Radaelli Under Fire: Luigi Forte

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

Following Masiello's short and perhaps underwhelming response to Achille Angelini's criticism of Radaelli's sabre method, another military officer, Captain Luigi Forte, saw this exchange as an opportunity to provide his own refutations of Radaellian principles and Masiello's statements in their defence. Forte's response was originally published over two issues of L'Italia Militare, but that same year it was also released in booklet form with the title Sul metodo di scherma Radaelli ('On the Radaelli method'), a copy of which can now be found in the Corble Collection at KU Leuven.¹

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In 1878 Luigi Forte was a cavalry captain in charge of the Catania stallion depot, one of several locations around Italy dedicated to breeding horses for the Italian army. Forte's authority on the subject of fencing was as an amateur, but one who had been raised in what he calls the 'true classical school of fencing' in his native Naples, where he was born on 29 October 1830. As a teenager he volunteered in the Royal Guard of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, receiving an officer's commission shortly after the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861, soon transferring to the Catania stallion depot. Here he would stay for the majority of his career, eventually rising to the rank of Lieutenant colonel in the reserve army.²

Forte draws on his own fencing experience in the Neapolitan school (as well as acknowledging the authoritative treatise of Giuseppe Rosaroll-Scorza and Pietro Grisetti) to criticise not just Radaelli's sabre theories, but also those for the sword—the only author in this series to do so. It is clear he is referring to Del Frate's 1876 book when dealing with Radaelli's sword material, but curiously like Angelini he instead relies on the 1868 version when it comes to sabre, at least when referring to the illustrations. In Forte's view, the method outlined in the Del Frate texts pales in comparison to the established fencing traditions of Southern Italy, which he refers to with terms such as 'true Italian fencing', 'the true science of fencing', and 'true classical Italian fencing'.

These are, of course, all purely theoretical arguments, based entirely off Del Frate's texts and without any mention of having personally witnessed Radaellian fencing. This should not be cause to dismiss Forte's opinions, but is worth considering how writings such as these may have influenced some to form unfavourable views of Radaelli's method before ever seeing it in action, keeping Radaellians always on the polemical back foot.

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1 For the original publication, see Luigi Forte, "La scherma metodo Radaelli," L'Italia Militare, 23 February 1878 & 26 February 1878.^↩
2 Jacopo Gelli, Bibliografia generale della scherma (Florence: Luigi Niccolai, 1890), 108. See also the ministry of war's yearbook, Annuario Militare, published by Carlo Voghera, to track Forte's promotions and postings.^↩