Two years ago I published transcriptions of two interesting copies of Del Frate's 1876 treatiseIstruzione per la scherma di sciabola e di spada containing notes written the owners of the books when they studied at the Milan Fencing Master's School. I stated at the end of the article that it is highly likely that additional copies of this kind still survive, and after sending out some enquiries I did indeed located one more. This copy originally belonged to Antonio Maragliano, and it now resides with the Biblioteca Polo Umanistico-Bioscienze at the University of Teramo. Below you may find a standalone transcription of the manuscript as well as a side-by-side comparison with the two previously-discussed manuscripts by Lombardi and Barbasetti.
Maragliano's notes are incomplete and the shortest of the three, coming in at around a third the length of Lombardi's notes, and all the content contained in his notes can also be found in both Lombardi and Barbasetti's. As indicated on the first manuscript page, Maragliano was a student of the 1883-84 course at the Master's School, which was the last course intake at the school before its closure in March 1884.1 Given that this course would have only been around four months in when the school closed, the incomplete nature of Maragliano's manuscript reflect this interruption, indicating the point in the theory curriculum the students had reached in March 1884. Maragliano and his fellow students were able to resume their training the following year in a condensed course at the new Master's School in Rome under Masaniello Parise.2 While Maragliano's name can be found in this subsequent intake, it is unclear if he did end up graduating.
Despite their brevity, Maragliano's notes provide a valuable third point of comparison in determining which of the minor variations across the three manuscripts are more likely to be representative of the reference material they were transcribing. In general it is Barbasetti who appears to deviate more often from the original wording through paraphrasing and the occasional omission. Given how minor these variations are, Maragliano's notes provide significant proof that, at least with regard to the content all three manuscripts have in common, the reference material remained very consistent between the years 1876 and 1884.
My sincere thanks to the library staff at the University of Teramo for providing the scans of this manuscript.
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1 "Da Milano a Roma," Corriere della Sera, 11 March 1884, 3.↩ 2 Cesare Ricotti-Magnani, "N. 90. - Corso speciale presso la scuola magistrale di scherma," Giornale Militare 1885: parte seconda, no. 31 (30 July 1885): 340–1.↩
If one has done any reading on the history of British sabre fencing, it is almost certain that the name Alfred Hutton and his 1889 treatise Cold Steel would be mentioned at some point, this book being among the most widely read and available sabre books in the historical fencing community.1 His high profile—at least in England—in the late 19th century means that his various writings are often cited in discussions on this period in British fencing, and his constant referencing of older fencing treatises also make him relevant to the historiography of the historical fencing movement.
Despite his prominence at home, the contemporary significance of his works drops off entirely once we look away from the British Isles, and yet Hutton still occasionally comes up in Anglophone discussions today on the subject of modern Italian fencing. This is largely owing to his vocal opposition to the formal adoption by the British army of Ferdinando Masiello's sabre method and the subsequent publication of the 1895 Infantry Sword Exercise.2
We aim to demonstrate that Hutton's critique of this text and Radaellian fencing in general is beset by a superficial understanding of the general European fencing context as well as a flawed understanding of fencing as a practice. The latter aspect will be explored in examination of his own technical works, focusing on the aforementioned Cold Steel as well as The Swordsman from 1891,3 and the former will be made clear in deconstruction of his opposition to the Masiello method. Along the way, we will provide the necessary context for a more accurate understanding of Italian sabre fencing in the 1890s.
In doing this, we may also gain a better understanding of how Italian fencing was viewed abroad; compare how well Hutton's perceptions agreed with reality and those of his countrymen; and, finally, come to a more grounded perspective for future assessments of Hutton's impact on British fencing in both civilian and military contexts.
The Italians according to Hutton
While Hutton's broad adaptation of both contemporary and historical fencing treatises for his own system may seem meritorious, his engagement with Italian authors is decidedly superficial and at times even drifts into the realm of plagiarism. Throughout his 1889 treatise Cold Steel, Hutton attributes several techniques as being characteristically 'Italian', these being:
Frequent use of the false edge
The vertical rising cut on the inside
The parries he names high prime, horizontal quarte, high tierce, high quarte, and high octave (or for those unfamiliar with French terms: 1st, horizontal 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th/yielding 6th)
There is no evidence of Hutton ever visiting Italy or having personal contact with an Italian fencing master prior to the publication of either Cold Steel or The Swordsman; his only engagement with Italian fencing was likely through his reading. Hutton's characterisation of the above techniques as 'Italian' would seem to be a result of a wide reading of Italian literature, but this notion is proven false when given due scrutiny. Although Hutton cites freely from British and French sources from the period in Cold Steel, he completely avoids mentioning the sources that inspired these 'Italian' techniques of his. Fortunately, however, some of his later writings reveal his awareness of the treatises by Federico Cesarano and Masaniello Parise,5 whom he mentions first in a lecture in February 1893, and then in September 1895, in an article published in the Army and Navy Gazette. The latter states explicitly that Parise's work was the primary inspiration for his 'high octave' parry.6
In reality, no discerning fencer outside of England would characterise these parries as typically Italian. All were commonly used throughout the continent by the 1880s, and nowhere else is it implied that Italians were the inspiration for their use. A very weak case can be made in the case of the outside hanging parry—which Hutton calls 'high octave'—as this was very common in Italian sabre texts throughout the century. However, they were not the only ones to include it (it was very popular among Spanish authors), nor did other authors associate the parry with Italians.7
Three variations of the outside hanging parry (i.e. 'high octave') by non-Italian authors. From left to right: Vendrell (1878), Merelo (1880), and Silfversvärd (1868).
Hutton's attribution of these parries to the Italians does not demonstrate his wide reading of Italian sources; it might instead indicate that his reading was almost entirely limited to the aforementioned treatises of Cesarano and Parise. His 'horizontal quarte', for example, is something of a rarity, particularly when used as a distinct variant of a regular low 4th. More than 20 sabre treatises were published in Italy between 1860 and 1889, but only around three of them include such a parry, and mostly as a beat parry against the thrust.8 Cesarano is one of the authors, and it seems likely that he was Hutton's sole inspiration for adding the parry; however, Hutton uses this parry against the vertical rising cut on the inside, also falsely claimed to be 'an Italian cut, which is used as a sort of substitute for the attack at the leg.' This is entirely Hutton's invention. Contemporary authors did not describe a vertical inside rising as stereotypically Italian, and it is very difficult to find an Italian author describing a specifically vertical rising cut.
The asserted 'Italianness' of Hutton's parries of high prime, high tierce, and high quarte is also misleading; a simple comparison of non-Italian sabre treatises of this period will demonstrate that the first was ubiquitous in Europe, while the specific slanted position of latter two is perhaps more common in Italy but not entirely absent elsewhere.9 The same can be said of false edge cuts, which appear infrequently in most Italian sabre treatises, and in some not at all.10 The passata sotto action is the only technique in the aforementioned list which can justifiably be associated with the Italians at this period, but the caveat here is that it almost never appears in sabre treatises or accounts of sabre bouts, instead being an Italian favourite in foil fencing. Hutton's reliance on a narrow range of source material is betrayed once again as we discover that Cesarano is the only Italian author from this period to include the passata sotto in their sabre curriculum. All of these instances show that Hutton assumes Cesarano and Parise to be representative of Italian sabre fencing, which particularly before the 1880s was a diverse practice with regional trends and external influences, all of which are lost on Hutton.
Three Italian authors whose head parries deviate from the typical slanted positions. Top: Parries of 5th and 6th according to Bellini (1880). Bottom left: The same parries according to Mendietta-Magliocco (1868). Bottom right: The head parry which Tambornini (1862) calls parry of 1st.
