By the Sword

by Richard Cohen

  Recently I lunched with an old friend, Ioan Pop, a Romanian who reached the Olympic saber finals in 1976 and is now technical director for the FIE. “If we are out of the Olympics, we are finished,” Ioan told me. “Every sport tries to get better and better for TV. We can’t perform a miracle—just one day to the next, little by little, try to make things better. Maybe get like tennis.” At least, he noted, fencing is no longer dominated by the five traditional leading powers. At Sydney the men’s foil event had been won, for the first time, by a South Korean; the saber by a Romanian, another first; China had taken two team medals. So the old order is changing, and this may have helped fencing’s cause when René Roch met Jacques Rogge in early February 2002.

  Rogge grew up in Ghent, which has a strong tradition of swordplay. He assured Roch that the sport would stay in the Olympics at least till 2008, with two hundred contestants and women fencing saber for the first time. Roch for his part promised to reform foil, particularly definitions of the attack. “Foil is like ice skating at the moment,” he explained to me a few days after his meeting with Rogge. “We need something objective.”3 So fencing kept its place at the Olympic table, a vital victory.

  Within two months, the whole settlement had unraveled. A plan to replace the traditional team events was vehemently opposed, particularly by the more powerful fencing nations. When in May it was announced that, to keep within the ten-event limit, team events at men’s saber and women’s foil would be discarded, there was uproar. Top international competitions in Madrid, Paris, Padua, and Warsaw were disrupted, striking finalists reading out prepared texts to the TV cameras to denounce the sport’s leadership.

  The IOC looked on appalled, disgusted at fencing’s ability to pierce itself in the foot. Couldn’t the world’s swordsmen agree on anything among themselves? At the same time, Roch’s attempts to take the sport back to its classical roots were blocked at congress after congress. The summer of 2002 found Olympic swordsmen in rancorous confusion.

  Yet was any of this really new? It all seemed one more convulsion in a history of revolutions. Amid the uproar blademakers were reporting record sales, as more and more people took to the fencing strip.

  * It is said that in the same competition, another leading Tauber fencer, now ranked at six in Germany, deliberately lost a fight so that his fellow German, Achim Bellman—a Leverkusen fencer, ranked one place above him—would not get through. A second Italian international, Stefano Bellone, has told me that he too was approached by Tauber personnel and asked to throw fights for cash. It was part of the overall Beck philosophy: he needed to build up his fencers’ self-esteem, and if he could, unknown to them, buy them some initial victories, the impetus should make them go on and win.

  † Samaranch finally retired at the beginning of 2001. His successor was the Belgian Jacques Rogge, a former Olympic yachtsman. Fencing was lucky. For years the front-runner for the post had been a Canadian lawyer, Dick Pound, who had made no secret of his wish to drop the sport on the grounds that it did not pay its way, people didn’t want to watch it, and sponsorship was minimal. But Pound had another reason: in 1988 the Canadian Fencing Association got itself into a muddle when a member of its saber squad said that the marking system should have qualified him for the Seoul team and challenged the association in court. Pound was retained by the association but lost, at great cost—and was left wondering what kind of sport it was that could get itself into such a mess.

  The exercising of weapons putteth away aches, griefs, and diseases, it increaseth strength and sharpeneth the wits, it giveth a perfect judgment, it expelleth melancholy, choleric, and evil conceits, it keepeth a man in breath, perfect health, and long life.

  —GEORGE SILVER, Paradoxes of Defence, 1599

  Doesn’t everyone wish he could fence? … It is violence refined into beauty; it has associations with love, honor and suicidal pride. We think of great fencers—unlike great footballers or great junk-bond salesmen—as superior beings; air and fire, rather than earth and water. We think of Cyrano, Zorro and the Three Musketeers.

  —JAMES TRAUB, GQ, 1994

  THE TWO TEENAGERS STOOD STARING AT EACH OTHER, NEITHER moving. Both had been told to strike quickly and without warning; both were justly afraid of the other. It was the tensest moment those watching could remember. The date was 1965, the place Rotterdam; the occasion, the fight-off for the world youth épée title.

