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was a matter of considerable legislation.. For those who were permitted to use a sword it became, through duelling, an instrument of dispute resolution in the aristocratic theatre of honour.. Fencing, the structured art of swordsmanship, developed largely to serve this often illegal cult..

The oldest European guide to swordplay is a late thirteenthcentury German manuscript in which a monk-like figure instructs a student who is armed with sword and a small shield known as a buckler..The arrival, in the fifteenth century, of the printing press in Europe saw a proliferation of fencing manuals: printed in runs of more than a thousand, they were amongst the bestsellers of the day, with artwork from such luminaries as Dürer and Michelangelo..

Amongst the most widely read works of the Renaissance was Baldassare Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier, published in Venice in 1538.. In this instruction manual for the social class one rung down from Machiavelli’s Prince, Castiglione noted that skill with sword was central to the life of the courtier,‘for beside the use of them he shall have in war .. .. ..There happen oft times enough variances between one gentleman and another, whereupon ensueth a combat..’

Demand for instruction was insatiable, and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Italian masters supplied the market all over Europe..Achille Marozzo, author of The New Text on the Art of Arms, analysed the techniques of thrusting and parrying, while Camillo Agrippa’s Treatise on the Science of Arms defined the stances (or guards) that remain in use today.. Italy was at that time an agglomeration of small states, each of which had its own school of swordsmanship, and it was only in the 1890s, after the creation of a united Italy, that a single style and set of rules was agreed upon.. By that time Italy had long been eclipsed by France, a centralised nation whose nobility had proved even more enthusiastic about duelling..

When Louis XIII took the throne in the early seventeenth century the parkland of the Bois de Boulogne was awash with aristocratic blood. . Duelling rules allowed multiple seconds to engage each other in combat, which resulted in mass fencing brawls.. British ambassador Lord Herbert wrote home, ‘There is scarce a

A EUROPEAN MARTIAL ARt: FENCING AL FRESCO At THE FIRST MODERN GAMES (Athens, 1896)

Frenchman worth looking on who has not killed his man in a duel..’ Even Cardinal Richelieu could not eliminate duelling, despite edicts banning it.. It was only when Louis XIV gathered the French nobility under the state’s watchful eye at the Palace ofVersailles that some kind of control was established.. In the regimented world of the Sun King, fencing was reinvented as a courtly practice.. Fighters were encouraged to engage in a dialogue of blades rather than an unstructured melee.. The foil, a lighter sword, was introduced and the legitimate areas of attack on the body were narrowed. Despite these measures, injuries abounded, and after three court masters lost eyes in the early 1700s masks were introduced..

The process of codification was completed in the nineteenth century. .The illegal but widespread underworld of duelling was given its definitive form by the Comte de Chateauvillard of the Paris Jockey Club in his compendious Essai sur le duel, published in 1836. The official technical text of the public world of fencing was provided by the state: in 1877 the French Ministry of War issued

its biblical Manuel d’Éscrime, which held sway over fencing practice for over half a century..

By the late nineteenth century fencing had assumed something close to its modern form, with weapons, protective clothing and rules broadly as they are today.. Competitive fencing then found a new home in exclusive urban clubs.. Fencing masters gave lessons and fought at gala exhibition events in front of thousands of wellheeled spectators.. But the emergence of fencing as a sport would not only require new rules and technologies that made it a nonlethal activity (and less susceptible to cheating), it also required the destruction of the military and aristocratic milieus in which it had been forged..The First World War delivered both..

Game On: Fencing Basics

Fencing bouts consist of three three-minute segments,

fought out on a piste – a strip that must be between 1..5 and 2m wide.. Fencers score when they hit the opponent’s target areas, which vary according to the kind of sword used..The winner is the one who scores most hits, and in the event of a tie one minute overtime is played.. Lots are drawn before overtime to determine who wins in the event of another tie, in order to force fencers to be aggressive..