While we assert that Hutton's consultation of Italian sabre sources was likely limited almost entirely to Cesarano and Parise, for whom he never gives direct recognition in either Cold Steel or The Swordsman, there is evidence that Hutton was aware of at least one more Italian sabre treatise by the time Cold Steel was published—namely, his uncredited reproduction of an illustration from Arnoldo Ranzatto's 1885 treatise Istruzioni per la scherma di sciabola showing how to grip the sabre.11 This is a stark demonstration that Hutton's use of contemporary Italian material is done entirely out of self-interest; if he truly did consider these works worthy of merit, and not just convenient sources of illustrations, he would have given them the same recognition he afforded other authors, such as Roworth, Miller, and Marozzo. By not acknowledging the authors, Hutton removes any obligation to engage with the works beyond the surface level. To put it simply: taking information from another author's book without citing it—attributing it only to the author's national milieu—is plagiarism. If nothing else, the appropriation of Ranzatto's image may help to clarify that when Hutton recommends the use of a 'light sabre similar to those used on the Continent',12 he probably had in mind those commonly used in Italy specifically. The sabre represented is of the model Parise type.
Top: Page 22 of Ranzatto's 1885 treatise Bottom: Plate 1 in Hutton's Cold Steel (1889)
Specifics aside, Hutton's 'Italian' parries betray a deeper failure of understanding. The fact is that there are no Italian parries, because no fencing action belongs to any particular national system. In sabre fencing there is only a limited number of possible parries, and they are available to all systems. Even Hutton's parries of sixte and octave, though they appear in no other works on sabre, are an implicit possibility open to all fencers. The Englishman certainly could not have claimed intellectual priority had another author included them in their system: they would be no more 'English' than the rest of Europe considered parry of 1st to be 'Italian'. What distinguishes one system's parries from those of another is simply their nomenclature, the details of their execution, and the author's preference for some of them over others.
That this fact was lost on Hutton is evidenced by his inclusion of both high tierce and St George's parry in both Cold Steel and The Swordsman. These two actions, though catalogued separately, would to any other master be considered the same head parry in pronation. The features that distinguish them—a small difference in the angle of the blade and the target it is supposed to defend—represent only the differing preferences of individual authors on how this same parry should be performed. Perhaps Hutton was again taken in by the exotic appeal of a foreign technique, not recognising that the two actions fill an identical tactical role: what parries the head will also parry the shoulder. Indeed Hutton himself lists both as defences against the vertical descending cut, without any explanation of the tactical implications.13 This redundancy reveals a poor understanding of the role of specific actions in the structure of a fencing system. Rather than defining each action functionally as a solution to a tactical problem, preferencing some possible solutions and excluding others, Hutton has simply included everything he could get his hands on.
Hutton's vials of wrath
When news began circulating in 1893 concerning the trials taking place at the national gymnasium school in Aldershot, Hutton may have felt that his continual lamentations about the state of fencing in the British army were finally being addressed. The head of army gymnasia in England at the time, Colonel Malcolm Fox, had recently spent two months in Florence, during which time he studied fencing under the renowned master Ferdinando Masiello. Fox's experience in Florence had such a great impression on him that upon returning to Aldershot he immediately set about introducing Masiello's method to the British army, which led to the hiring of one of the master's most decorated students, Giuseppe Magrini, who arrived in the country in April 1893.14 New students at the Aldershot school were now being trained in Masiello's system, but it was not until 1895 that the new system came to the attention of those outside the school through the publication of the official Infantry Sword Exercise.
The Penny Illustrated Paper, 23 September 1893
Ferdinando Masiello was by this point a very prominent figure in Italian fencing. He had been a military fencing instructor since 1871, receiving his first qualification under Cesare Enrichetti in Parma and renewing it at Giuseppe Radaelli's school in 1876. A year later he was promoted to civil fencing master. This means that he was no longer simply a soldier who also taught fencing, but a civilian employed by the army to teach in its academies and colleges solely as a fencing master. In this new, highly coveted role, Masiello taught at various institutions until ending up at the Florence Military College in 1887. That same year he was promoted to 1st class civil master, which was the highest qualification a fencing master could achieve outside of being director or vice director of the national Fencing Master's School.15
Despite the transportation of the Fencing Master's School from Milan to Rome and the installation of Parise's method in 1884, Masiello remained a fervent supporter of Radaelli's method. In August 1887 he published his own 593-page fencing treatise; aside from giving a detailed and modernised exposition of the Radaellian method, it was full of scathing indictments of Parise's method. The book was met with widespread praise from Masiello's contemporaries, and it firmly cemented him as the spiritual leader of Parise's opponents for the next two decades.16
In spite of this, or perhaps in response to it, Masiello was offered the role of vice director at the Fencing Master's School in Rome, but he and Parise were unable to reach an agreement: the differences in their methods were too great.17 Masiello remained at the Florence military college until he retired from military teaching at the end of 1893.18 The sabre portion of Masiello's treatise was revised and republished that same year and again in 1902, in the latter instance also being published alongside a revised volume on the foil.19
In contrast with the Italian reception of Masiello's work, the 1895 Infantry Sword Exercise had a much more mixed response from the British public. Articles both for and against the new method appeared in periodicals such as the Army and Navy Gazette, including several letters from our Alfred Hutton, who would later expand these arguments into a 10-page article published in March the following year in the United Service Magazine.20
From the very beginning of the article, it becomes apparent that the context around Masiello's system was totally unknown to Hutton, who in the second paragraph of his critique remarks smugly, but quite wrongly, that Masiello was not 'one of those who have been selected by the Italian Government for the instruction of either their Army or their Navy'.21 This sets the mood for the rest of the text, where the English fencer reads the Masiello system in a similarly superficial and ungenerous way.
Hutton's superficiality with regard to source material has been demonstrated in the previous section, but we see it again in the following paragraph, when he wrongly states that '[t]he main object of the Italian fencing-master is to prepare his pupil for the duel … while an English Sword Exercise has to be compiled for military men … who have to fight for their country against all sorts and conditions of enemies, armed in all sorts of ways'.22 Hutton was not the only one to make such a claim in this period, but it is simply not borne out from the evidence. Let us use an example from an author with whom Hutton was familiar, Masaniello Parise, who states that: 'If historically it is true that fencing took place in direct correlation to the frequency of duels, today the matter is quite different.' Fencing to Parise should rather be directed towards the 'more noble aim' of physical education, and through its adversarial nature it was also perceived to give other behavioural and intellectual benefits that gymnastics did not provide.23 Italy's duelling culture certainly made fencing more relevant to certain members of society, but as in the rest of Europe fencing masters in Italy taught fencing for the sake of fencing, with the duel being just one application.
Even with this in mind, Masiello acknowledged the importance of sabre fencing for the soldier and particularly those in the cavalry, thus in 1891 he published a short treatise on the use of the sabre on horseback.24 His regular fencing method—as described in the 1895 Infantry Sword Exercise—was not subordinated to a specific application. Masiello understood effective sabre fencing to be founded on common principles for all its applications: '... since the sabre is a weapon of the soldier, who must always be ready to fight opponents no matter how they are armed, thus sabre fencing, for its useful effects, must be studied in those manifestations that are always constant and always sufficient in relation to any type of combat.'25
His pigeonholing of Masiello's system leads Hutton, in a few instances, to misattribute certain aspects of the system as resulting from Italian duelling conventions, such as the reason why the legs are not included in the valid target area or why the Italians preferred lighter and more protective fencing sabres than the British. Despite Hutton's implication, no Italian duelling code of the period forbade attacks to the leg; the convention to not hit the legs in sabre fencing was, however, extremely common in fencing halls and tournaments. The light fencing sabres favoured by the Italians were also not weapons designed specifically for the duel, nor were they ever referred to as 'duelling sabres' in Italy, but they were favoured by fencers due to the higher complexity of play and lighter blows they allowed.26 Italian fencing culture in the 1890s was not merely derivative of its duelling culture—each influenced the other and saw their own developments.
