18 January 2023

Radaelli Under Fire: Achille Angelini


This is the first article in the 'Radaelli Under Fire' series. Click here to return to the introduction and view the other entries in the series.

The Radaellian method had several high-profile opponents in its heyday, and even among them General Achille Angelini was a particularly tenacious one. Veteran of all three Italian Wars of Independence, friend and aide-de-camp of King Vittorio Emanuele II, and notable duellist, by the 1870s Angelini had lived remarkable life. Known for his temerity and unshakeable patriotism, the 'cavalier without fear' made many friends and enemies throughout his long career, with the use of arms in all contexts being being a recurring topic in his work.1 The first booklet in this series we will be looking at was written by Angelini, published in 1877 under the title Observations on the handling of the sabre according to the Radaelli method [Osservazioni sul maneggio della sciabola secondo il metodo Redaelli].

***Click here to read***

The scans of the original book can be found here through the Corble Collection at KU Leuven, along with hundreds of other rare fencing-related texts.

Focusing solely on sabre, Angelini’s booklet would quickly become the most widely cited critique on Radaelli's system, and was the only one cited in the 1884 report on the notorious anti-Radaellian fencing treatise commission, which was also chaired by Angelini himself. Comparing said report with this booklet, it is clear how much the views of the rest of the commission were influenced by Angelini's writing, as seen in their statement that Radaelli's system teaches to grip the sabre 'with great an incessant force', a prescription entirely fabricated by Angelini.2

Although Angelini states at the beginning that he had read Del Frate's 1876 book on Radaelli's system, Istruzione per la scherma di sciabola e di spada, he makes it clear that he did not consider the differences between this book and the 1868 version to be significant, and as such most of his quotes are taken from the earlier edition. In addition to citing Del Frate's book, Angelini also directs criticism at material taken from the 1873 cavalry regulations, which contain a cavalry-focused adaptation of Radaelli's method. It is unclear whether or not Radaelli was involved in writing these regulations (although Angelini takes it for granted that he was), but that did not prevent Angelini from giving him the blame for all the faults he finds in them, including criticisms for techniques and advice—such as the sweeping semi-circular parries and the maxim to focus on attacking rather than defending—which can be found in much earlier (pre-Radaellian) versions of the regulations, such as the 1853 Piedmontese cavalry instructions.

In addition to writing a very popular duelling code in 1883, Angelini would later resume the offensive against Radaellian fencing after reading Masiello's 1887 treatise, in which the author vehemently denounces the treatise competition and the modern Neapolitan school as represented in Masaniello Parise. When Angelini states at the end of his 1877 booklet that the only thing that would convince him to change his mind is arguments from Radaellians based on 'defined mathematical rules', as he professes to have given (a desire echoed by other critics of Radaelli), this may have influenced the way Masiello would later write his own treatise, which contains numerous mathematical discussions to justify his particular brand of Radaellian fencing. Judging by the statements in Angelini's second booklet, however, he did not find Masiello's proofs sufficiently convincing. In this second critical work, entitled Final word on the revived Angelini-Masiello matter and published in 1888, Angelini felt compelled to respond to the denunciation of the commission he presided over by largely restating the points he made in his 1877 booklet, also adding a summary of Masiello's 'contradictions' of what is written in Del Frate's Radaellian texts.

That same year, prolific author Jacopo Gelli responded to this in turn with his own booklet, a point-by-point response to Angelini's critique written in a tone that could at times be described as exasperated, but is overall a good demonstration of how the issues Angelini described in Radaelli's sabre method were often based more off bad readings of outdated material rather than what was actually being taught at the time.


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1 A. M. Adamoli-Castiglioni Branda, Cenni biografici del generale Achille Angelini (Florence: Bernardo Seber Successore Loescher, 1900).
2 Paulo Fambri, "Relazione," in 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), i–xxxv.

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