The publication of Masiello's booklet of criticism marked the climax of the debate surrounding Pecoraro and Pessina's sabre treatise. As we already saw with Alberto Cavaciocchi's reply to Masiello, public discussion began to focus more on the people making the arguments against Pecoraro and Pessina's treatise rather than the text itself. News of the treatise's imminent approval by the Ministry of War (and a possible second edition in the works) likely made the adoption of the new system seem like a fait accompli even to those who deemed it inadequate, at least in its current state.
In line with this state of affairs, Radaellian master Poggio Vannucchi decided to take up his pen to denounce the new official system as well as the general trend of Italian fencing. Below is the full translation of an article of his published on 14 March 1911 in the Bolognese newspaper Il Resto del Carlino. Note that the incident he is referring to at the beginning was a recent public dispute between Agesilao Greco and Jean Joseph Renaud following a fencing exhibition in Paris. The dispute eventually ended in a duel between the latter and Italian journalist Luigi Campolonghi.
If the recent Italo-French fencing dispute has ended in a not-too-dishonourable way for the Italian nation, and this is thanks to the intervention of those who dared drop the pen for the sword to protect our honour, we must also confess that this dispute ended deplorably for our Italian fencing; it was a true disaster. This is not to rekindle controversies which we should instead all wish to be over and hope, unfortunately in vain, for them to be soon buried in oblivion. It is not even to criticise the chivalrous behaviour of our champions that I wish to make my voice heard here; the whole nation and the entire civil world was the judge of that behaviour. It is only technical deficiency that I intend to speak of—our lack of preparation, the inferiority, it must be admitted, in which we find ourselves. And we can admit this, because it is not an inferiority of race or of traditions, but of systems, an inferiority which depends not on less aptitude, but of less seriousness in preparation and practice. I will mention nothing else, because too much has already been written rightly or wrongly and even when it was better to be silent. What the current state of our fencing is, that professed officially at the Rome Master's School, in institutes and military corps, and unfortunately even on the pistes of international tournaments, what this fencing is, I have already discussed on another occasion in the columns of this same newspaper. I said then that one of its fundamental principles is the laziness which the lunge in the Neapolitan style teaches, more resembling a comfortable sitting-down than the sudden burst that it should be and which, according to them, allows one to return to guard more comfortably. And this laziness introduces a whole arsenal of small tricks, deceptions, games; gimmicks like rattling, somersaults, and mean ploys; intentionally provoked double touches to strike fraudulently where one cannot strike with art; parries done no longer with the blade, but with the body, if necessary turning the back or exposing another part of the body where blows are not conventionally valid. And I also said that instead our true fencing—that with which Radaelli made the best Italian fencers in a single year—is fatiguing and gruelling, with neither economy nor respite, because only in this way can the necessary performance of the body's capacity and the harmony of movements and volition be achieved. A few minutes, I added, of strict instruction on the piste should be enough to exhaust the keen pupil, who fully intends to gain the necessary requirements; far better than hours and hours of continuous teasing, whipping, charming jumps, and back turns. And with this exercise it is possible to implement that system which is one of our forgotten glories, which is based on the absolute precedence of the blade over the body so that those who strike in a truly sudden manner, without having warned the opponent with the body, should touch; the other cannot parry, even if they know where the other wants to strike, even if a simple and brief movement is enough to parry; they cannot parry if the opponent had a good start, simply because they had a good start. This requirement of the blow is something very arduous to achieve; it requires effort and constancy, enthusiasm and sacrifice, but it is only this which can ensure supremacy for Italian fencing. I would like to again recall that I twice gave an open invitation to a practical test of this fundamental principle, a test which I still propose in the same terms: to lunge from defined guard positions against a declared target, without a preceding movement or feint to deceive the opponent, at correct measure, committing myself to touching the opponent at least six times out of ten and parrying at least the same number of their blows. And perhaps this time too I will wait in vain. But to return to our current thesis and conclude: throw into oblivion this disgrace that we call the current official Italian fencing system, that which is the cause of our defeats and our embarrassments, and exhume our old, true fencing; because when the system is serious, so too is the behaviour of those who profess it and represent the Italian name in trials of arms held before the entire civil world.
Cap. Poggio Vannucchi
Fencing master
Vannucchi does not name Pecoraro and Pessina explicitly, but it was well known by then (at least among fencing enthusiasts) that the two masters had taken over direction of the Master's School, and his reference to the 'lunge in the Neapolitan style' would be universally understood as the type with an upright torso that was typical of Neapolitan fencers. This body carriage is typical of the supposed weakness Vannucchi sees in fencing of the period, which had strayed too far from the 'fatiguing and gruelling' style of the Radaellian of his younger years in the 1870s and early 80s. For those of you who have read Vannucchi's 1915 treatise, the above article might seem rather familiar, as the majority of it is in fact repeated verbatim in his treatise's introduction.1 One may note the removal of the reference to the Master's School, as by 1915 it had been closed as part of the country's war preparations and could no longer be blamed for any perceived degradation in the nation's fencing.
