Read Ebook: Secrets of the Sword by Bazancourt C Sar Lecat Baron De Townsend F H Frederick Henry Illustrator Clay Charles Felix Translator

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 605 lines and 40614 words, and 13 pages

"It was clearly a revolution, and declared itself by the unmistakable signs of all revolutions, by its aggressive attitude and by its onslaught on old ideas and traditions, which till then had been thought unassailable.

"Moli?re's famous maxim,--'Hit and don't be hit back,'--asserted itself triumphantly. Truth and falsehood went hand in hand. The thing to be done was to winnow the chaff from the corn, and not reject the whole as worthless.

"Well, let us now see if we can sum up the real changes which the new school introduced.

"As a matter of fact it proposed absolutely none that was unreasonable. Its tenets amounted to this:--'A fencer must be judged not so much by his graceful attitude and classical style, not so much by his masterly command of precise execution, as by his power of quickly conceiving and quickly delivering the right attack at the right moment.

'When once a beginner has learnt the rudiments of sword-play; when he has learnt that the movements of hand and body must correspond, and maintain an even balance in every position; that the wrist must be quick to follow the adverse blade and form a close parry, without flying wild and wide in uncontrolled disorder; when he can appreciate the value of a step to the rear and the value of a step to the front; when he has grasped the danger to which he is exposed in making a complicated attack, and realises that the effectiveness of a simple attack depends on the power of seizing the critical moment,--then he should be left to follow his natural instinct, and allowed to exercise his own judgment in making use of the knowledge he has acquired.'

"You should not say to him:--'We must now describe an exact circle, beyond which, by thought, word, or deed, you must not budge. You find it a more natural position, and easier for attack and riposte, to lean your body forward and double yourself up. It cannot be helped, you are required to keep the body upright by the rules of classical fencing.

'You prefer to keep out of distance, because you find that at close quarters your nervous dread of a surprise attack or of a quick thrust is disconcerting and disturbs your equanimity. You must not keep out of distance. You are required to keep the prescribed distance and to join blades.

'You are afraid of attacks on the sword, such as beats, binds, and pressures, or of surprise attacks, and to avoid them you refuse to engage your adversary's blade. You must not refuse. You are required to engage swords by the rules of the game; only bad fencers attempt to avoid the engagement.

'You attack in the low lines, perhaps you hit your opponent below the belt. Quite true, the hit would be fatal in a duel, but in sword-play it is considered a foul blow; the code does not allow it, therefore the hit is bad.'

"This sort of thing is mistaken prejudice. The assault ought to be a sham fight.

"It follows that everyone should have liberty of action. Do not attempt to force A. to be graceful and elegant, if he is not built that way. Permit B. to develope his own style in his own fashion, and do not try to make him a servile copy of yourself, merely for the sake of emphasising your superiority. If he makes mistakes, take advantage of them, that is the most convincing kind of correction. If his play is dangerous but incorrect, show him that you can be at once correct and dangerous.

"In short we ask for a fair field and no favour for every sort of style and theory that is based on a study of the weapon. Science you know is the result of intelligent application. Do you seriously believe that these fencers are devoid of science, because they refuse to be judged by your standard, or because they try to obtain new results, where you persist in seeing nothing but annoying tricks?

"You must allow one of two things. Either the methods which these fencers employ, their plans of attack and defence, are based on policy and their knowledge of the weapon, and their source of inspiration is the same as yours; in that case they are justified by results, they have teeth and can bite, and are not the easy prey, which you expected to find them. Or on the contrary, they go to work without judgment, they let fly at random, and advance or retire without any notion of time or distance, their parries are wide and weak, without any sense of touch, their attacks uncertain, wild and incoherent. In that case they are not dangerous. Chance may perhaps protect them once, but you with your experience and skill of course will easily defeat them, and their slap-dash play will lead them promptly into every trap which you choose to set for them.

"Such is the controversy, the great quarrel between the two schools, the feud between the white rose and the red. I have attempted to explain it to you in its general outlines as clearly as I possibly could. You will find it easier to understand the details, which we shall consider when we continue this discussion."

"What will your subject be to-morrow?" asked my host.

"I really cannot say," I replied. "It would be difficult to lay down a regular plan. No doubt something will turn up to talk about. And, by the way, this morning I noticed in the library one or two old books about sword-play, and I shall try to find time to turn them over."

The Second Evening

It began to dawn upon me that my undertaking was more serious than I had anticipated, and that I had let myself in for some uncommonly hard work; for I should have to advance solid reasons in support of the theories that I had so rashly propounded. I had committed myself to nothing less than the exposition of a system to men who, for the most part, knew nothing at all about sword-play, and could not be expected to understand the meaning of the technical terms. I should have to be clear and precise and ready to answer any questions that might be put to me.

I was particularly anxious to carry my little audience with me, because I venture to think that no gentleman's education is complete without some knowledge of fencing, and I consider that parents and guardians are much to blame if they fail to recognise the two-fold importance of this indispensable exercise, which not only strengthens and developes the learner's body, but also insures his life.

"Ah," I exclaimed, as I joined the company in the smoking-room, where we met every evening, "my audience I see is before me."

"You have kept your audience waiting," said my host, "and we have kept an armchair waiting for you. Sit down, and begin as soon as you please."

"Thank you," I replied sitting down,--"I will begin at once."

