By the Sword

by Richard Cohen

  IN 1553 CAMILLO AGRIPPA PUBLISHED TREATISE ON THE SCIENCE OF Arms with a Philosophical Dialogue, with engravings thought by some to have been provided by his friend and fellow fencer Michelangelo.† His book was eagerly seized on by all who could read it—or at least appreciate the illustrations. A noted architect (he built the famous obelisk in St. Peter’s Square in Rome), engineer, and mathematician, Agrippa was an amateur fencer who had, Castle suggests, experienced the practical side of swordplay “during many a personal encounter in the dark winding Roman streets.” Sydney Anglo, too, notes that Agrippa was “a brawler, [and] ruffian” but, free of the prejudices of a master, he was able to see the advantages of the thrust over the cut. He was so proud of the mathematical and engineering knowledge he was bringing to the problems of armed combat that he had himself depicted on the book’s frontispiece demonstrating some mathematical nicety with a pair of compasses. But his insights were genuine enough. Agrippa pointed out to his readers that it was far more effective to hold the sword in front of the body, not behind it. Nor was it sensible for a right-hander to stand with his left foot forward. Agrippa identified four basic guard positions. Prima (the “looking at your wristwatch parry”) showed his pragmatism: it was the first parry a man could make after drawing his sword. Taken with the other three, secunda, terza, and quarta, the parries effectively quartered a fencer’s chest: upper and lower left, upper and lower right. Simple, but effective.

  A marketplace melee, from a 1506 engraving by Lucas Cranach. Spectators lean over a simple barrier. A tournament of this type would have been rare by the early sixteenth century. (illustration credit 2.1)

  While Agrippa did not invent the lunge per se, he described a thrust delivered by fully extending the sword arm forward and moving the rear foot back. By studying the bobbing head movements of fighting cocks, he discovered the “disengage” (moving the blade from one line of attack, where it is blocked by the opposing blade, into a line that is not protected). This was possibly the first time animal movement had been used as an analogy of human movement, evidence of fencing theory being on the intellectual cutting edge of its time: Agrippa’s work was significantly original. As with previous theorists, however, he did not challenge the way in which fencers fought by circling each other, like boxers, nor did he criticize their “passing” (moving to one side) in both attack and defense, requiring several steps before even getting within striking range.

  Another Venetian, Giacomo di Grassi, set out “the master keys to fencing.” He divided the sword blade into various parts and reduced the number of basic guard positions to three. His concern for a fencer’s sense of touch in parrying is remarkable for its time, and he was equally farsighted in stressing the importance of distance, and thus footwork. The psychological insights of his treatise The Art of Defence transformed swordplay. No one had ever thought it possible to analyze a fight that might last only a few seconds. Di Grassi argued that, indeed, most elements of a fight could be analyzed and that the basic qualities of speed, balance, and efficient use of the body and mind could be enhanced by training.

  Over the next few decades a series of Italian masters further defined the structure of swordplay. In 1610 Rodolfo Capoferro of Siena opined that in choosing a weapon a man should select a sword twice the length of his arm, a reminder that blades remained of widely differing sizes; thus, when Hamlet demands in the duel scene, “These foils have all a length?” it is not just an index of his suspicious nature but a question any good fencer might have asked. Giuseppe Morsicato Pallavicini, in La scherma illustrata (1670), reported how fencing was conducted day to day and describes the use of swords with protective buttons—“which, when wrapped in leather, were about the size of a musket ball.” Each of these masters contributed to making swordplay an autonomous activity, separate from the demands of the battlefield—proof that if a new art has confidence enough it can leave behind the assumptions that first gave it life.