In the meantime, Masiello did eventually become aware of Alberto Cavaciocchi's article in Rivista Militare, but after reading it he did not deem the technical arguments to be of a high enough standard to warrant a full rebuttal. Nevertheless two of Cavaciocchi's personal attacks against him did justify a reply, which appeared in La Nazione on 16 April 1911. After accusing Cavaciocchi of being uncourteous by not informing him of the Rivista Militare article's publication, as Masiello assures he always does when replying to others, he first takes issue with Cavaciocchi's claim that Masaniello Parise's attempt to conciliate the opposing factions in Italy around the year 1889 only ended in vain thanks to the 'intransigence of a few'. Masiello informs him that there were in fact two such attempts, and that if anyone present at those meetings should be accused of intransigence, then it should be Parise himself. Masiello quotes a letter he had received a few days earlier from Salvatore Arista, who said that at one of these meetings, during a discussion on how the disengagement should be executed, Parise dismissively stated 'let's not go into useless details'. For Masiello, such a statement was demonstrative of how disingenuous Parise's engagement was with his critics, and how futile such attempts at conciliation were from the outset.
The second exception Masiello took with Cavaciocchi's article is when the latter brought up an exhibition which Masiello took part in at the National Academy of Fencing in Naples in 1880. Aside from the fact that Cavaciocchi misremembered the year the event actually happened (1882) and falsely called the event was 'competition' rather than simply an exhibition, he also claimed that when Masiello appeared to be losing to his clearly superior Neapolitan opponents he pulled out of the event, claiming that the pain in his knee had become too great to continue. As Masiello rightly points out, he had in fact been suffering significant knee pain at the time which was increasingly preventing him from fencing, such that in 1881 he even underwent a meniscectomy to remedy this pain, which was the first time such a procedure had been performed in Italy.2 Masiello concludes his short article by assuring Cavaciocchi and all those who had been subject to his criticism that he has no intention of dethroning or defaming anyone, but simply to speak the truth as he sees it for the benefit of fencing. He also declares that he has too high an opinion of his own system for it to be adopted at the Master's School, where, with an explicit nod of approval to Vannucchi's article, they follow methods 'based on laziness'.
The final publication to directly contribute to this debate (that I am aware of at least) was a booklet titled Poche parole "Sui metodi di scherma per l'esercito" del Colonnello di fanteria E. Cavaciocchiwritten by a Florentine amateur named Giovanni Dumortier. Dated to May 1911, the booklet is a direct rebuttal of Cavaciocchi's article, with Dumortier emulating his witty and occasionally condescending tone. Given that the booklet was published in Florence, it is possible that Dumortier was a student or acquaintance of Masiello, and felt compelled to defend his friend. Since Cavaciocchi spent a significant portion of his article comparing Parise's system with the Radaelli and Masiello's, Dumortier's booklet is almost entirely occupied with refuting these points and defending the legacy of the Radaellians.
Those who are interested in the specifics of the argumentation should read the booklet themselves, but the most pertinent point to the overall debate regarding Pecoraro and Pessina's treatise is in Dumortier's conclusion, where he admits that he is quite certain the new system will be approved by the military. This, he claims, is not because the system is revolutionary or altogether different from what came before, but precisely because this is the exact kind of sabre fencing that had been taught at the Master's School for the past 25 years: a mixed style which disregarded the official status of Parise's method. While there is good evidence to suggest that practical instruction at the school often diverged from the official curriculum, Dumortier is probably exaggerating the true extent of this practice.
It is here that the great controversy of Pecoraro and Pessina's treatise finally subsided, likely to the great relief of the embattled authors as well as the general fencing public. While the 1912 revised edition improved many of the flaws that the book was accused of possessing, it never quite reached the same semi-legendary status as Parise's treatise. A large part of this can be attributed to the fact that, unlike Parise's treatise, Pecoraro and Pessina's text did not enjoy three straight decades of use at the Master's School, as the school was closed only few years later at the outset of the First World War. However, the treatise did re-emerge in the 1920s when the school was reopened under Mussolini's fascist government, which prompted a reprinting of Pecoraro and Pessina's sabre and épée treatises (as well as Parise's foil section) exclusively for students of the school. Over the following decades various authors throughout Europe considered the book authoritative enough to cite or sometimes even plagiarise in their own works, and when Giorgio Pessina (Carlo's son) and Ugo Pignotti were tasked with writing a new sabre textbook for the Italian Fencing Federation in the 1960s, they too drew inspiration from Pecoraro and Pessina, preserving their molinelli and preliminary exercises more or less unaltered and making extensive use of their terminology throughout.3
Returning now to 1911, when the treatise's legacy was still unwritten (and indeed there is much more that can be said about said legacy), we do find at least one old-school Radaellian who saw the publication of Pecoraro and Pessina's treatise in a rather positive light. Egidio Candiani was a graduate of the Milan Master's School under Radaelli and later spent some of his career as an assistant instructor at the Rome Master's School under Parise. In November 1911, as the fencing masters of the military were being called to the Master's School to learn the new Radaellian method, Candiani expressed his hope that Pecoraro and Pessina's leadership would return Italian sabre fencing onto the bright path it had once followed. I will end here and let Candiani speak for himself.