"I remarked, yesterday, that the art of fencing would greatly benefit by simplification, and that it does not require such formidable and protracted study as some of the text-books by their elaborate display of intricate and interminable combinations would lead you to suppose.

"The elementary principles of sword-play are four in number. They are these:--

SIMPLE ATTACKS. COMPOSITE ATTACKS. SIMPLE PARRIES. COMPOSITE PARRIES.

"Here is a table of the attacks and parries:--

SIMPLE ATTACKS.

The Straight Thrust. The Disengagement.

COMPOSITE ATTACKS.

One, two. Beat straight thrust. Beat disengage. Feint disengage. Feint cut over. Cut over and disengage in tierce or quarte.

SIMPLE PARRIES.

Quarte. Tierce. Seconde. Low Quarte, or Quinte.

COUNTER PARRIES.

Counter-Quarte. Counter-Tierce. Circle.

"My classification, you see, is not very complicated."

"But," some one objected, "you are surely forgetting to name an immense number of strokes and parries; for it is impossible that the long lists of names, which are given in the books, and the directions for the various passes, which have the air of cabalistic formulae and are about equally intelligible, can be reduced to such simple terms."

"I am willing to forget them," I replied, "in fact more than willing, for I am convinced that they only serve to distract the learner's mind. The simpler the principles, the simpler the practice. Give him fewer things to do, and he will do them more easily, and he will certainly learn to do them in a shorter time.

"I have always said that a text-book of fencing, which contained nothing that was superfluous, would not fill a volume but might be written out on a sheet of notepaper, and besides, I would have you notice that several of the attacks, parries, and ripostes included in my list might logically have been omitted, because they are simply different ways of executing the same movement.

"You see, then, that the multiplication of strokes, far from extending to infinity, may be reduced to very narrow limits. And I am firmly convinced, that if you transgress these limits you are at once involved in endless confusion, which you ought to be very careful to avoid.--You will, I am sure, admit the force of my argument.

"The lucidity of his mind is reflected even in the movement of his hand which goes straight to its mark without hesitation or confusion. Speed and freedom of delivery follow as a matter of course. And we must not forget that quickness of hand, combined with what may be called fencing judgment, is of all qualifications the most important, the most necessary, the most vitally indispensable.

"We may as well follow up the turn our conversation has taken, and pass under review without further preface the three watch-words of swordsmanship:--

JUDGMENT; CONTROL; SPEED.

The man who should master these three would be the pattern of the perfect fencer.

"Well, what of fencing judgment? Why in the world should you be afraid of it, as though it were the hundred-headed hydra that guards the sacred portals? What is it but that part of the understanding that we all bring to bear on the conduct of everyday life? Nothing in human affairs however trivial or however great can be done without it.

"Fencing judgment implies more especially distrust, cunning, a wise caution, the power of interpreting the dumb language of the sword, the faculty of drawing correct inferences. These faculties are in the first instance directly stimulated by the master's lessons, and natural intelligence, acting without any conscious effort on your part, combined with experience, will make the good seed grow. Do not concern yourself about it. Over-anxiety always has a most disturbing effect on the mind.

"The other night when I spoke of the alphabet of fencing, I had a special object in view. There is a language of the sword, by which questions are asked and answered. As soon as you have learnt the words you can speak and understand it. To admit that it is necessary to make a separate study of every possible phrase implies that a simple and straightforward method of instruction, which I hold to be of the highest importance, is unattainable.

"In like manner the faculty of control is a thing that may be gradually acquired by practice. It is the result of imparting a supple 'temper' to the wrist and body, and consists in the knitting up of the various operations into one continuous movement. But, as in the case of fencing judgment, so here, the desired result cannot be obtained all at once. It is the first and most natural consequence of your master's instructions. It comes of daily practice and you must patiently watch and wait for it, as you might wait for a peach slowly ripening on a sunny wall. Let it grow upon you like a habit, by slow degrees, till it becomes a second nature.

"Speed, not of course mere quickness of hand, but the rapid execution of every movement, is one of the fencer's great resources, whether in attack, parry, or retreat. It is to my mind the main point to be insisted on from the very first.

"It is certainly useful to practise the hand by exercising it on the master's jacket, but it is useless to practise it by slow movements. First explain how the stroke is to be executed, and then without more ado make your pupil get into the way of taking it quickly. Slowness is convenient, because it renders execution easy, but the ease of execution that is derived from it is dangerous, because it reacts on the judgment and accustoms the mind to lazy ways. Your object is, no doubt, to bring the hand under control and analyse the stroke in detail, but if the result of your teaching is that your pupil falls into a sluggish habit you are sowing the seeds of a vice, which you will probably never succeed in extirpating.

"Suppose you are teaching a child to walk, you are not surprised that his first steps are wavering and unsteady, and that he cannot plant his feeble feet firmly on the ground. You hold him up, but you let him walk. In due time he learns to use his strength, as a bird learns to fly. The young fencer is the child learning to walk. As his knowledge and experience gradually expand, many faults will disappear of themselves, or will be more easily seen and corrected by his maturer judgment.

"Speed is a mechanical force, unreasoning, unconscious, but a force capable of development. You must add fuel to the fire and not allow it to go out. Do you suppose that all you have to do is to change the word of command:--'Now do quickly what you have done slowly hitherto'? Your new command introduces a new idea and creates new difficulties.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet