrast to
the newer sport for the sallé, one need only consult such works as Bazancourt’s
Secrets of the Sword (1862), Burton's rewrite of it asSentiment
of the Sword (written in the 1880s, but not published until 1911), Alfred
Hutton's Old Swordplay (1892) and The Sword and the Centuries
(1901), Matthey's 1898 introduction to George Silver’s reprint, and Egerton
Castle’s article on “Swordsmanship Considered Historically and as a Sport”
(1904). It is plainly evident in their opinions and observations that their
generation of experienced military fencers —who had literally witnessed
the emergence of sport fencing— held no delusions about what worked in cordial
athletic play as opposed to what real life-and-death encounters required.
An 1894 article from The Saturday Review entitled “Fencing and Fighting
Circa 1600” went as far as to describe, “That difference between fencing
and fighting, between the use of arms in practice and their practical use.”
It cited how Johan Jacobi Wallhausen’s, Ritterkunst, of 1616, “a
work on the use of arms in battle, not in the fencing school and written
by a soldier, not a fencing master… is valuable as illustrating the method
of fighting adopted by reiter and dragoon, musketeer and pikeman, at the
close of the sixteenth century.” The author then referenced George Silver’s
views in adding, “all learning and refinement of these [fencing] schools
had to be laid aside in war, and Wallhausen shows us what took their place.”
(September 1, 1894, p. 234-235) And he was writing during a time which saw
traditional fighting skills with older arms and armor transform in light
of new military methods, even as civilian swordplay was changing along with
it.
 This
evidence may appear “Anglocentric,” and that is because it entirely is.
In contrast to its continental neighbors of the 19th century, it was the
British Empire that was sending its armies all over the globe to engage
indigenous inhabitants –who, unlike Europeans, were still fighting effectively
with traditional swords, knives, spears, clubs, and bows. The British army’s
experiences in East Africa, South Africa, India, Afghanistan, and Asia taught
them well the lessons of ill-preparing men for earnest sword fighting by
using the “dueling school” approach. As the saying goes, if you don’t use
it, you lose it. As did so many that later followed, the pioneering researchers
of Asian fighting arts, Donn Draeger and R.W. Smith, criticized the sportification
of traditional martial arts as far back as 1968, noting: “Rules and regulations
enabling a fighting art to become a competitive sport tend to reduce… combat
effectiveness. With this watering-down process combat values weaken, often
disappear, and elements unrelated to real combat creep into the exercise
patterns.” (Asian Fighting Arts, p.92)
None of this should really need to be explained in the 21st century given
the tremendous advancements that have been made in understanding authentic
teachings of Medieval and Renaissance swordsmanship. But, despite the considerable
advancements made over the past two decades in reviving these martial arts,
a new sporting approach concerned with referees and winning points has emerged
to complicate their reconstruction. It is worth heeding then the classical
view of how swordsmanship was previously turned into a sport and what was
lost in the process.
5-2024
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