Radaelli resurgit!
It is not well established if the bones of the dead shiver under the earth, but if this is true, those of the late great master Giuseppe Radaelli should now be trembling with joy to know that his glorious sabre system has now again been adopted at the Rome Fencing Master's School.
Yes, Radaelli resurgit!, and he is resurrected thanks to the approval of the new sabre treatise compiled by the talented masters Pecoraro and Pessina, the former the director and latter vice-director of said school.
This is because, with all due respect to the valiant authors, their treatise approved by the Ministry of War as the official text is only a return to the old—or, to say it better, the revindication of the Radaellian system, unjustly condemned to ostracism by the late Masaniello Parise who was appointed supreme director of the Rome Master's School in 1884.
Parise, who was undoubtedly a profound theoretician of fencing, as well as a much appreciated fencing master, having dedicated all his intelligence and care to his preferred weapon, the sword, he was neither willing nor able to also deploy the same rare talent and ability on the sabre, which had instead found in Radaelli a marvellous and unsurpassed master.
Fencers with the enviable fortune of having fewer years under their belts—lucky them!—cannot remember the long, relentless, implacable campaign waged before and after the death of poor Radaelli in order to demolish his system, which had given Italy its best and strongest fencers. It will suffice to recall of that glorious host the names Ronca, Roggia, Cavalli, Arzani, Vezzani, Pecoraro, Guasti, Giordano Rossi, Varrone, Pessina, Sartori, Barbasetti, Gallanzi, Tagliaferri, and many others, adding to these world-famous masters a pleiad of formidable amateurs of the time such as Magrini, Burba, Scansi, Sestini, Santagalli, Baldi, Santoponte, Ceccherini, Pinelli, Giurovick, etc.
So there is something to be pleased with and rejoice over in the valorous Pecoraro and Pessina, authors of the new sabre treatise, if thanks to them the Rome Master's School is officially teaching that abhorred sabre system which, like it or not, throughout the fencing world has always been considered the best.
To learn the Radaelli sabre system, revised and corrected by Pecoraro and Pessina, all civil and military masters belonging to the various institutes and corps subordinate to the Ministry of War are now called to Rome, divided into groups for a course of 15 days.
This course has already been completed by the civil masters who all have words of high praise for the clear and rational method by which professors Pecoraro and Pessina expound their treatise theoretically and practically. The masters raise a true hymn of gratitude and esteem to the commander of the Rome Master's School—who is the distinguished artillery colonel Cav. Salonna, a passionate and talented fencer as well as a fervent apostle of the Radaelli system—for the welcome he gave on their arrival at the Master's School.
At the completion of the course there was a banquet for all the masters called to Rome and the instructors of the Master's School. As a pleasant memento, Colonel Salonna wished for a group photo of all the masters attending the fraternal symposium.
1 Poggio Vannucchi, I fondamenti della scherma italiana (Bologna: Coop. Tipografia Azzoguidi, 1915).↩ 2 The full context of this operation has been helpfully summarised in Nunzio Spina, "La prima meniscectomia in Italia: storia di armi, di coraggio e di felici intuizioni," Giornale Italiano di Ortopedia e Traumatologia 34, no. 2 (June 2008): 90-96, https://old.giot.it/article/la-prima-meniscectomia-in-italia-storia-di-armi-di-coraggio-e-di-felici-intuizioni/.↩ 3 Giorgio Pessina and Ugo Pignotti, La sciabola (Rome: Scuola Centrale dello Sport, [1972?]. For a blatant example of plagiarism, see Federico Ynglés Sellés, Tratado teórico-prático de esgrima. Segunda Parte. Sable (Toledo: Editorial Católica Toledana, 1944).↩ 4 Egidio Candiani, "Il nuovo sistema di sciabola adottato presso la Scuola Magistrale Militare di Roma," La Stampa Sportiva, 5 November 1911, 5, https://www.byterfly.eu/islandora/object/libria:42583#page/5/mode/1up. The photo Candiani refers to at the very end was not included in the original article, but can be found in Eduardo De Simone, La Scuola Magistrale Militare di Scherma. Dalla sua fondazione in Roma a tutto l'anno 1914. Note storiche (Rome: Tipografia Editrice "Italia", 1921), 53.↩
In very early 1911, or possibly December 1910, the long critique of Pecoraro and Pessina's sabre treatise which Ferdinando Masiello had promised back in August was finally published. The length of its title, La Scherma di Sciabola: Osservazioni sul Trattato dei Maestri Pecoraro e Pessina Vice-Direttori della Scuola Magistrale militare di Scherma, portends the length of the booklet itself, totalling 161 pages (well over half the length of the treatise in question).