Hutton takes it for granted that, because it was being taught at an army institution, Masiello's system must satisfy Hutton's own conceptions of what is necessary for an infantry officer to know. Contrast his view with the fencing curriculum of any other military school in Europe, even those of France where colonial confrontations were also a concern, and it is clear that the goal of this kind of training was to teach fencing as an end to itself, first and foremost. Fencing treatises containing grapples, off-hand techniques, advice for facing multiple opponents, improvised weapons and so on were the absolute exception in the 19th century, regardless of whether a treatise was written as a regulation military text or by a civilian.
Significant portions of Hutton's argumentation lie in strategic appeals to authority to assert that Masiello's system was not only ineffective and unsuitable, but in opposition with the majority views in both Italy and the rest of continental Europe. A perfect example of this is Hutton's condemnation of Masiello's lunge, in which the upper body leans forward to its fullest extent, from which he claims 'a prompt recovery is practically impossible'.27 This is in contrast to what he considers 'the correct form recognised by the great French School'. This particular topic has been dealt with in a previous article, but here it will suffice to observe the fencers in the images below, taken from a French sporting magazine in 1904. Not only do all fencers except one demonstrate some degree of lean, several on par with Masiello, but the fencer with the most upright lunge, seen in the centre of the first image, is the only Italian among those photographed.28
La Vie au Grand Air, 22 December 1904
His appeal to the 'French School' is little more than a shallow excuse to justify his opposition to Masiello. Another ineffective appeal to authority can be seen when he maligns the techniques described in the Infantry Sword Exercise as 'circling cuts' (known in Italian as molinelli), claiming that the type 'recommended by most Italian teachers' primarily used the wrist, unlike Masiello's elbow-focused motions.29 In his casual rejection of elbow molinelli, Hutton demonstrates his ignorance of a hugely significant debate over fencing mechanics that had divided the Italian scene for decades. Moreover, by 1896 the claim that most masters favoured the wrist was categorically false. As demonstrated earlier, Hutton openly admitted to consulting the wrist-centric treatises of Cesarano and Parise when compiling his own works, and he was aware that the latter treatise was the regulation fencing text for the Italian army at the time. What he was clearly not aware of, however, was that since at least 1892 the wrist-centric molinelli had ceased being taught at Parise's school and in army fencing halls generally. After repeated rejections of his sabre method by the cavalry, Parise employed the assistance of the renowned Radaellian master Salvatore Pecoraro to make the necessary changes.30
The resulting reforms, referred to by some as the 'Parise-Pecoraro method', at last received the approval of the cavalry in late 1890, and although it would take until 1904 for Parise's treatise to be updated with the new exercise molinelli, the changes would be reflected in the 1891 and 1896 cavalry regulations. These molinelli were no longer the extended-arm, wrist-centric type advocated by Hutton, but instead bore more resemblance to the kind described in Masiello's treatise, with the arm being fully withdrawn prior to giving the cut. Parise's students were still told to continue the cut through the target with a drawing motion before returning to guard, as opposed to the Radaellian preference for ending the cut at full extension, but the overall motion is characterised more by its use of the elbow than the wrist.31
Setting aside the fact that the 200+ fencing masters employed by the Italian military32 were no longer teaching wrist-centric molinelli, from the first publication of Parise's book in 1884 to the appearance of the 1895 Infantry Sword Exercise there had been a total of four sabre treatises published in Italy, and the three most widely read of those were by Radaellians (one of course being Masiello). Even in civilian circles, the Radaellian domination of sabre fencing at this time would be very apparent for anyone paying attention to the scene. Yet again, Hutton feigned knowledge of contemporary Italian fencing but showed no awareness of its most significant developments.
A final example of Hutton's questionable appeals to authority is his citing of several medical professionals who testify to the supposed biomechanical defects of Masiello's fencing system. A letter from doctors I. D. Chepmell and G. H. Savage was published in the Lancet in mid-1895, and it was followed by two articles from surgeon C. T. Dent, one being in response to an article in defence of the method by E. D. Ritchie.33 The content of these critiques presents views almost identical to Hutton's. They employ all the anatomical terms expected of medical professionals, but they lack any empirical evidence while maintaining a particular fixation on muscular exertion in an activity that is, fundamentally, physical exercise. Dent in particular relies on familiar comparisons to the much-touted 'French system', giving the impression of someone putting an academic veneer on their preconceptions. As with Hutton, the opinions of these men seem to be based solely on their readings of the Infantry Sword Exercise, not practical observation. A very similar debate had in fact taken place in Italy during the 1870s, when Radaelli's system was becoming more prominent. One critic asserted that the 'excessive bending' of the body and limbs demanded by Radaelli's system are 'harmful to one's health' and that they could 'easily cause hernias or distention', among other complications.34 Needless to say, these concerns were not founded in reality or practical observation of the system, and such arguments were irrelevant by the 1890s.
It is precisely practical observation which may have caused Dent to later reconsider his strong opposition. Following the publication of these articles, there appeared a report in the Lancet on a demonstration of Masiello's system at the Aldershot academy organised by Colonel Fox for the benefit of several medical professionals, among them Dent. The report gives a largely positive summary of the advantages of the system, concluding with the following:
At the conclusion of the display Sir William MacCormac cordially thanked Colonel Fox for the opportunity he had afforded him and his colleagues of examining into the new system of swordsmanship—a system that appeared to be thoroughly sound, both practically and theoretically.35
Much has been said about how Hutton's ignorance of Italian fencing affected his judgement of Masiello's system, but this is not the only flaw in his critique. Throughout the article he seems to almost go out of his way to deliberately read passages of the Infantry Sword Exercise in the most dishonest and uncharitable way possible. The text's description of various movements being 'simultaneous' is a particular sticking point for Hutton, who is unable to conceive of how both legs are supposed to move backwards while jumping.36 Following the publication of Hutton's critique in the United Service Magazine, a scathing reply was published anonymously in the same magazine, giving the following remark about Hutton's reading:
Any one, for instance, who has seen 'the jump' on which Captain Hutton has expended the vials of his wrath, will admit that it is a perfectly simple, easy, and effective movement, though by no means one the nature of which it is easy to define accurately in words.37
Thus it would be tenuous to make the claim that Hutton's interpretation of these passages was the average reader's experience. We again see this several pages later when Hutton is astonished by the seeming impossibility to follow the text's advice to 'raise both feet at the same instant from the ground' when performing the rear lunge, exclaiming 'I should like to see some one do this; raising anything from the ground is a more or less deliberate action'.38
One final example of Hutton's pearl-clutching is his imagined horror at the harm that Masiello's forward leaning lunge could have on the cavalrymen, who when 'trained on foot to throw his body forward and out of balance will, by force of habit, do so when mounted, and he will be liable to overbalance himself so much that the slightest mistake on the part of his horse will topple him out of his saddle, and he will fall flat on his face on the ground.'39 Hutton would have been comforted to know that not only was this leaning used to great effect on horseback by the Italian cavalry throughout the 19th century, but its utility was even recognised by the British cavalry itself.
