Secrets of the Sword
First published in 1862 as Les Secrets de l' p e, the Baron de Bazancourt's book is far from a dry technical manual: it is a lively work written as a series of after-dinner conversations. This English translation by C. F. Clay appeared in 1900, with spirited fencing drawings by F. H. Townsend.
The setting is a country house during a shooting party. Over eleven evenings in the smoking-room the author explains to his friends, few of whom have ever fenced, why the art need not be the formidable science the professors make of it.
He reduces fencing to a handful of simple and composite attacks and parries and the three watchwords of judgment, control and speed. He argues for early loose play, for breaking ground on the parry, for refusing to join blades, for guarding the low lines as carefully as the chest, and for judging the blade by eye as well as by touch. Along the way he deals with stop thrusts and time thrusts, left-handed fencers and the so-called secret thrusts, in which he did not believe.
The last evenings turn from the fencing room to the duel with sharp swords: the duties of seconds, the choice of ground, the parry with the unarmed hand, the corps corps, the call for a halt, the hurried lesson for a man who has never held a sword and must fight the next morning, and the principles of serious fighting between two men who mean it.
Townsend's drawings head and close each evening.
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