  Illustrations showing the four guards described by Agrippa. It is possible the artist was Michelangelo. (illustration credit 2.2)

  Much of the essential procedure of fencing was now in place. The sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries saw people responding to the Renaissance idea that man could improve himself by study and avidly assimilating new ways of fighting.4 Even Martin Luther recommended fencing (along with jousting and wrestling) to promote good health. Oakeshott is correct when he states that “the period from about 1500 to about 1620 was the greatest for the sword as a weapon for Everyman; no longer was its use a privilege confined to the knightly class.”5

  ITALY WAS THE ACCEPTED WORLD LEADER. IN BOTH ENGLAND AND France skill in swordplay had been a questionable attribute, and in the roughhouse of sixteenth-century Europe only gradually did it become apparent that swordsmanship had become a necessity. By the middle of the sixteenth century the vocabulary of fencing was Italian, and France was at best an eager pupil.

  Renaissance Italy was eagerly receptive to original ideas, and its masters were quick to embrace a new weapon: the rapier. A slender, double-edged sword, rarely less than four feet long, it was developed in Spain in the early fifteenth century. Spaniards found they could go about with these swords in comparative safety and began calling them espadas roperas (“dress swords,” from ropera “clothing”), as they could be worn with ordinary civil dress. When early in the sixteenth century the espadachines of Charles V overran Italy, they took their new sword with them. The French condensed the name to rapière, the English to “rapier.”‡

  For the next fifty years, a variety of swords, even two-handed ones, were termed “rapiers.” Then the specialized rapier, a weapon ideally suited for thrusting, came into being. The blade was rarely more than three-eighths of an inch wide and sometimes as much as fifty inches long, mounted in a classic “swept” hilt—that is, curved back to protect the hand. The rapier’s unwieldy length relegated the cut to a secondary action and made it prudent to combine it with a dagger or cloak, which had by this time replaced the buckler (a small shield about twelve inches across). Daggers were resilient, about a foot long, with thick blades and sharp edges, sometimes with sawlike teeth set back like barbs. Duelists took to grasping their opponents’ rapiers with a heavily gloved hand, and glovemakers responded by lining the palms of their gauntlets with fine mail. For a Europe increasingly gripped by the mania for private dueling, the rapier became the ideal weapon for settling scores.

  WHILE THE ITALIANS AND, FOLLOWING THEIR EXAMPLE, THE French, English, and Germans, were discovering that simplification led to progress, the Spaniards chose to make fencing an arcane and elaborate ritual. They could have dominated Europe, but instead they produced “the most elaborate, and quite the most ridiculous, treatise on fencing ever written.”7 This was the work of Don Jeronimo de Carranza, a master based just south of Seville, who in 1582 published Libro que trata de la philosophia de las armas, y de su destreza, y de la agressión y defensión christiana. The book, dedicated to his king, Philip II, propounds a thesis so abstruse as almost to defy understanding.

  Carranza explains that he created his system by applying the entire education of a gentleman—mathematics, science, art, philosophy, and religion—to the management of arms. He called his system “la destreza” (“the high art”) rather than “esgrima” (“fencing”) because it expressed “art and skill at the highest level.” Science, he argued, must be applied to swordsmanship, and above all the science of geometry. It is possible that he was influenced by the Muslim thinkers who formed an integral part of Spain’s heritage—one of whom, the Tunisian-born Ibn Khaldun, wrote in 1377 that “Geometry enlightens the intellect and sets one’s mind right. All its proofs are very clear and orderly. It is hardly possible for errors to enter into geometrical reasoning, because it is so well arranged and orderly.”8

  Just as Leonardo da Vinci had placed man in a circle in his examination of human proportions in 1509, Carranza organized his doctrines around a circle, whose radius bears a cryptic relation to the length
of human limbs and Spanish swords. In this “mystical” circle the vertical axis bisects the body, while a horizontal chord is run through the outstretched arms. The circle is further inscribed in squares and intersected by various chords that seem to stand for certain strokes and parries. The pupil was expected to imagine a similar circle around himself and step from intersection to intersection, guided by complicated calculations. Correctly implemented, Carranza believed, this process guaranteed victory. Castle’s only comment was “How the Italian and French masters must have laughed.” And so they did: several Elizabethan playwrights made “the magnificent Carranza” the butt of jokes.