The disingenuous manner in which Hutton approaches his critique often ventures into hypocrisy. He seems unable to decide whether to criticise it as a system to be adapted for his battlefield scenarios or as one which serves well in a fencing hall. Hutton bemoans the exclusion of the legs as a valid target in bouting or the lively footwork, elements making Masiello's method only suitable for salle play, yet when it comes to the force, speed, and accuracy it is said to promote through practice of the exercise molinelli, then suddenly the method is unsuitable even for this context:
This makes it clear that the basis of the system is not swordsmanlike skill but mere muscular violence. The man who has been specially trained to strike only with his 'utmost force' will be found, I am afraid, incapable of playing a light game40
Hutton then goes on to express his sympathies for the 'poor sergeants who are compelled to learn this brutal work' as well as the young students who will fall victim to their teachings when they later seek employment at schools. Only one page earlier he expressed his confusion at why the Infantry Sword Exercise would bother teaching the disarm expulsion when the bouting rules state that it is not permissible to hit someone once they are disarmed.41 Hutton is able to quickly forget about bouting etiquette when it suits his argument.
An argument on the grounds of inconsistency in application for the fencing hall or battlefield would have served Hutton no better here, as he is by far more guilty of this in his own writings. Several examples can be found in Cold Steel, such as his 'cut 8' or vertical rising cut aimed at the groin, which he clarifies 'should never be used in school play', or the similar qualification in his description of hitting with the hilt and grappling, while allowing for 'exceptional circumstances'.42 Contrary to what he says in his attack on the Infantry Sword Exercise, a jumping retreat is a perfectly admissible technique here, particularly useful 'in a room where the floor is level, but might be attended with considerable risk in the open'.43 Hutton provides sabre bouting rules which allow for the legs to be an invalid target when they are unprotected and his general rules forbid the use of the left hand for grappling.44 Despite his own inconsistency in what he considers acceptable in bouting, Hutton expresses great resentment for those who 'ignore the rules and customs of gentlemanly fencing'.45
Throughout his whole critique, Hutton's arguments remain solely in the hypothetical realm. Considering that Aldershot had been teaching Masiello's method since at least the beginning of 1893, there is a distinct lack of engagement with how the army's instructors were reacting to the change and the results among their students. Remember, Hutton was not just criticising the British army's implementation of Masiello's method but the foundations of the method itself. He completely ignores the past and continuing success of Radaellian fencing in Italy as well as in Austria, where (by 1896) Luigi Barbasetti had received a rapturous welcome that quickly led to the adoption of his method—very similar to Masiello's—by the Austrian military.46 In due time this would be replicated by other Italian masters in Hungary, Germany, the Netherlands, Argentina, Chile, and elsewhere. Inspector of the Aldershot school, Colonel Fox, himself identified Hutton's confinement to the theoretical realm already in 1893:
To conclude, I cannot but think it is a pity that Captain Hutton has not taken the trouble to find out for himself, or to come and see what is actually going on in the headquarter fencing establishment at Aldershot, before condemning it, as he is evidently in entire ignorance of the system that is carried out there.47
Three years later, Hutton's response to the 1895 Infantry Sword Exercise again demonstrates this pattern of behaviour. Today, we are only able to engage with fencing from this time through books, but for a wealthy, well-connected ex-soldier such as Hutton, such ignorance is less forgivable. Instances such as this might well prompt us to consider how reliable Hutton was even within his own British context.
Conclusion
Having reached this point, readers may be wondering: why bother refuting Hutton at all if his opinions are irrelevant to Italian fencing? What we hope to have demonstrated with this article is that the way Hutton engaged with source material, both contemporary and historical, did not only lead to incorrect assumptions about European fencing, but also serves as a poor example for modern readers. Emulating Hutton's approach to reading fencing treatises inevitably encourages superficial engagement with the systems described within them, to treat the individual techniques as nifty tools to appropriate without having a deeper understanding of the context behind them.
When reading primary fencing sources, we should ask ourselves questions such as these: Why did the author publish their book, and who was the intended audience? How did the author's contemporaries view the work, both at home and abroad? Is this work representative of that country or region's fencing as a whole? On the surface it would appear Hutton did attempt to approach his readings in this way, but time and time again he was only able to develop conclusions which validated his preconceptions and are contradicted by the historical record.
One would then do well to ask the same questions of Hutton's works, but this is beyond the scope of this article. Only one question will be posed here: what can we speculate about Hutton's motivations? It is undeniable that he was greatly invested in improving the apparent stagnation of British fencing in the latter half of the 19th century, as evidenced by his writings going back to the 1860s, but how can these efforts be reconciled with his near hostility towards Fox's efforts at reform in the 1890s?
Beginning with the publication of Cold Steel in 1889, Hutton coupled his fencing promotion with self-promotion, placing the reinterpreted techniques of old treatises alongside his own unremarkable observations and peddling them as a novelty, or rather a renovation. Any specific choice of inclusion in the material could be justified by his insistence on drawing upon the established works of other masters; thus through their expertise, Hutton was able to derive his own authority. Hutton hosted grand displays of old fencing styles—with the rapier and dagger, sword and buckler, and longsword—while simultaneously inserting himself into debates on fencing and physical education within the British military, despite showing little effort to engage directly with the most influential institution within that field.
When it became apparent that the British military, along with many other European states, was beginning to look to Italy for inspiration in revitalising their own fencing cultures, Hutton had no option but to place himself in opposition. Hutton had to reject Masiello's system not because of its lack of merit, but because he had absolutely no involvement in its adoption. As Hutton said himself in 1893: 'What is really needed as a text-book is a judicious blend of the time-honoured English broadsword play with certain details, and not so very many of them, derived from the modern Italians (and this I claim to have already provided in "Cold Steel" and "The Swordsman")'.48
It is understandable that Alfred Hutton's works were and are useful for those beginning their dive into the history of modern fencing. For a person living in 19th-century England he was particularly well-read on the topic of fencing and a tireless advocate for the practice within civil and military society; where he fell short was in the analysis and application of those fencing systems. As modern researchers bring more of the world of fencing to light, as we write the history of British fencing in the 19th century, the community ought to begin looking beyond people such as Hutton.