The introductory sections suggest that Masiello had intended his booklet to reach a slightly wider audience of readers who, understandably, may not already be aware of the debate that had raged in the public press over the course of the previous year, but still wish to remain up-to-date with the latest developments in Italian fencing. Masiello begins by addressing Pecoraro and Pessina directly, saying that although they were all were raised under the same 'father Redaelli', from the day that the Master's School came under a hybrid and defective method, they had been divided. He asserts that he had always fought 'at the breach' for his conscience, and expects that Pecoraro and Pessina will give his opinions due respect and refute them with well-reasoned arguments if they disagree. Masiello comes very close to apologising in advance for the tone of his writing, as he openly admits that the more light-hearted remarks and jokes were to keep any less enthusiastic readers sufficiently engaged and entertained.
Turning then to the reader, Masiello provides a summary of what he considers the most important events that led up to the present debate. He states that Pecoraro and Pessina's initial announcement of their treatise in the first half of 1910 contained an element of truth when they implied that sabre fencing had by then fallen into decline. Where Masiello takes issue with this statement, however, is that the treatise authors themselves should accept much of the blame for that state of affairs. Evidence of this is in all that took place in Italian fencing following the death of Giuseppe Radaelli and the appointment of Masaniello Parise at the Master's School in 1884. This, Masiello believes, is the origin of the steady decline in Italian fencing throughout the past 25 years, as the sabre method Parise then introduced was so regressive and flawed that Giovanni Monti, who had served as Radaelli's replacement at the school's final years in Milan, supposedly 'cried like a child' after seeing a demonstration of the new method he would be forced to teach.
Pecoraro and Pessina had been complicit in teaching this defective sabre method at the Master's School for two and a half decades. Meanwhile, Masiello famously published his own treatise in 1887, which was well received throughout Italy, but Pecoraro and Pessina had consistently refused to engage with Masiello's theories, even when he gave a public demonstration of them in Rome in 1890. Despite the fact that Masiello's method was then adopted by the British army, Pecoraro publicly doubled-down in his support for Parise's method in a letter sent to the magazine Scherma Italiana in 1894, which Masiello reproduces in its entirely in the booklet's introduction.
Masiello asks the new leaders of the Master's School how they can square such a declaration of commitment, and their long career teaching Parise's system, with their own treatise, which is clearly based on Radaellian theory? The timing of this sudden conversion is also conspicuous to Masiello, given how soon after Parise's death the treatise was announced. Masiello imagines that if an afterlife existed and Radaelli and Parise were looking down on the two authors from heaven, both masters would feel betrayed and disappointed in their students. Finishing on this sombre image, Masiello then provides reproductions of the most significant newspaper articles in the debate published over the previous year by himself and Pecoraro and Pessina, all of which have been either translated or summarised in the course of this current series of articles.
The remaining 134 pages consist of Masiello's observations on the treatise itself. The critique is divided into three parts, corresponding to the three parts of Pecoraro and Pessina's treatise, with Masiello providing commentary on almost every individual section or topic found within it. If you have read my summary in Part 1 of the critique Masiello already published in La Nazione on 19 August 1910, then you will be familiar with the main arguments presented throughout this booklet. In this expanded format Masiello's semantic arguments become even more glaringly prominent, but more substantive arguments can be found regarding the preliminary exercises, the molinelli, the lunge (a whopping 12 pages' worth), the cuts, and the inquartata.
Much of the criticism presented against these techniques in particular come from the point of view that since Masiello's own treatise presented long (sometimes overly long) mechanical explanations for why his chosen method of execution is preferable, Pecoraro and Pessina should also have to provide lengthy explanations for their own choices in order for their treatise to be considered an improvement over pre-existing theory, thus justifying its publication. The 2nd and 3rd editions of Masiello's sabre treatise goes to great lengths to explain why his fully-inclined lunge is superior to one with an upright torso, and yet in Masiello's eyes Pecoraro and Pessina have disregard all of this reasoning and advocate the latter version, providing no justification for it.
When it comes to Pecoraro and Pessina's cuts, Masiello is frequently annoyed and confused at the authors' repeated use of the term 'strettissimo' to describe how the molinello movement is refined to create a smaller, faster arc which is used to give practical cuts. Masiello asserts that since the length of the wielder's sabre and forearm never change, the arc of the molinello cannot be reduced. Those familiar with Masiello's work should find such a criticism particularly confusing, as Masiello himself uses the word 'ristrettissimo' several times when describing how to apply cuts by molinello in his own treatise.1
Another point Masiello makes in this section and which reoccurs elsewhere throughout his critique is that the method of gripping the sabre as described by the authors does not permit many of the positions shown in the photographs. In Masiello's reading, the grip is described as static and unchangeable, unlike how Masiello allows the thumb to slide up and down the grip to put the blade more or less in line with the wielder's arm. This line of argumentation is somewhat reminiscent of Achille Angelini's reading of Del Frate's treatise back in the 1870s, in which Angelini disregards the illustrations and asserts that Radaelli wished the sabre to be always held fully perpendicular to the forearm.
