baron de César Lecat Bazancourt

“ Without a doubt the man who has unconsciously arrested the blade, instead of merely turning it aside, will be in despair, and in the loyalty of his heart will be the first to accuse himself. But if his point has taken effect, if he has delivered a fatal thrust, will his despair or regret or any self-reproach heal the wound that he has inflicted, or restore the life that he has taken? If the odds were a thousand to one against a fatal issue, that one chance would be enough to condemn fatally this dangerous agreement. ”

“ That is where science and strength, skill and personal superiority tell. What is fencing if it is not the art of leading your opponent into a trap, the art of making him think that he will be attacked in one place, when you mean to hit him in another? the skill to outwit his calculations, to master his game, paralyse his action, outmanœuvre him, reduce him to impotence?—That is the sort of thing the accomplished fencer sets himself to do. ”

“ We no longer live in the days when every gentleman carried a sword at his side and as a matter of course knew how to use it. The taste for fencing is not so universal that we are all impatient to be initiated into its inmost mysteries. Some of us may not have sufficient leisure or sufficient inclination; we are too busy or too lazy. I believe that what most men think about it can be put in a very few words:—‘We don’t want to fight but—if we must, we should like to be able to show our teeth and fight like gentlemen,’ that is all that the average man wants with fencing. ”

“ Picture for yourselves two men fighting.—You see them at one moment standing their full height, the next bent double, swerving to right and left, colliding violently, and entangled in a furious encounter; suddenly they break away, recoiling from each other with a bound, rest for a moment, panting and glaring, till suddenly they renew the struggle. Do you suppose that all these intricate evolutions, and the subtle application of muscular force that they imply, can be systematically analysed and taught? ”

“ My own opinion is that this uncertainty is the great beauty of the sword, the one feature that distinguishes it as the only weapon for a fair fight; for even the weakest player has his opportunity, his lucky moments, his strokes of fortune, which must always prevent the duel from degenerating into simple butchery.
“If fencing were an exact science, if you knew, that as sure as two and two make four, you could certainly hit your man, and that he as certainly could not hit you, how could you in common honesty cross swords with him? ”

“ All that one can say to the pupil, whose temper is such that he cannot play a waiting game, is something of this sort:—Trust your instinct, be guided by your natural impulse. You quite understand that by acting as you propose you run a greater risk; for your attack is delivered at random, you are embarking on a wild and hazardous speculation. Your only chance of success, as you yourself admit, is that you may, by suddenly and violently letting yourself go for all you are worth, take your opponent by surprise and put him off his parry. ”

“ In the third place, the brief pause gives you a moment or two to pull yourself together and get steady, to take a good look at your opponent’s point, and get over that first involuntary sensation, that momentary chill, which no one, not even the bravest of us, ever fails to experience. It also gives you time to run your eye over your antagonist, and by noting how he stands, how he holds his sword, in a word how he shapes, to look the situation in the face and settle your plan of campaign. ”

“ In the assault with its incessant alarms and perilous crises, in encountering the wiles and avoiding the snares of the enemy, those who use the sword find their ‘crowded hour of glorious life,’ the hour crowded with illusions and disenchantments, the rubs of fortune, the ups and downs of victory or defeat. ”

“ But you do not imagine, I suppose, that a man completely ignorant of the use of his weapon, who goes to a professor for advice on the eve of an encounter, can hope to come away comforted with the assurance that he has learnt the whole art of how to hit his opponent without being touched himself? That, I fancy, would be too convenient. It would be better then to study the art of not learning to fence, instead of spending months and years in studying the art of fencing. Ignorance would indeed be bliss and wisdom folly. ”

“ It is evidently impossible to enumerate in the course of conversation all the situations that may occur, or to describe all the traps that you may set for your opponent or that he may set for you. These things are matters of instinct and inspiration, the happy thoughts of the moment, and depend on character and individual temperament, physical and moral. The art of fighting cannot of course be learnt in a day; it grows upon you gradually, as you learn by experience to combine the various elements scientifically into a well-ordered whole. ”

“ We have now reached a point from which we may survey the thrilling spectacle of the assault, as fencers call the mimic combat, in which desperate and brutal fighting is controlled by skill, the hazardous duel, full of fire and fury, between two combatants, who summon to their aid all that they know or all that they think they know. ”

“ In a duel with swords there are two things you want to know: first, what is your opponent’s natural temper, when he is fighting in earnest; secondly, what is the character of his play and the quality of his swordsmanship. No one can deny that it is very advantageous to know, whether the man that you have to face is impatient and excitable or self-possessed and cool; whether he will attack you with resolution or play a waiting game; whether he will attempt to parry or simply offer his point ”

“ Again, the man who has inflicted a wound and has felt his point go home, instantly and instinctively stays his hand, and even if his opponent renews the attack hesitates to strike a second time one who is already hurt. It is during this juncture of a moment’s pause with a moment’s hesitation that the wounded man may make his mad rush, and either run his opponent through the body, or meet his own destruction, if his opponent has promptly recovered his guard, and calmly offers him his point. ”

“ Is not his fatigue due to the violence and the excessive energy with which he began the fight, to the regardless eagerness with which he has assailed you, without consulting his staying powers or husbanding his strength? You have had to bear the brunt of all this fury, you have sustained incessant attacks, but you with more skill have economised your resources and have bided your time to attack him. That opportune moment evidently comes just when your opponent, exhausted by the failure of his repeated attacks, is likely to offer you the least resistance. ”

“ You do not choose your opponent, he is chosen for you by accident; he may be tall or short, strong or weak. You are no longer engaged in a sport in which your object is to play correctly, in a contest of skill in which you may perhaps allow yourself to be hit occasionally in order to lead your opponent on and afterwards defeat him more easily. The man who confronts you with that threatening point may be an artistic and accomplished swordsman, but he may equally well never have touched a sword in his life, and be trusting to luck, or to his general smartness, or to a cool head. ”

“ This is so true that the majority of fencers, amateur and professional alike, affect certain favourite strokes; they have favourite attacks, favourite parries and ripostes, and always come back to them as to old friends on whose services they can confidently rely. In the course of an assault the same stroke is often repeated in many different ways; the shape it takes changes with the changing incidents of the fight, and accordingly as it is adapted to suit the peculiarities of the individual against whom it is employed. That is the great beauty of a stroke in fencing. ”

“ It is important for the prestige of fencing, that those who have no knowledge of their weapon, or at most a mere smattering, should not be allowed to suppose that they can depend upon mere energy and a blind rush to defend themselves against a man who has been trained to the skilful handling of the sword. Confidence, that mainest mainstay of defence, ought not to be possible for the ignorant fencer ”

“ This is so thoroughly true, that if you set two men to fight in a fencing-room with blunt swords, you notice at once that the assault is something very different from what it would have been with mere foils. You might almost fancy that the swords, though they can no longer wound, are still possessed by the spirit of mortal combat, and retain some reminiscence of the real thing, of naked chest opposed to naked steel. ”