  The final four had fenced a round robin, but the Austrian and the Russian had trailed in third and fourth places, with a tie for first between the Frenchman, Jacques Brodin, and the Swede, Hans Jacobsson. The two fought off, but when time was called at six minutes they were level. In those days fencers did not continue until a deciding hit—“sudden death,” as it is appositely known. Instead they had had to fight a second barrage, and when time was called Jacobsson and Brodin were tied again, at 3–all. Over the final and the two fight-offs they had been equal on aggregate hits. The organizers conferred, then told the combatants to battle it out once more; if this match remained undecided, they would share the championship.

  So they squared off, Hans Jacobsson—slim, blond, a classical épéeist who would be part of his country’s all-conquering team in the 1970s—and Jacques Brodin, already a senior world finalist, short, broad-shouldered, skin darkened by southern sun, adept at snaking out attacks to his opponent’s toe or wrist. In his fight in the round robin he had hit the Swede three times this way, all the more remarkable in that he held his épée by the pommel, shunning the protection of his guard but giving him crucial extra inches. He was the reigning champion and had first won the title four years before. The two were finely matched; now it was a question of character. Whose nerve would break?

  Neither took the initiative, and the entire audience was on the edge of their seats wondering who would make the first move, asking themselves what they would do under such circumstances. Would one last all-out attack be worth it, at the very last moment of full time? Were both under orders to do nothing, or was it mutual fear? What did each want more—the chance to be cochampion or to risk everything to be supreme? “He either fears his fate too much / Or his deserts are small / That puts it not unto the touch / To win or lose it all.”1

  The seconds ticked away—four minutes, five … still neither man ventured forward. At last the buzzer sounded for the full six minutes. For the only time in fencing history, a title was split following three rounds of barrages.*

  It is possible that some arrangement had been reached between the French and Swedish teams, but I like to think not; rather, that this was a defining moment in competitive swordplay. Often have I wondered what I might have done in similar circumstances, never having faced such a challenging moment; but in the 1970 Commonwealth Games, my first appearance on the English team, I did fight a match that felt dramatic enough at the time. I was competing for the bronze medal against an experienced Scot, appropriately named Gordon Wiles; the score had reached 4–4. As soon as the referee said “Play!” each of us would attack, time and again, unwilling to trust the last hit to defense. Finally Wiles went back into a parry, which I evaded to take my first international medal.

  Many years later, when in 1998 I moved to America, I came across an old wool mat, about three and a half by two feet, that my father had knitted to commemorate that victory. It portrays two figures in white lunging at each other against a black background. Two blocks of squares record the score: four hits against five. At the top my father had carefully put in “Commonweath [sic] Games 1970” in white and sky blue. Wiles, black-haired in real life, has brown hair; mine is pink.

  I remember thinking of my father’s attitude to sport and how completely honorable he had been—even to the point of foolhardiness: it would never have occurred to him to cheat or to behave ungenerously to an opponent. And then my thoughts drifted to a more poignant moment, ten years before. My mother was dying in an East Sussex hospital. I had traveled down from London to sit with my father at her bedside. It was nearly midnigh
t when the doctors told us there was nothing to be gained by sitting with her further, and despite my father’s protests we were ushered out and made our way back to my parents’ house. My parents had twin beds; to keep my father company, I slept in my mother’s that night. At about three in the morning the telephone rang and my father answered it.

  There was nothing we could do immediately, so we lay silently where we were. I think my father believed that I had managed to drop off again. After a while I heard a knocking, endlessly repeated every few seconds. At first I was mystified, then I realized: my father was hitting his chin with his fist, to stop himself crying out: even though I was over forty, I was his child, and he was determined to shield me.

  What does this have to do with fencing? First, it is a reminder that defense lies at the heart of the sport. My father believed, from feelings of love and duty, that he should act in a certain way. I do not want to put him on a pedestal (he would quickly have stepped off it), but often while writing this book I have reflected how he would have reacted to various aspects of the history of swordplay. I think he would have been bewildered—that people should ever remotely have regarded cheating as an option or even seen sport as an end in itself.