If throughout his critique Masiello is constantly exasperated at how Pecoraro and Pessina have ignored the practical improvements of their predecessors, elsewhere he is suspicious that the authors have knowingly indulged in plagiarism. When Pecoraro and Pessina describe how to gain distance in an attack by bringing the rear foot up against the front foot before lunging, Masiello sees so much similarity with his own work that he places the two relevant sections side-by-side for the reader to compare. Elsewhere Masiello claims the authors plagiarised his terminology and phrasing in their descriptions of the cuts, and recalls that at a tournament in 1906 he gave a demonstration of what Pecoraro and Pessina call the tocchi di sciabola di passaggio to some fencing masters, Pecoraro among them, and that this must have been where the authors first found out about the technique, despite Masiello receiving no credit. Furthermore, their preliminary exercises were clearly stolen from the treatise of Nicolò Bruno, whose versions are superior anyway.2 Despite these tenuous, or even spurious, claims, the most credible accusation is in relation to the authors' section entitled 'preparatory lesson for the bout', where Masiello rightly points out the close similarities between the first three paragraphs of their work and the 1876 treatise by Settimo Del Frate.3
Skipping to Masiello's conclusion, he lists 17 items which he considers notably absent in the treatise. Directly translated, these are:
Definition of fencing in general;
Benefits of fencing;
Harms of a false system;
Force in fencing;
Method of wielding the sabre;
The sabre considered as a lever;
Laws which govern the guard;
Laws which govern the lunge;
The (very important) division of the target, without which an inexperienced fencer could confuse one target with another, as happened to the authors themselves (see p. 18 of their treatise);
How to perform the passage from one parry to another;
Lunge by launching the left foot back;
Absence of scientific proofs to contrast certain principles of theirs with those of other authors;
Absence of scientific proofs to absolutely and definitively establish the pivot from which one generates the very important action (both for the sword and for the sabre) of the disengagement, which the authors prescribe sometimes to the radiocarpal joint, sometimes to the scapulohumeral joint;
Absence of indications regarding how the cuts should be given, i.e. whether as hammer blows or by slicing;
Absence of a psychological proof on the advantage the attacker has over the defender;
Lacking the copertini;
Lacking a chapter to explain some expressions used in fencing language.
If any of these seem overly specific, that is because they are all topics which Masiello himself deals with in his own treatises; clearly, he considered his own work to be far superior. He ends by noting that he had received credible reports that a commission of senior officers, appointed by the Ministry of War, had recently given a favourable verdict of Pecoraro and Pessina's treatise, and that it would likely be approved to replace Parise's sabre curriculum at the Master's School. It is this factor which Masiello asserts was the main motivating factor in writing such a detailed rebuttal of Pecoraro and Pessina's work, since whatever they write will effectively become gospel for the next generation of Italian fencers, thus they owe it to everyone to make their textbook as perfect as possible. He repeats that he considers both authors to be good friends, and hopes that his critique will be read in this light.
Following the booklet's publication, I have been unable to find any published response from Pecoraro and Pessina, but in all likelihood they did read it. Whether or not they gave due consideration Masiello's critique is certainly up for debate, but if we compare some of his remarks to the revised edition of Pecoraro and Pessina's treatise, published in 1912, we can indeed find several specific instances which strongly suggest awareness and consideration of Masiello's observations. Some are changes to particular wordings which Masiello considered confusing or misleading, such as their use of the phrase 'a piena mano' when describing the grip of the sabre. In the 1912 edition this phrase was removed and another paragraph and a half is added describing how the sabre is to be wielded in the various movements, using which parts of the upper limb.
When describing the fourth preliminary exercise in the 1910 edition, the authors make a reference to the 'cappuccio', or backstrap, of the grip. As Masiello points out, this term had not been defined anywhere in the treatise, and so it is removed in the 1912 edition, also making other improvements to the descriptions of these exercises. As for the molinelli, Pecoraro and Pessina do not do away entirely with the 'strettissimo' descriptor so despised by Masiello, but they do at least provide a better explanation of how the molinello motion can be made smaller, through a 'simple turn of the hand accompanied by a slight bending and subsequent sudden extension of the elbow.'4
With many of the more substantial changes found in the 1912 edition, such as the comprehensively rewritten preface, it is harder to attribute Masiello's influence with any certainty; nevertheless, it is not unreasonable to adduce that, despite all the semantic and sarcastic nit-picking, Pecoraro and Pessina's work was improved from the public hazing it received from Masiello.
Given all the negative impressions of Pecoraro and Pessina's treatise we have looked at so far, we ought not assume that this was the universal impression amongst all Italian fencers. It is impossible to determine how well the method was received by most in the community, but as Masiello himself notes, the system was deemed good enough to receive at least provisional approval from the Ministry of War by early 1911. Furthermore, we can find at least one supportive voice from this time who spoke up in defence of the authors and to push back against Masiello's self-righteousness.