* * *
1 Alfred Hutton, Cold Steel: A practical treatise on the sabre (London: William Clowes, 1889).↩ 2 Infantry Sword Exercise 1895 (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1895).↩ 3 Alfred Hutton, The Swordsman: A Manual of Fence for the Foil, Sabre, and Bayonet (London: H. Grevel, 1891).↩ 4 Hutton, Cold Steel, pp. 3, 31, 34, 73, 97, 98. See also Hutton, Our Swordsmanship (London: Harrison and Sons, 1893), 9.↩ 5 Federico Cesarano, Trattato teorico-pratico di scherma della sciabola (Milan: Natale Battezzati, 1874); Masaniello Parise, Trattato teorico-pratico della scherma di spada e sciabola preceduto da un cenno storico sulla scherma e sul duello (Rome: Tipografia Nazionale, 1884).↩ 6 Hutton, Our Swordsmanship, 9; Hutton, "To the editor of the 'Army and Navy Gazette'," Army and Navy Gazette, 7 September 1895, 749.↩ 7 Some examples: Jaime Merelo y Casademunt, Tratado completo de la esgrima del sable español (Toledo: Severiano Lopez Fando, 1862), 54; Reinhold Silfversvärd, Handbok för undervisning i sabelfäktning till fot (Stockholm: Iwar Hæggström, 1868); Léon Galley, Traité d'escrime pratique au sabre, à la baïonnette et au bâton (Fribourg: Imprimerie Galley 1877) 22; Liborio Vendrell y Eduart, Arte de esgrimir el sable (Vitoria: Elias Sarasquela, 1879), 40–1; Alfredo Merelo y Fornés, Manual de esgrima de sable y lanza para toda el arma de caballería y sable de infantería (Madrid: M. Minuesa, 1880), 38; Luis Cenzano y Zamora, Manual de esgrima de sable: recopilación de las principales tretas puestas por lecciones al alcance de todos los aficionados (Burgos: Viuda de Villanueva, 1882) 26.↩ 8 The three that demonstrate a similar position as Hutton are: Carlo Tambornini, Breve trattato di scherma alla sciabola (Genoa: Tipografia Ponthenier, 1862); Salvatore Mendietta-Magliocco, Manuale della scherma di sciabola (Parma: Sarzi Erminio, 1868); Cesarano, Trattato teorico-pratico di scherma della sciabola. One might wish to be generous and include the point-forward variations seen in two authors: Giuseppe Cerri, Trattato teorico pratico della scherma per sciabola (Milan: self-pub., 1861); Giovanni Battista Ferrero, Breve trattato sul maneggio della sciabola (Turin: Tipografia Subalpina di Marino e Gantin, 1868).↩ 9 In the case of slanted head parries, see Bluth, Praktische Anleitung zum Unterricht im Hiebfechten (Berlin: Siegfried Mittler, 1883), 30–31; Antonio Álvarez García, Tratado de esgrima de sable y florete (Jerez: Imp. de El Cronista, 1886), 9. For examples of horizontal head parries by Italian authors, see Tambornini, Breve trattato di scherma alla sciabola; Mendietta-Magliocco, Manuale della scherma di sciabola; Alberto Falciani, La scherma della sciabola e del bastone a due mani brevemente insegnata nella lingua del popolo (Pisa: Fratelli Nistri, 1870).↩ 10 Even Hutton's favourite contemporary Italian author, Parise, only mentions them four times throughout his entire treatise. Cuts with the false edge are mentioned rarely or not at all in Radaellian works. See Giordano Rossi, Manuale teorico-pratico per la scherma di spada e sciabola (Milan: Fratelli Dumolard Editori, 1885); Ferdinando Masiello, La scherma italiana di spada e di sciabola (Florence: Stabilimento Tipografico G. Civelli, 1887).↩ 11 Arnoldo Ranzatto, Istruzioni per la scherma di sciabola illustrate da dieciotto figure con aggiunte alcune norme per il duello (Venice: Stabilimento Tipografico Fratelli Visentini, 1885), 22.↩ 12 Hutton, Cold Steel, 2.↩ 13 Ibid., 38.↩ 14 "Col. Sir Malcolm Fox: An Appreciation," The Sportsman, 5 August 1915; Mutio, "La nuova scuola di scherma a Londra," Scherma Italiana, 20 April 1893, 27.↩ 15 "Ferdinando Masiello," Cappa e Spada, 15 January 1888; Ministero della Guerra, Bollettino ufficiale delle nomine, promozioni e destinazioni negli ufficiali del R. Esercito Italiano e nel personale dell'amministrazione militare, (Rome: Tipografia C. Voghera, 1887), 499.↩ 16 One commentator in 1891 likened Masiello's importance in Italian fencing as equivalent to Mérignac for French fencing, and that 'the majority of Italians consider [Masiello] as the head of our Italian school'. Liberato De Amici, "La scherma italiana: Pini e Mérignac," Baiardo: periodico schermistico bimensile, 16 May 1891, 2.↩ 17 "Scherma," Notizie del giorno, Il Piccolo della Sera, 17 October 1887.↩ 18 Ministero della Guerra, Bollettino ufficiale delle nomine, promozioni e destinazioni negli ufficiali del R. Esercito Italiano e nel personale dell'amministrazione militare, (Rome: Tipografia E. Voghera, 1893), 592.↩ 19 Ferdinando Masiello, La scherma di sciabola, 2nd ed. (Florence: Tipografia di Egisto Bruscoli, 1893); Masiello, La scherma di sciabola, 3rd ed. (Florence: R. Bemporad, 1902); Masiello, La scherma di fioretto, 2nd ed. (Florence: R. Bemporad, 1902).↩ 20 Alfred Hutton, "The Infantry Sword Exercise of 1895," United Service Magazine, March 1896, 631–40.↩ 21 Hutton, "Infantry Sword Exercise of 1895," 631.↩ 22 Ibid.↩ 23 Parise, Trattato teorico-pratico, 24.↩ 24 Ferdinando Masiello, La scherma di sciabola a cavallo (Florence: Stabilimento G. Civelli, 1891).↩ 25 Masiello, La scherma di sciabola, 2nd ed. (Florence: Tipografia di Egisto Bruscoli, 1893), 11.↩ 26 See Saverio Cerchione, "Il peso dell'arma nello schermire," La Gazzetta dello Sport, 24 October 1898, 2.↩ 27 Hutton, "Infantry Sword Exercise of 1895," 636.↩ 28 Louis Perrée, "Quelques mesures prises chez les Maîtres d'armes," La Vie au Grand Air, 22 December 1904, 1038–9.↩ 29 Hutton, "Infantry Sword Exercise of 1895," 634.↩ 30 Sebastian Seager, "The Parise-Pecoraro Method (Part 1)," Radaellian Scholar (blog), 21 January 2019, https://radaellianscholar.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-parise-pecoraro-method-part-1.html; Seager, "The Parise-Pecoraro Method (Part 2)," Radaellian Scholar (blog), 16 February 2019, https://radaellianscholar.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-parise-pecoraro-method-part-2.html; Seager, "The Parise-Pecoraro Method (Part 3)," Radaellian Scholar (blog), 23 January 2021, https://radaellianscholar.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-parise-pecoraro-method-part-3.html.↩ 31 Ministero della Guerra, Regolamento di esercizi per la cavalleria, vol. 1, Istruzione individuale (Rome: Voghera Enrico, 1896), 30–2; Masaniello Parise, Trattato teorico-pratico della scherma di spada e sciabola preceduto da un cenno storico sulla scherma e sul duello, 5th ed. (Turin: Casa Editrice Nazionale, 1904), 285–6.↩ 32 A study conducted in 1893 counted a total of 225. See Luigi Moschetti, "La scherma nell'esercito," Scherma Italiana, 1 September 1896, 38–9.↩ 33 I. D. Chepmell and G. H. Savage, "Infantry Sword Exercise and the Recent Handbook from the War Office," The Lancet 146, no. 3752, (27 July 1895): 234, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(02)05337-0; C. T. Dent, "Infantry Sword Exercise and the Recent Handbook from the War Office," The Lancet 146, no. 3770 (30 November 1895): 1391–2, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(00)31601-4; E. D. Ritchie, "The New Infantry Sword Exercise," The Lancet 147, no. 3787 (28 March 1896): 888–9, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(02)01770-1; C. T. Dent, "The New Infantry Sword Exercise," The Lancet 147, no. 3789 (11 April 1896): 1021, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(01)39514-4.↩ 34 Achille Angelini, Osservazioni sul maneggio della sciabola secondo il metodo Redaelli (Florence: Tipi dell'Arte della Stampa, 1877), 21.↩ 35 "The New Infantry Sword Exercise," The Lancet 147, no. 3800 (27 June 1896): 1814, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(01)39112-2.↩ 36 Hutton, "Infantry Sword Exercise of 1895," 633–4, 637.↩ 37 Onlooker, "The New Sword Exercise: A Rejoinder by an Onlooker," United Service Magazine, April 1896, 99.↩ 38 Hutton, "Infantry Sword Exercise of 1895," 637.↩ 39 Ibid., 636–7.↩ 40 Ibid., 639.↩ 41 Ibid., 638.↩ 42 Hutton, Cold Steel, 31, 33, 89.↩ 43 Ibid., 87.↩ 44 Ibid., 120, 236.↩ 45 Ibid., 121.↩ 46 Victor Silberer, foreword to Das Säbelfechten by Luigi Barbasetti, trans. Rudolf Brosch and Heinrich Tenner (Vienna: Verlag der Allgemeinen Sport-Zeitung, 1899), 5–6.↩ 47 Malcolm Fox in Alfred Hutton, Our Swordsmanship (London: Harrison and Sons, 1893), 13.↩ 48 Hutton, Our Swordsmanship, 9.↩
Like many of the books I have presented on the blog, this latest addition to my library is a book which has been largely neglected by history. The 180-page Das Fechten mit der Stoss- und Hiebwaffe in sportlicher und moderner Auffassung ('Fencing with the thrusting and cutting weapon in a sportive and modern conception') was written by Leopold Targler, and various external sources date it to 1913 (as well as a previous owner of this particular copy, who wrote this year on the inner title page). Curiously it was published in the relatively small town of Arco in Trentino, which was then part of Austria-Hungary.