  His grandaughter, Mary, started to fence épée when she was twelve. In January 2002, when she was fifteen, I took her to compete in the Northern Irish Open. We stayed the night with friends of mine, the Haldanes. Fiona, a longtime international, has often won the women’s épée title. As ill luck would have it, Mary’s first fight the next day was with Fiona, and she was quickly down 2–0. I was fencing on another piste and when I got to her saw that Mary had won the bout 5–3. I congratulated her, and she replied ruefully that she felt she had cheated. “Cheated?” I know I looked aghast. “Yes,” said Mary, perfectly serious. “I used speed.” This was an interesting insight. She hadn’t behaved wrongly in any ethical sense, but she had been taught to use her brains and technique; employing the natural speed of a teenager was somehow a wrong way to win.

  WHY DOES ANYONE FENCE IN THE FIRST PLACE? I STILL COMPETE and enjoy it as much as ever. And although nowadays I am at best no more than an occasional irritant to a top fencer, in the last twenty-five years a veterans’ circuit has been built up, for those age forty and over, and since 1998 there has been a world championship, as well as a thriving European championship, the most recent of which drew more than thirteen hundred entrants to Hénin-Beaumont, near Lille, in 2011. The standards vary wildly: some competitors are at no more than county level, but by the last eight most of those involved are ex-internationals, still burning to win.

  In May 1997 I traveled to San Remo for the European championships along with Kathy, my girlfriend, now my wife. She has never fenced but to my surprise enjoys watching—“You can tell so clearly what people are like from the way they perform.” Besides, San Remo has its own pleasures: an Edwardian-era spa not far east of Nice, it boasts a huge casino, built in 1905, and fine public gardens. The competition was held in one of the town’s grand houses, the Villa Ormand, and we found ourselves lunging and parrying among fountains, exotic Mediterranean plants, and an entire Japanese garden in miniature. In more than one sense, the veterans look after themselves.

  There were two opening rounds. Early on I lost a fight to Péter Bakonyi, a member of Hungary’s gold-medal-winning team in the 1966 world championships. Then came direct elimination. I fought my way through to the last eight, where I faced a compact Ukrainian who did not pose too much of a problem. In the semifinal I drew Bakonyi again. He still had a marvelous hand, but his legs were another matter, and this time I squeaked home 10–8.

  In the final my opponent was a German, Wolfgang Marzodko, an ebullient competitor who had been Germany’s number one in the mid-1970s and was good enough to have reached the last twelve at the Budapest Open, the strongest saber event on the calendar. He had put on weight since then but was still a difficult proposition—as well as being the defending champion. A sizable crowd gathered, and I was aware how much the British contingent was willing me on when one of our women rushed up to wish me good luck and whisper a word of advice. Again the winner of the bout would be the first to land ten hits, and I took an early lead. Then, to my frustration, the match started slipping away. I found myself continually caught by Marzodko’s left-handed prime parries, which, perfectly timed, seemed to sweep up any attack, from whatever direction. Soon I was down 7–9, one hit away from defeat. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Kathy pacing up and down the line of spectators, muttering to herself as I went further behind. What was she saying? But I had to think about the match and how I was going to take the next three hits …

  On the referee’s “Allez,” I decided that I would try defending, and as Marzodko launched himself at me I managed to choose the right line, successfully making my parry before landing a riposte: 8–9. There was no time for deliberation, as once again he drove down the piste, gathering himself for a more careful attack. I threw out my blade and landed on his wrist. Lucky; but that made it 9–all. On the final hit I was sure he would go back to what had worked so well for him, waiting for me to attack so as to catch me again in that blasted prime parry. I shortened my step forward and made a simple lunge. It caught him a split second earlier than he’d expected, and although he got his blade to mine I was through, brushing his jacket at midchest. That meant 10–9, and the European championship. A cup for veterans, maybe, but I was happy.

  Ten minutes later, as I bent down from the winners’ rostrum to accept the trophy from an august Eduardo Mangiarotti, Wolfgang glanced up to ask, “What was it that girl said to you just before we fenced?” I smiled. “She told me to forget that you were a friend of mine and that I had to concentrate on winning.” “That is funny,” he replied. “I was thinking the same thing.” Then the national anthem was played and it was all over and time for me to search out Kathy. I had a question of my own.

  “What was it you were muttering during the bout?” She didn’t reply at first, then blushed. “I was telling myself, ‘If he loves me he’ll win, if he loves me he’ll win.’ ” I didn’t say anything then, just took her in my arms—and reflected that fencing is, after all, a romantic sport.