Colonel Alberto Cavaciocchi, the commanding officer of the 60th infantry regiment, had been an avid fencer for many decades, originally learning the old Radaellian method as part of his military training before being fortunate enough to train under Masaniello Parise himself. From this point on Cavaciocchi became convinced of the superiority of Parise's method, finding the improvements brought to the Radaellian method by Masiello and his colleagues to be insufficient. This conviction was carried over to Parise's successors, Pecoraro and Pessina, when they published their own treatise which built upon not only Radaelli's foundation, but Parise's too. Feeling that Masiello's critical articles in La Nazione could not remain unanswered, Cavaciocchi took it upon himself to respond if only in his capacity as an amateur, which he did in the form of a substantial 8000-word article published in the March issue of the Rivista Militare Italiana.5
While asserting that the Neapolitan foil method had always been superior to others, Cavaciocchi does recognise the merit and achievements of Radaelli's method, particularly in its later, more refined forms. His primary critique of Radaelli's system, however, is its body carriage, specifically in the guard and the lunge. He finds the slightly rear-weight guard position and upright lunge advocated by Parise to be much more logical and effective than those prescribed by Radaelli. This naturally gives Cavaciocchi a rather favourable opinion of the new system detailed by Pecoraro and Pessina, as a clear goal of their treatise was to combine the best aspects of Radaelli and Parise's theory. Masiello, on the other hand, instead managed to amplify many of the original Radaellian flaws, with his untypically wide stance in the guard and accentuated lean in the lunge.
Instead of explicitly defending Pecoraro and Pessina's system, well over half of Cavaciocchi's article is dedicated to comparing Masiello and Parise's systems, partially to redeem the latter, but also to show the continuity of the sound theoretical foundations inherited by Pecoraro and Pessina in their own work. Cavaciocchi reveals that he himself was one of the members of the commission eluded to by Masiello which had the task of assessing and approving the new treatise for use in the army, so it stands to reason why he would feel the necessity to now defend both the authors as well as his own reputation. He ends with the hope that the teaching of fencing at the Master's School continues 'holding firm to the excellent fundamental bases established by Masaniello Parise, but without renouncing that constant and progressive perfection which human nature unceasingly aims for.'
In the final part of this series, we will hear two more Radaellian judgements on the new direction being taken by Italian sabre fencing: one decidedly negative and the other refreshingly positive and hopeful.
*******
1 Examples can be found on pages 78, 79, 90, 118, 120 of Ferdinando Masiello, La scherma di sciabola (Florence: R. Bemporad, 1902).↩ 2 Cf. Nicolò Bruno, Risorgimento della vera scherma di sciabola italiana basata sull'oscillazione del pendolo (Novaraç Tipografia Novarese, 1891), 63–8.↩ 3 Cf. Settimo Del Frate, Istruzione per la scherma di sciabola e di spada del Prof. Giuseppe Radaelli scritta d'ordine del ministero della guerra (Milan: Gaetano Baroffio, 1876), 26.↩ 4 Salvatore Pecoraro and Carlo Pessina, La Scherma di Sciabola: Trattato Teorico-Pratico (Viterbo: G. Agnesotti, 1912), 53.↩ 5 Alberto Cavaciocchi, "Sui metodi di scherma per l'esercito," Rivista Militare Italiana 56, no. 3 (16 March 1911): 611–34.↩
In the immediate aftermath of Masiello's last article, in which Pecoraro and Pessina received an occasionally warranted harsh assessment of their sabre treatise, no response from the authors was forthcoming. In the meantime, another grizzled Radaellian veteran, Giovanni Pagliuca, took up the pen to provide their own nit-picky and often sarcastic impressions of Pecoraro and Pessina's method. Pagliuca's first appearance in the public press was in 1880, when he published a booklet criticising Radaelli's foil curriculum, which he had learnt at the Milan Master's School in 1876. Aside from that single publication, Pagliuca had shied away from the partisan debates of the 1880s and 90s, being best known as a stellar representative of the Enrichetti school of foil, but occasionally also considered among the old-school Radaellians.1 In the twilight of his career, Pagliuca resoundingly removes any doubt over his allegiance to Radaelli's theories in his unforgiving review of Pecoraro and Pessina's treatise, which appear in La Nazione of Florence on 7 October 1910.
After my renowned friend and colleague Ferdinando Masiello reviewed the pages of the sabre pseudo-treatise by the gentlemen Pecoraro and Pessina so well, it would seem that nothing else could be said regarding this treatise, so many and innumerable indeed were the flaws found within. Yet from a less salient but perhaps more practical point of view than that of my friend Masiello, I will try to lay bare all the harm that the theories of the two aforementioned authors would do to the art of fencing if, unfortunately, they found some followers among the innocent beginners of the practice.
First of all, a declaration: when the publication of the treatise in question—the work of Pecoraro and Pessina—was announced, I immediately thought that the theories discussed in it would have neither scientific basis nor proof.