  THE SPANISH MASTER’S TEACHING WAS ONE THING, THE SPANISH rapier another. In England, Elizabethan masters recognized that the new weapon was more lethal than any other available, and they professed as much in their work. Throughout the land men wanted to know about this new arm, “set out in Print that every man may read it.”9 It was said that there were four Spaniards to every Englishman on the streets of London, each a walking advertisement. Raphael Holinshed, the historian whose chronicles so informed Shakespeare, could write, “seldom shall you see one of my countrymen above eighteen or twenty years old go without a dagger at least at his back or side.… Our nobility wear commonly swords or rapiers with these daggers, as does every common serving man also.”10§ Well aware that young men versed in swordsmanship would be a valuable asset in wartime, Henry VIII granted letters of patent to the best-known teachers in the country enabling them to form a new, royally sanctioned academy. On July 20, 1540, he granted a license to certain “Masters of the Noble Science of Defense,” simultaneously outlawing independent practitioners. He forbade anyone who was not a member of his new institution from teaching and obliged all members to swear not to instruct murderers, thieves, or other undesirables. (In recent times English international teams adopted a Tudor rose as part of their costume, in recognition of Henry’s patronage.) To help keep the peace, a proclamation declared that no remarks or comparisons could be made about anyone engaged in a fencing bout. Nine original masters, together with eleven provosts, were duly registered. They created four ranks, neatly appropriating the language of the universities: scholar, free scholar, provost, and master, with ascent through the ranks based on success in “prizefights.”

  The effect of Henry’s initiative was immediate. Within five years, Roger Ascham would complain, in his classic treatise on archery, that the bow and arrow were “being neglected in favor of swordplay.”11 The new academy forged ahead. Applicants to the Masters of the Noble Science of Defense were divided into ranks by experience; and examinations and the payment of hefty fees were required at each stage. A minimum of seven years of study was required before one could apply for provost, then a further seven before contending for the Master’s Prize.

  “Playing the prize” (hence the modern term “prizefight”) was the phrase used for the highly physical matriculations. The applicant was expected to take on all the masters within a certain jurisdiction with at least six different weapons on a scaffold erected in the marketplace. The examination was brutal, lasting two or three days, and thus requiring stamina as well as skill. The City of London’s records show that when a scholar applied for guild admission the crowds were so great that nearby businesses shut down for the day. The masters would gather at theaters and taverns just outside the city limits: in Bishopsgate, Holborn, Ludgate Hill, and Newgate. Severe outbreaks of the plague, such as the epidemic that took more than seventeen thousand lives in the summer of 1593, occasionally curtailed performances, as well as limiting the number of prizes contested within the city.

  Despite the popularity of these contests, the standing of masters remained on a par with that of jugglers, actors, and other vagabonds. Swordplay had been discouraged in England in the Middle Ages, especially in large towns, since it so often led to bloodshed. As far back as the reign of Edward I (1272–1307) there had been fencing schools of a sort. In 1281, and again in 1310, these establishments were banned from London “under pain of imprisonment for forty days.” The instructors were commoners, never noblemen, and often little better than hired thugs, providing their services to those who preferred not to fight themselves. On the Continent, such men were called free fighters or freelances. In the instance of a duel insisted on by the courts, an appellant might hire a proxy—in England a “pugil,” in France a ferrailleur, in Italy a bravo—or seek professional tuition to improve his chances. Before long, expert duelists were committing all manner of crimes, confident that they could “prove” their innocence simply by defeating their accusers—for the right to call for trial by combat was not formally repealed in England until 1819.

  On the whole, though, the demand was for instruction, whether for self-protection or for self-advancement. By Henry VIII’s time, commoners were able to raise the money needed to become a master of fence. Once qualified, a reasonable living was assured: Sir Philip Sidney wrote to his brother urging him to “practice the single sword, and then with the dagger, let no day pass without an hour or two such exercise.” Another contemporary advised young gentlemen to put aside two crowns (120 pennies) a month for lessons—a considerable investment at a time when good beer cost a penny a quart.