  * Titles per se had been shared twice before. In 1935 four fencers divided the men’s foil championship. More intriguingly, we have met Ellen Müller-Preis as the Olympic champion of 1932 and the bronze medalist of 1936. Here is the official British report on the Monte Carlo world championships of 1950:

  Ladies Individual—The final of eight was fought on a very hot afternoon. In the last bout Renée Garilhe, the French champion, beat the title-holder Ellen Müller-Preis of Austria so that both ended in a tie with two defeats each. During this last fight of the regular final Mrs Preis fell and aggravated an injury to her knee which had caused her to retire from the team matches. The fence-off was a most painful affair as Mrs Preis hobbled on to the strip and came on guard with many gestures of physical distress. Miss Garilhe obviously felt herself unable to go for her and in fact the director [referee] asked her not to bustle Mrs Preis. Two half-hearted attacks from Miss Garilhe were stopped and a third parried. With the score 3–1 for Mrs Preis the latter broke down and seemed unable to get on guard. The French captain Levy then asked his lady to leave the strip. The jury of appeal decided that the fence-off could not be regarded as properly fought and declared the two ladies equal winners. This seemed the only possible solution but the Austrians have protested.

  Despite the protest, the decision stood, and both women were named champion. But why did the Austrians protest? In 1950?2

  In 1932, when Müller-Preis won Olympic gold, she was faced with another fight-off—against the British foilist Judy Guinness, who lost 3–5 after twice acknowledging hits the judges had missed. This must count as the most self-denying act of sportsmanship that fencing has witnessed.

  OTTO VON BISMARCK ONCE FOUGHT A DUEL WITH SAUSAGES—or so several readers of this book have informed me. Shouldn’t I have included this d
etail? Sadly, the story is, if not entirely apocryphal, too far from the truth. In 1863 a cholera epidemic swept through much of Europe. Slaughterhouses in lower and central Germany were blamed, but the various governments seemed unconcerned. Bismarck’s comment on the matter, “The less people know about how sausages and laws are made, the better they will sleep at night,” led to his being repeatedly hectored by an eminent pathologist and politician named Rudolf Virchow. Enraged by Virchow’s criticisms, Bismarck ordered his seconds to arrange a duel.

  Virchow consented, with one stipulation. As the challenged party, he had choice of weapons, and he selected two gigantic pork sausages, one safe to eat, the other laced with trichinae, which could inflict a slow and lingering death. Virchow passed back the message “Let His Excellency decide which he wishes to eat, and I shall eat the other.” Bismarck called off his challenge at once, reasoning that a man might die with some sort of honor on a dueling field but never by poisoning from a sausage. His assistants replied, “His Highness has destroyed the sausages and asks that you be his guest at dinner this evening. After due consideration he feels he may have been slightly in error.” So, after all, there was no duel, nor is there firm evidence that the challenge was ever given.1

  Sausages may hold their special place in the history of dueling, but in the five years since By the Sword was first published I have come across several more challenges with swords worthy of mention. Georges Clemenceau, so formidable a swordsman himself, in 1888 volunteered to second his political ally Charles Floquet, then France’s elderly prime minister. His opponent was Floquet’s leading political adversary, General Georges-Ernest-Jean-Marie Boulanger, who at one time seemed likely to lead a coup d’état against the republic. Boulanger had insulted Floquet in the Chamber of Deputies, charging that he had “lied impudently” during a debate. Having choice of weapons, Boulanger selected swords—this against a man of sixty, some ten years his senior. The two rivals, stripped to the waist, met on the exercise ground of a private garden in Neuilly. In the first exchange, Floquet was slightly cut on his left leg, while Boulanger had his right forefinger punctured. At the second pass, the elder man had his left hand opened, but Boulanger was far more seriously wounded. Floquet’s rapier had pierced Boulanger’s throat a good two inches, passing through the jugular and the carotid artery and nearly severing the phrenic nerve, and the seconds immediately called off the fight. After two days, Boulanger was out of danger, but he had been mortally shamed. Three years later, discredited and exiled, he shot himself through the head on his mistress’s grave.2