Masiello wrongly reproaches this deficiency, because he himself and everyone knows that the aforementioned authors were unable to do so. I rather expected, along strict, simple, and perhaps primitive lines, a theoretical exposition of what they have carried out very well, indeed excellently, for about forty years: beautiful practice. But unfortunately even this they were unable to do. Overcome by the obsession of wanting to be authors at any cost, to appear original, even at the risk of bordering on ridicule, they have even forgotten essential principles which do not change, but mould to the evolution of the art, principles which they repeated—and here it must be said by ear—millions of times to their pupils at the Master's School. Thus they have defined speed as a movement, measure as an intuition, tempo (keeping in mind that tempo is almost everything in fencing) as 'the moment the fencer chooses', without reflecting that the moment chosen by the fencer cannot be the tempo: this in the 'artistic sense', as the authors say, 'is the propitious moment for the execution of an action', which is something totally different. But in the fencing treatise the word tempo has become a myth at the complete discretion of the authors. They toss it around like a toy, to the point of writing on page 60, note 1: 'Since the direct thrust is one of the simple actions, it is necessary, in its execution, for a rapid and coordinated combination of the individual movements and such timing as to overcome, with its simplicity, the opponent's potential defence.' Timing that overcomes with its simplicity...?! Well, I do not understand that at all. How impressed I was, indeed I was alarmed to discover on page 190 that there is 'GREAT timing'. I hope that the authors also wish to publish something else which announces and explains to the fencing world what medium and small timing are. And now to the most interesting subject, which demonstrates how the treatise in question can actually bring the art to ruin rather than facilitate its progress. Since a book which deals with fencing can make itself useful even in small proportions, it is necessary that in such proportions there is an advantage over preceding authors to assist the practice all the more so, facilitating it with suitable simplification. Pecoraro and Pessina's book instead aims at precisely the opposite goal, that is to get even the few connoisseurs of fencing that still exist to avoid those possible complications, those incomprehensible and, even worse, absolutely impracticable prolixities which they wish to introduce 'for artistic finesse' (sic) to the practice of sabre fencing. Can you imagine a sabre fencer who attempts a circular feint by forced glide with a feint? Or a fencer who amuses himself by melting the air with parries in the opposite direction while his opponent dispenses a powerful descending cut to the head and a strong traversone? Moreover, the first and indispensable quality of a fencing book which aspires to call itself a treatise is that of presenting the definitions in the clearest and simplest form and at the same time the most synthetic, the most exact, and the most rational form. Do you want some examples of the precise definitions contained within the book in question? 'The jump back serves to gain a lot of ground' (page 24). Since when one takes a step forward, one loses ground—understood? 'When, in order to defend oneself from the opponents blows, one performs with the sabre a rapid movement aimed at avoiding them, (!) one is said in a fencing sense to have completed a parry' (page 32). So, the parry avoids a blow; it does not oppose the blow, as every fencer in the world has repeated until now and as the same authors of the ever under-appreciated book have always performed in practice. Yes, a blow can be avoided, but not 'with a rapid movement of the sabre', but with a rapid movement of the body. Continuing: 'Half-counter parries are those through which it is necessary for the sabre to cover half the path' (page 74). They could at least have added 'of our life'.2 Consequently, dear readers, throw a sabre into the air: when it has reached the halfway point of what it can travel, it will have performed a half-counter parry. But interrupting ourselves on the topic of definitions—an enormous amount of space would be needed, and we would bore readers too much—I must confess with full sincerity that I did learn something new from Pecoraro and Pessina's book, and with my 63 years of age I will nevertheless try to put it into practice, as it seems to be the most practical thing in fencing and within reach of any person young or old, like me, to immediately finish off any opponent. I learnt that one imprisons the opposing sabre (pages 105 and following). So from today onwards I will come on guard with good custody, into which I will immediately introduce my opponent's sabre, locking it up. Except then launching at that poor wretch, who has let their sabre be imprisoned, a good number of flat hits on the meatiest parts of their body. Finally, irony aside, it can safely be asserted that the book by the aforementioned gentlemen, more than a work of fencing, has resulted in a work of comedy, capable of giving an hour of good humour to anyone who wishes to enjoy looking through it, and nothing more. As Giuseppe Radaelli, the creator of sabre fencing in Italy, was unable to write the treatise of his theories himself, he was obliged to turn to Captain Del Frate; but he had the frankness to declare it, explicitly publishing in the title: 'The sabre fencing of Giuseppe Radaelli written by Captain Del Frate'. While the same frankness did not guide the two renowned masters Pecoraro and Pessina, in their defence we should not convince ourselves that everything contained in the book was developed independently of their ability to understand it. I end with a new declaration: as an old master and old artist of arms I could not help but protest against a book which is the negation of the art of fencing. If, in pointing out the enormous faults of this book, I was forced to implicate the authors' responsibility, I will not cease harbouring for them, as artists and executors, the greatest respect. And it is through this respect, through the sincere esteem that I have always had in their fencing ability, that I regret the vain ambition that induced them to write a treatise, an ambition which certainly throws them—in their quality as vice-directors of the Military Fencing Master's School—from the lofty pedestal which they had created for themselves with their undisputed practical ability.
Maestro GIOVANNI PAGLIUCA Via della Croce, 34 — Rome
If we peel away Pagliuca's witty and casual writing style, it becomes apparent that many of his issues with Pecoraro and Pessina's treatise stem from their poor choice of words and unrefined definitions, something which we have seen Masiello point out already. Any criticism of the technical material itself and the overarching method is certainly lacking in Pagliuca's case, but slightly better in Masiello's. Pecoraro and Pessina seem to have had a similar reading of both Masiello and Pagliuca's articles, as is evidenced in their eventual response to their critics on 23 October in Rome's Giornale d'Italia.