The book's author was well respected in his local Viennese scene at the time of publication, serving as for several years as the president of the Akademie der Fechtkunst, an Austrian organisation which certified civilian fencing masters founded by Luigi Barbasetti in 1904, as well as teaching at the Fechtklub Friesen and the Wiener Sportklub.
An excellent article on his career written by Maciej Łuczak and Michael Wenusch was published in the December 2018 issue of the American Historical Review, so I invite readers to consult this for full details. In summary, Targler was born in Gattendorf, Austria in 1865, and graduated from the Wiener Neustadt school in 1890. He later studied under Luigi Barbasetti, and after many years in Austria he began teaching at the military fencing school in Poznań (Poland) in 1922. Although he only stayed here until 1925, his impact on the local scene was significant and long-lasting, particularly for his role in introducing the Italian method to this region. He returned to Vienna in 1925, and in the year following Austria's annexation by Germany in 1938 he became a member of the Nazi Party. He died in February 1945.
Leopold's daughter Elisabeth or 'Elsa' Targler followed in her father's footsteps and became a fencing master in 1910. At the time of this book's publication, she taught alongside her father at the Wiener Sportklub as well as assisting Luigi Della Santa at the Wiener Fechtklub. A photo of her in the lunge is used as figure 3 in this book, between pages 8 and 9. Like her father, Elsa was a continuous supporter of the Nazi Party throughout the 1930s and 40s.
The influence of Barbasetti is clear throughout Targler's book, with the sabre material in particular being structured in a very similar manner, with the molinelli preceding the invitations and engagements, followed by the blows and parries. From here there is some evidence of Hungarian influence in Targler's 'cut-parry-cut' exercises, first seen in Károly Leszák's 1906 treatise Kardvívás. Just seven photos are placed throughout Targler's book, but an interesting novelty can be found at the very end in a single fold-out plate approximately 70cm in length, containing motion-capture images of Targler performing a lunge and recovery with the foil, a head cut with a lunge in sabre and a recovery from the same. It is interesting to note how Targler withdraws his arm all the way back behind the head prior to giving the cut, in a manner very similar to the coupé described in Del Frate's texts.
Although Targler's method shows many unsurprising similarities to Barbasetti's, a clear deviation is his preference for a somewhat low and semi-retracted guard of 3rd as opposed to the standard Radaellian 2nd. This is even more pronounced in the foil section, which shows a guard position more similar to the French school than the Italian. On the final page Targler mentions the texts he used as references for his own work, which are the foil book by Rudolf Brosch, Barbasetti's sabre treatise, and Josef Bartunek's Ratgeber für den Offizier zur Sicherung des Erfolges im Zweikampf mit dem Säbel.
The large blade-swinging exercise of the Radaellian tradition known as the molinello (plural molinelli) has been commonly misunderstood by fencing commentators from the 1870s right up to the present day. The prescribed motion has been variously described by critics as slow, overly exaggerated, and easy to exploit—and indeed many of these comments are not necessarily false. What the comments ignore, however, are the practical applications of the wide motions and how they can be refined into tighter movements as the situation requires, with the elbow still remaining the primary pivot point.
Although this separation between exercise molinelli and practical or 'regular' molinelli may at times be understated in the Radaellian treatises, it is a distinction the authors make. In the first book on Radaelli's system by Settimo Del Frate, he defines the molinello in the following manner:
The molinello is the movement of rotation that the sabre does when striking. The exercise molinello is therefore nothing other than a somewhat exaggerated rotational movement of that which is done with the sabre in performing an ordinary blow, and they are exaggerated because they make the later blows with a regular molinello easier.… Once the student is confident and performs these three types of molinelli with precision, he will perform all sabre blows with the utmost ease, because they are all merely molinelli with a wider or smaller motion.1
Thus the molinello is simply a rotational movement pattern for a cut, and the exercise molinelli are a means to practise this movement pattern in an exaggerated manner in order to facilitate later learning. A good example of this is that the exercise molinelli contain within them positions which resemble certain parries, meaning that students are learning how to perform basic parry-riposte actions before being formally introduced to the concept.
Through the wide exercise molinelli, students learn not only how to move the sabre to and from every position, but also stop it wherever they want, which was a key attribute of the 'secure carriage' that the elbow-focused system was said to provide. Emphasis is also placed on giving the blow maximum reach and power, ending the action with correct edge alignment. As Giordano Rossi puts it, 'the more perfectly the circles are performed from the beginning of instruction, the lighter the sabre will seem, and the faster the blows with a regular molinello will be while staying well-directed, without imbalance in the hand, being ready for any other offensive or defensive action even after striking.'2 To help readers visualise how the molinelli can be reduced in size, Rossi provides some illustrations depicting three different paths that the hand can follow in the molinelli, providing examples for three out of the six molinelli.
Top left: molinello to the head from the left Top right: molinello to the face from the left Bottom: Rising molinello from the left
This does not mean, however, that only the smaller movements are useful in fencing. In the parry-riposte, for example, a wide rotation is often necessary to free your blade from the opponent's and hit the most convenient target, as Rossi states:
The molinelli with wide rotation are very useful because, in addition to the aforementioned benefits, with them one obtains the actions that are performed in the bout; for example: if we from guard of second parry third and riposte to the opponent's inside flank, we perform the traversone with the exercise molinello. So too if we, from guard of second, parry first and riposte, we have thus performed the molinello with wide rotation.3
While the exaggerated weight-shifting and leaning in the exercise molinelli either disappear or decrease in amplitude in most Radaellian sources after Del Frate, this is less a repudiation of elbow molinelli than it is evidence of the system's refinement and the specialisation in an on-foot fencing context. This is in contrast to the system's origin as a cavalry system, where body movement must compensate for the inability to adjust the distance from an opponent through footwork. While Radaellian fencing treatises from the 1880s onward tended to de-emphasise weight shifting in the molinelli, it continued to be taught in the Italian cavalry until the early 1890s and was eventually reintroduced in 1912.4
The author who provides the clearest description of how the molinelli can be refined is Nicolò Bruno. In his framework, the motion of the molinello can be categorised as one of three 'circles', these being maximum, regular, and minimum. Maximum circles utilise full rotation of the forearm with accompanying movement of the upper arm, which is what the typical exercise molinelli entail. In minimum circles there is no raising or lowering of the upper arm, and the forearm 'turns on itself'. A 'regular' circle lies in between these extremes, with the elbow remaining stationary as the forearm rotates. This is the most common motion employed in the bout and in lessons.5
The description provided for fig. 27 on the right is: 'Molinello to the head from the left, starting from the guard or parry of 2nd or 1st in line, and demonstration of the maximum, regular, and minimum circle the sabre must describe. The same principles must serve as a basis for all other molinelli: that is, rising and to the face from the left, and rising and to the face from the right.'