Penalties

Penalties can be awarded for jostling, deflecting hits

with the hand and refusing to salute one’s opponents. . Referees award a yellow card and a warning for the first infringement, a

red card and a penalty point after this, and a black card for

a third offence, which means disqualification.. It is illegal to parry a blade with the arm, but the practice is widespread: high-level fencing is so fast that referees rarely catch it..

Chose your Weapons

Three types of weapon are used in Olympic and inter-

national fencing, and different rules apply to each..

The Finer Points

Who can Hit whom? Rules of Priority

If both fencers score a hit simultaneously, who gets

the point? To deal with this problem, foil and sabre fencing have rules of priority: the person who attacks first has priority and normally gets the point.. Defenders can gain priority and become attackers after an opponent’s strike fails, but they must be quick to claim it or they will lose priority.. If no priority can be determined, no one gets a hit.. In épée, which has no rules of priority, hits registered within 0..04 seconds of each other score for both fencers, unless their scores are equal and one point from victory – in which case, no one scores..

Getting Technical

after a hit has been scored and the bout stopped, the

referees will describe the winning exchange in technical terms. . Commentators may well use these terms too, so it’s as well to know them..

Attack: the first offensive action

Parry: a successful defence and deflection of an attacking blade Riposte: an attack that follows a successful parry

Remise: an attack that follows a successful parry but with no withdrawal of the fencing arm

Redouble: an attack after an opponent has lost his or her chance at priority due to inaction or slowness

Swords and Styles

Foil Foil bouts are closely regulated by the rules of priority and are often technical affairs, with small and rapid movements the key to gaining advantage..

Épée The épée duel is closest in style to classical duelling: the whole body is the target, there are no rights of priority, and collisions are permitted.. Counter attacking is often the preferred style.. Look for fencers attempting to provoke rather than launch attacks and then responding when a gap opens..

Sabre As the sabre can score a hit with any part of the blade and as parries are hard to execute, defence in this discipline is best conducted by footwork and positioning. . Because cuts as well as thrusts are allowed, more flamboyant bladework is on display, and the flèche – a run and leap at the opponent with an outstretched sword – is also permitted..

Protect and Survive:

Kit and Injuries

Fencing has a fatal past and remains a dangerous sport.A Russian contestant was run through the chest at the 1980 Olympics.At the 1982 World Championships Vladimir Smirnov was killed when a foil pierced his mask and his eye; three years later, at the same event, a Frenchman impaled his thigh on a broken blade and was saved by a Spanish doctor

who leapt leaping from the audience to help him.

Consequently, fencing has gone to considerable lengths to design equipment that will prevent injury. Olympic athletes will have to put on a lot of kit.Their fencing jackets are now partly made of Kevlar (used in bullet proof vests etc.).Women wear a plastic chest protector beneath this. An additional protective layer called a plastron is worn under the armpit (a weak point in past competitions) and regulations are so exacting that this cannot have a seam. Gauntlets are designed to prevent a blade running up a competitor’s sleeve.The demands on fencing masks have steadily risen and the visors must now be able to resist a force of 56kg.Fortunately these

days the most likely injuries for fencers are twisted ankles and lower back pain. More recently, the FIE has tried to make the sport more TV-friendly by introducing coloured kit and clear masks that reveal the fencers' faces.

Fencing goes to the Olympics

Fencing is one of just four sports to have appeared at

every Olympic Games, though the rules were not settled until the

foundation of the FIE (International Fencing Federation) in

1913.. Prior to this, fencing was a quirky Olympic presence.. Unlike any other event, there were separate competitions for amateurs and fencing masters, who were deemed a special and permissible category of professionals..There were also competitions in which both groups took part – a kind of early pro-am fencing.. Foil had been present since 1896 and épée and sabre were soon added, but there was experimentation in 1904 when a single sticks competition (fencing with wooden poles) was held, and in the non-recognised 1906 Games there were medals for the unorthodox three-pointed sabre.. In 1904 the Cuban fencers took gold in individual foil and épée but had to call in a NewYorker to make a trio, which went on to win the only Olympic medal for a mixed team..