  Italian teachers continued to enjoy wide popularity. The French royal family employed Italian masters, and French and German aspirants continued to study in Italy. Mostly, the English followed suit, but while aristocrats might attend Italian schools, a fierce rearguard action was waged in favor of the traditional cutting sword with its heavy double-edged blade, which was seen as more manly and more English. “Sword and buckler fight,” says a character in Henry Porter’s play The Two Angry Women of Abington, “begins to grow out of use. I am sorry for it. I shall never see good manhood again. If it be once gone, this poking fight with a rapier and dagger will come up. Then the tall man—that is, a courageous man and a good sword-and-buckler man—will be spitted like a cat!”

  The argument between edge and point, between aggressive Italian thrust and the more defensive English style, raged for nearly fifty years. The only surviving English fencing manual from the sixteenth century was written by the ultraconservative, formidably combative, and unashamedly xenophobic George Silver. He viewed swordplay as a practical military art and extolled English methods in his Paradoxes of Defence. Italian methods he dismissed as “school tricks and juggling gambols,” the rapier itself as “a childish toy wherewith a man can do nothing but thrust … and in every moving when blows are a dealing, for lack of a hilt is in danger to have his hand or arm cut off, or his head cloven.” Rapier play was not only dangerous but unmanly: a thrust could be parried “with the force of a child.” True Englishmen should “cast off these Italianated, weak, fantastical, and most devilish and imperfect fights, and by exercising their own ancient weapons, be restored … their natural, and most manly and victorious fight again.”12 For all its invective and hyperbole, Paradoxes of Defence did emphasize the importance of real combat conditions and pointed out some of the limitations of the rapier.

  Silver’s protestations notwithstanding, the rapier attained swift ascendancy, bringing with it a new fashion in finery. In 1571, the thirteenth year of Elizabeth’s reign, “began the long tucks and long rapiers,” records a contemporary chronicler, “and he was held the greatest gallant that had the deepest ruff and the longest Rapier. The offence to the eye of one, and the hurt that came … by the other caused Her Majesty to make proclamation against them both, and to place selected grave citizens at every gate, to cut the ruffs and break the Rapier’s points of all passengers that exceeded a yard in length of their rapiers, and a nail of a yard in depth of their ruffs.”13 The modern equivalent would be policemen at every street corner with a mandate to cut overlong hair and confiscate switchblades. One thing was clear: the rapier derived its popularity both from its capacity to menace and its value as a fashion accessory.

  Based on the widespread enthusiasm for Italian culture in general, the upper
classes succumbed to the new craze for rapiers, and several leading Italian masters came to England, including Vincentio Saviolo, Rocco Bonetti (whose pupils, according to Silver, “wear leaden soles in their shoes, the better to bring them to nimbleness of feet”), and Jeronimo Rocco (“Rocco the Younger”), said to have translated Grassi into English. Between them they taught in their adopted country for thirty years. “Teachers of offense,” Silver called them, complaining that these foreign experts were receiving as much as a hundred pounds for a course of lessons—more than six times the year’s pay of an army captain. Hit in pride and pocket, one disgruntled master, Austen Bagger, went armed with sword and buckler to Bonetti’s house “and trampled upon him,” deciding only at the last minute to spare his life.14 On another occasion, Saviolo was invited by a master in Wells to visit his school of defense but refused in so insulting a fashion that the master boxed his ears and emptied a mug of ale over him. Both Rocco the Younger and Saviolo continued to speak slightingly of English swordsmanship, so Silver and his brother Toby challenged them to a public contest on stage. It was the first time such a challenge had been issued. The Italians, having no wish to imperil their position, declined to meet it. As for the unfortunate Jeronimo Rocco, it is said that an Englishman named Cheese, spying him in a coach with his girlfriend and, thinking it “a happy and obvious occasion for calling on him to fight” (the two men had long been at odds), went to the carriage, forced Rocco to fight him, and soon ran the Italian through, killing him outright.