Bruno includes in his treatise a helpful illustration of the molinello to the head which is almost identical to the type we saw in Rossi's treatise; as a slight improvement on Rossi's, however, is the fact that in the description for the illustration we are told that each of the three circles, i.e. maximum, regular, and minimum, are being depicted.6
In each of these variations the elbow is always the most dominant joint utilised in the arm, but this should not come at the exclusion of sensible use of the wrist where appropriate. The most obviously useful movement of the wrist joint is ulnar deviation to bring the sabre in line with the forearm and radial deviation in the more angled parries.
An illustration of wrist flexion (left) and extension (right).
The hand undergoing ulnar deviation. The opposite direction would be radial deviation.
Wrist movement was limited by the Radaellians so far as to ensure that the edge always travelled in the direction of the cut, as Salvatore Arista explains:
In the Radaelli sabre method, the pivot of rotation is indeed brought normally to the elbow, but it is not true that articulation of the wrist is totally abolished. In fact the wrist is well articulated starting with the blow to the head for the purpose of better finding the line and the target. The only inhibited movements are all the ineffectual or harmful movements of the wrist which cause the point to oscillate.7
These 'oscillations' are experienced when the blade flexes perpendicular to the direction of the sabre's path through the air, often as a result of wrist flexion or extension. Oscillations can serve as a feedback mechanism for the fencer, as they highlight when the edge is misaligned as it travels or if a force is being applied to the sabre that deviates it from the initial plane of motion. For Poggio Vannucchi, an otherwise very conservative Radaellian, this still allowed for wrist motion beyond the typical ulnar and radial deviation, saying that the sabre 'is wielded mainly through movement of the forearm and arm, with harmonious lateral and adduction movements of the hand, but never flexion.'8
With the end goal of the molinelli being to eliminate oscillations and ensure complete domination of the sabre, the precise size of the movement reduces to being only as wide as necessary to move from one place to another while avoiding obstacles such as the opponent's blade. Salvatore Pecoraro and Carlo Pessina seemingly take this to its logical conclusion when they state that as soon as the student has achieved the necessary blade control through the exercise molinelli, the rotations should 'be gradually reduced to the lowest limits, i.e. performing them with the simple turn of the hand accompanied by a slight bend and successive abrupt extension of the elbow.'9
Not all Radaellians agreed with this level of reduction, however, and Pecoraro and Pessina were criticised by their fellow Radaellian Ferdinando Masiello over this particular point. Although Masiello occasionally described cuts by molinello with terms like ristrettissimo, meaning 'very restricted' or 'very tight', at least by 1910 he was of the firm opinion that a molinello should only be a circular motion with a radius that corresponds to the length of the forearm plus sabre. In the first edition of his sabre treatise, Masiello allowed some use of wrist extension in executing the molinelli as well as ulnar and radial deviation, but from the 2nd edition onward this was changed to allow only deviation.10 Unhelpfully for our purposes, Luigi Barbasetti gives no clear indication of how or even if the molinello motion can be reduced, so he may or may not be in a similar camp as later Masiello.11
Molinello to the head from the left, from Sestini (1903).
None of this is to say that some Radaellian authors allowed smaller cutting motions while others did not; these differences mainly come down to how they all defined the molinello specifically. Both Masiello and Barbasetti make extensive use of direct cuts in their methods, consisting of just a small bending of the forearm prior to extension along a linear path, and they also have the coupé. Rossi, Bruno, and Vannucchi, on the other hand, do not explicitly define their own version of a direct cut (although, as discussed previously, that does not mean they never used them), thus their interpretations of how a molinello can be performed may have been intended to help fill this terminological gap, which would also explain why the first two authors also give a broader definition of the coupé to allow cuts to other targets aside from just the head.
Even after explaining all this, a common refrain from critiques of Radaellian fencing is that no matter how tight one performs an elbow molinello, it always exposes the forearm to a stop cut. While this is true in a technical sense, it is very much overstated. This danger posed to an attacker using a molinello was not lost on the Radaellians; after all, how else would they have achieved the competitive success they did without knowing how to effectively compensate? The most important factor in avoiding stop hits, as in most techniques, is ensuring that one is not beginning the action too close to the opponent. One method the Radaellians used to ensure that their students were not advancing the body too early, thereby exposing the arm, was to give stop cuts to their arm or body as they lunged.12 If the cut is correctly timed, the blow to the arm should simply land on the student's hilt. Giordano Rossi expanded on this and also advocates attempting a sforzo on the student's blade to prompt the molinello; if the sforzo lands, then it shows the student that the beginning of their molinello was too slow.13
Correct decision-making is also something that the master must develop in their students. In a pure fencing sense, the molinelli are merely one way to move the blade from one position to another while avoiding all obstacles. They make the most tactical sense when beginning from an extended position with the blades engaged or with the arm in any position after completing a parry. The molinello allows a fencer to free their blade from or avoid entirely the opponent's blade and, in the same continuous motion, touch an exposed target. If nothing is in the way between one's blade and the desired target, then a direct cut or thrust will most often be the correct response.
The cult of Radaellianism has distinct principles that sets it apart from other sabre systems, but these principles should not be confused with religious dogma. Advocates of wrist-focused sabre systems can be quick to dismiss these principles, but doing so is a rather uncharitable way to engage with a tradition which saw widespread success at home and abroad for many decades.
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1 Settimo Del Frate, Istruzione per maneggio e scherma della sciabola (Florence: Tipografia, lit. e calc. la Venezia, 1868), 8.↩ 2 Giordano Rossi, Manuale teorico-pratico per la scherma di spada e sciabola con cenni storici sulle armi e sulla scherma e principali norme pel duello (Milan: Fratelli Dumolard Editori, 1885), 157.↩ 3 Giordano Rossi, Considerazioni e proposte per l'unificazione dei vari sistemi di scherma in Italia (Milan: Tipografia degli Operai, 1890), 12.↩ 4 For an exploration of this process, see my series The Parise-Pecoraro Method. The Radaellian cavalry method reintroduced in 1912 is found in Ministero della Guerra, Regolamento di esercizi per la cavalleria, vol. 1 (Rome: Voghera Enrico, 1912).↩ 5 Nicolò Bruno, Risorgimento della vera scherma di sciabola italiana basata sull'oscillazione del pendolo (Novara: Tipografia Novarese, 1891), 59–60.↩ 6 Bruno, 294.↩ 7 Salvatore Arista, Del progresso della scherma in Italian; considerazioni sull'impianto della nuova Scuola Magistrale per l'esercito fondata in Roma nel 1884 (Bologna: Società Tipografica già Compositori, 1884), 22.↩ 8 Poggio Vannucchi, I fondamenti della scherma italiana (Bologna: Coop. Tipografica Azzoguidi, 1915), 44.↩ 9 Salvatore Pecoraro and Carlo Pessina, La Scherma di Sciabola: Trattato Teorico-Pratico (Viterbo: Tipografia G. Agnesotti, 1912), 53.↩ 10 Ferdinando Masiello, La scherma italiana di spada e di sciabola (Florence: Stabilimento Tipografico G. Civelli, 1887). Note, however, that there is a curious contradiction in these latter editions. While in the section 'method of wielding the sabre' both flexion and extension are excluded, later on when defining the molinelli extension is instead permitted. It seems likely that the latter inclusion was an oversight in the editing process. Cf. Masiello La scherma di sciabola (Florence: R. Bemporad, 1902), 25, 55–6.↩ 11 Luigi Barbasetti, Das Säbelfechten (Vienna: Verlag der Allgemeinen Sport-Zeitung, 1899).↩ 12 Stated in the handwritten notes of the personal textbooks of Luigi Barbasetti and Giovanni Lombardi under the heading 'Molinelli con spaccata'. The first manuscript is found in the KU Leuven Libraries Special Collections, R4A552b, and the latter is in Museo Silvio Longhi at the Agorà della Scherma in Busto Arsizio, Italy. See here for transcriptions of both.↩ 13 Rossi, Manuale teorico-pratico, 176; Rossi, Considerazioni e proposte, 12–3.↩
It has been a long time coming for this treatise to finally become freely available for all, but at long last here is the Italian version of Barbasetti's foil treatise, La Scherma di Spada, published in 1902 by Alessandro Gattinoni of Milan.