The aristocratic ambience of fencing is best captured by the record of the six-man British team at the ‘Intercalated Games’ of 1906, which included one knight and two peers of the realm..They sailed from England to Athens in a yacht called the Branwen, owned by Lord Howard de Walden. .Theodore Cook, the team captain, wrote up a report of the expedition, which included the squad’s favourite classical quotations in Greek and Latin, as well as architectural and historical discussions.. EdwardVII, who like most crowned heads of Europe attended the Games, was so excited by the fencing that he agreed on his return to become a patron of the art..

Aristocratic insouciance notwithstanding, fencing enjoyed some bitter feuding – notably at Stockholm 1912.. In the foil event the French insisted that the upper arm be included in the target area; the Italians refused to accept this and the French stormed out..The

WILL IT BE SIX? ITALY’S Valentina VEZZALI HAS Won THE LAST FIVE Women’S Foil TITLES

Italians then argued for a rule change in the épée that would have extended the permissible length of the sword; the French refused and the Italians walked out..

Fencing in the 1920s was still a vocation rather than a sport, typified by the Nadi brothers from Livorno. . Relentlessly schooled from an early age, Nedo Nadi won his first gold medal in 1912 and five at the 1920 Antwerp Games, before turning professional. . (His multiple haul of medals stood as a record for fifty years, until Mark Spitz won seven swimming medals at the 1972 Games. ). With his younger brother, Aldo, Nedo formed a partnership that fought a celebrated series of exhibition bouts.. He lived the life of an itinerant playboy, moving to Hollywood, where he trained movie stars and choreographed fights..

The 1924 Olympics saw the last contest that boiled over into a real duel.. In the final rounds of the sabre competition it was clear that the Italian fighters were going soft on team favourite Oreste Puliti, easing his path to the medals. .The tactic was denounced by the French judge Lajoux and the Hungarian judge Kovacs. . Puliti responded by making threatening remarks to both and was disqualified.. Inevitably, Puliti and Kovacs met the following day at

the Parisian cabaret, the Folies Bergères, where the exchange turned violent and satisfaction was demanded..The two met on the ItalianYugoslav border in November and duelled for over an hour,injuring each other seriously before the contest was stopped..

For much of the inter-war period fencing proved attractive to the elites of Europe’s fascist states, satisfying their predilection for blood sports, warrior cults and medievalism.. Oswald Mosley encouraged British fascists to embrace the foil, General Franco fenced with enthusiasm, and Reinhardt Heydrich, Himmler’s deputy in the SS, was so obsessed with fencing that he had the archive of the FIE seized from Belgium and brought to his office in Berlin, from where he planned to run the global sport.. Mussolini had a penchant for duelling in his journalist days and when in power he liked to be seen practising by foreign journalists..The Italian fencing team received considerable support under his rule and the dictator enlisted Nedo Nadi – despite his anti-fascist convictions – as coach.. In Hungary, the country’s mastery of the sabre (it won every gold medal between 1924 and 1960) was incubated in the salles and clubs of the ultranationalist army..

Since the Second World War, the pre-eminence of France and Italy has been steadily whittled away..West Germany became a fencing power in the late 1970s and early 1980s, driven by their maniacal head coach Emil Beck, but perhaps the most significant change in the world of fencing came about as a result of the crushing of the 1956 uprising in Hungary, the nation that had dominated the sabre since the 1920s. .The consequent exodus of top-class fencers led to the establishment of new schools in

Sweden, Poland, Romania and, ironically, the Soviet Union – a

legacy that has been bequeathed to Russia, which is now among the strongest countries in the sport..

Between 1924 and 1960 individual foil was the sole women’s event, though a team foil competition was introduced in Rome.. However, it wasn’t until 1996 that women’s épée was added, followed by the sabre in 2004. .While the USA, Switzerand and China have won medals in the women’s events, the old fencing nations remain dominant..