I will omit a summary of its contents today, as it is relatively well-known book in Anglophone fencing circles due to its many republications throughout the years throughout the years. The German from 1900 is also freely available here through KU Leuven.
My cursory comparison of the German and Italian texts showed no significant differences between them aside from the front matter. The German edition contains a dedication to Archduke Franz Salvator of Austria and a preface by Bernhard Dimand, one of the two translators of the book; the Italian version instead contains an introduction from Roderico Rizzotti, who explains that, after having read Barbasetti's original manuscript prior to its translation into German, he felt that work presented a unique simplicity and practicality in its explanations that even the Italian public, who had no shortage of comprehensive foil treatises, would welcome its publication, and thus Rizzotti encouraged Barbasetti to publish his work in Italy. Rizzotti's introduction is followed by the preface from Barbasetti's 1899 sabre treatise Das Säbelfechten, which the Italian editors felt was still relevant and worth providing for the new audience. This preface was not included in the English translations of either of Barbasetti's books.
One minor difference between the two versions is some very small variations in the dimensions of the foil (several parts changing by half a centimetre or so); another difference can be see in the given Italian terms for the advance-lunge. In the German version the term is given in both German and Italian, the latter being pattinando; the Italian version of the text uses both pattinando as well as the noun version of the word pattinaggio, which did not seem to catch on in Italian terminology (although neither did pattinando).
My sincere gratitude to Roberto Gotti and the Martial Arts Museum in Brescia for allowing me to view their impressive collection and share this treatise with readers.
It has been a while since we have taken a look at a non-Radaellian sabre text, and that has largely been due to such texts gradually becoming available elsewhere (I am obliged to mention KU Leuven and their ongoing high-quality digitisation of the Corble Fencing Collection). As a rare book, the subject of this article is one which has flown under the radar seemingly for its entire existence, although it has great relevance to our usual Italian context. The book's full title is Scherma di sciabola: metodo d'insegnamento adottato presso la scuola militare di cavalleria ('Sabre fencing: teaching method adopted at the cavalry military school'), published in 1861 by Giuseppe Chiantore of Pinerolo.
The Pinerolo cavalry school was at the time of this book's publication the only dedicated cavalry school for the Italian army, giving two-year long courses for NCOs and low-ranking officers. Although no author is named in the book, through military records we can make an educated guess as to who may have had a hand in writing it or contributing to the method it contains.
The 1858 and 1860 editions of Calendario generale del regno list the cavalry school's head fencing master as Lieutenant Clemente Doux.1 Although there is no 1861 edition of this yearbook, it is likely that Doux relinquished this role that same year after being promoted to captain in March and then adjutant major in July.2 The roll was filled in March 1862 by Carlo Marella, who stayed there for 3 years. In late 1862 the school began a brief experiment of being split into two separate institutions under unified command, one called the Cavalry Military School and the other the Cavalry Normal School, with only the latter aimed at creating instructors for the cavalry. No specific individual is named as fencing master for the Military School, merely 'a non-commissioned officer of the Cavalry Normal School', while Marella assumed direction of fencing at the Normal School.3
If Doux was not actually directly involved in the writing of this book, it is nevertheless likely that he taught the method described, given that it was supposedly a summarised account of the school's fencing curriculum:
The soldiers who take part in a training course at this Cavalry Military School are generally, when they return to their unit, entrusted with directing the teaching of fencing to the lowest ranks of their respective squadron. This instruction has been compiled in order to facilitate their task, and in it one finds the lessons which they received here laid out progressively, and briefly reminded of the indispensable notes for the regular execution of the same.
Nothing is known of Clemente Doux's pedigree as a fencer, but he would later be known for his public criticism of Radaelli's method, submitting several articles to the military journal L'Esercito.4 Attempts to obtain these articles have so far been unsuccessful, but at the very least this short treatise provides the best guess as to what kind of sabre method Doux preferred.
Although the book describes what was being taught at a cavalry school, the method resembles a typical on-foot sabre fencing system of the time, and in fact it contains no specific exercises or technical advice for applying the method on horseback. Like most 'military fencing' books of the time, it is clear that fencing is the end for which the method is intended, as further reflected in its description of bouting and the recommended lesson structure: the material in part one of the book—describing the guard position, footwork, parries, exercise molinelli, and the lunge—is to be taught as a group, while parts two and three are done as individual lessons, with the master wearing a mask and plastron.
It is expected that 15 to 20 lessons are sufficient to teach the material in the book's first part, 35 to 40 lessons for part two, and part three taking even longer. The only note in the entire book about a cavalry application of the method is that such an application means that only the material in sections one and two are sufficient 'to make a soldier of even mediocre aptitude capable of fighting advantageously', requiring 50 to 60 lessons in total.
The techniques described are fairly standard for the time and, in part, recognisably Italian, namely the high extended guard of 3rd as well as the familiar parry positions and numbering: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th (the latter also taking the name 'yielding 2nd'). The exercise molinelli are wrist-centric done with an extended arm; only descending and rising molinelli are included, but separate cuts to the head and face are described later on. It is interesting to note that while the cutting mechanics in this book focus on wrist motion, unlike Parise the molinello is performed before contact is made with the opponent's body, instead of afterwards while recovering from the lunge.
The book contains one large fold-out plate of illustrations, depicting first position, the guards of 3rd and 4th, the seven parries, and a drawing of the master's plastron. The book is only 67 pages long, but is a valuable point of comparison with the other Piedmontese works of the period, such as the 1853 cavalry sabre instruction, Blengino, and Ferrero.5 Given that Giuseppe Radaelli was interacting with various cavalry officers such as Gerolamo Avogadro while teaching in Turin in the 1850s, his hall would have been visited by those who had previously learnt this very method, some at the Pinerolo school itself.
Special thanks to the kind staff of the Biblioteca Sportiva Nazionale for helping me see this book and the rest of their wonderful collection.
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1 Ministero dell'Interno, Calendario generale del regno pel 1858 con appendice di notizie storico-statistiche (Turin: Stamperia dell'Unione Tipografico-Editrice, 1858), 538; Ministero dell'Interno, Calendario generale del regno pel 1860 con appendice di notizie storiche sull'ultimo decennio (Turin: Stamperia dell'Unione Tipografico-Editrice, 1860), 914.↩ 2 See the March and July 1861 issues of Giornale militare 1861: Bollettino delle nomine, promozioni ed altre variazioni occorse negli uffiziali dell'armata di terra e di mare non che delle amministrazioni militare e marittima.↩ 3 Ministero della Guerra, Annuario ufficiale dell'esercito italiano 1863 (Turin: C. Cotte e F. Capellino, 1863), 779–804.↩ 4 Cited in: Achille Angelini, Osservazioni sul maneggio della sciabola secondo il metodo Redaelli (Florence: Tipi dell'Arte della Stampa, 1877), 3; Ferdinando Masiello, L'Italia Militare, 19 January 1878, 3.↩ 5 Istruzione pel maneggio della sciabola approvata dal Ministero di Guerra (Turin: Officina Tipografica di Giuseppe Fodratti, 1853); Cristoforo Blengino, Teoria di scherma sulla sciabola (Ivrea: Tipografia Violetta, 1851); Giovanni Battista Ferrero, Breve trattato sul maneggio della sciabola (Turin: Tipografia Subalpina di Marino e Gantin, 1868).↩