Dear Mr. Director,
Since publishing the sabre fencing treatise of which we, Salvatore Pecoraro and Carlo Pessina, are the authors, if there has been no lack of praise from many quarters, especially in private and authoritative letters, from some individuals we were not spared censure. And we would not lament this if the censures had always been proportionate and had not revealed, in the fury of critique, something other than a pure love of the art. In any case, we will not let this distract us from serenely following our path; but we will limit ourselves to a few words in legitimate defence. It was our precise intention to collect in our treatise what the experience of a not inglorious artistic career had taught us. To this end, we freely jotted down our thoughts as they flowed from the pen, without any literary pretence and with the conviction that, above all, true fencers would have considered the substance. We were instead deceived, since our detractors—particularly Ferdinando Masiello and Giovanni Pagliuca—met to attack us primarily for literary form, stating with regard to substance only criticisms which, if they express an individual judgement of theirs, have a very relative value that is based on poor familiarity with the special weapon, to which we instead have given and will give all our activity as people and as fencers. This being the case, while it will not be difficult for us to eliminate in a second edition of our treatise those flaws of a literary nature which our opposers have been pleased to highlight in a noble sentiment of fencing fraternity, we will have the opportunity to better illuminate the quality of our method's substance, which we are not at all disposed to compromise on, and which we are always ready to give a practical demonstration of. We will declare, however, that any cross-examination of an artistic nature will be accepted by us with those connoisseurs who have deeply studied and taught the noble art of the sabre, achieving practical, and not just theoretical, results. Because among those who have always studied and sought the progress of sabre fencing, dedicating to it all their physical and intellectual energy, because they considered this art truly sovereign, and those who instead, even setting themselves up as the god almighty of fencing, have defined it as the art of butchering, and, naturally, cannot boast of a single product worthy of remembering, they will serenely judge the true fencers.
It is noteworthy that in this brief defence the authors are already talking of a revised second edition to correct the errors of the work's 'literary form', thus accepting at least in part the criticism that Masiello and Pagliuca have directed at them. However, their dismissal of other aspects of the criticism as well as their reference to some self-proclaimed 'god almighty of fencing', aside from being unsatisfying as a response, may have also struck Masiello as a veiled personal attack on him. Therefore on 27 October yet another letter bearing his name appeared in the pages La Nazione.4
In this reply Masiello is quick to assert that his own well-reasoned observations were unfairly lumped together with all the other critics, and in doing so they had overlooked all his observations of substance in order to focus on those relating to form. He admits that he did repeatedly highlight their substandard grammar, but he considers the problems with their definitions to be far more important than they are willing to acknowledge. Pecoraro and Pessina's accusation that Masiello possessed 'poor familiarity' with the sabre is one which Masiello was unable to go unanswered, as he asserts that his tireless advocacy for sabre fencing was by then indisputable. Aside from his 1887 treatise as proof of the quality of his studies, he refers to a well-received public demonstration of his sabre method that he gave in Rome in 1890, which Pecoraro and Pessina curiously did not attend, as well as the fact that he personally went to London to organise the British army's fencing programme at Aldershot in the 1890s.
As to their own practical results from their teaching at the Master's School, Masiello does not consider this enough to make somebody a good author, nor are one's competitive accomplishments sufficient to demonstrate the quality of a fencing system. Masiello is slightly comforted, however, that the two authors are already proposing a revised and corrected second edition of the treatise, for which he hopes his own observations might serve some use to them. Just as Pecoraro and Pessina had asked their detractors to withhold judgement on their treatise before reading it, Masiello now asks them to wait for his imminent publication, in which he will expand upon all his gripes and grievances regarding their method. Through this more detailed response, Masiello hopes that they might reconsider their view of him as being simply a 'detractor' and take his observations to heart for the benefit of their method, and not simply in a literary sense.
In the next post we will be focusing on this long-awaited, expansive critique from Masiello.
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1 For more biographical information on Pagliuca, see Sebastian Seager, "Radaelli Under Fire: Giovanni Pagliuca," Radaellian Scholar (blog), 18 April 2023, https://radaellianscholar.blogspot.com/2023/04/radaelli-under-fire-giovanni-pagliuca.html.↩ 2 Translator's Note: This tongue-in-cheek remark is a reference to the opening line of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy: 'Midway upon the journey of our life ...'.↩ 3 Reproduced in Ferdinando Masiello, La Scherma di Sciabola: osservazioni sul Trattato dei Maestri Pecoraro e Pessina Vice-Direttori della Scuola Magistrale militare di Scherma (Florence: G. Ramella, 1910), 23–4↩ 4 Ferdinando Masiello, "Polemiche schermistiche: Una lettera del M.° Masiello," La Nazione, 27 October 1910, 2.↩
Having exposed and discussed the differences between the two editions of Pecoraro and Pessina's sabre treatise in the previous post, we can now turn our attention to what the public debate around the treatise was like before and after the publication of the first edition. The digital availability of Italian newspapers leaves a lot to be desired at present, thus it is not feasible to capture the full scope of discussion taking place in the public press; however, thankfully for us, Ferdinando Masiello took this debate rather seriously and reproduced several of his own articles and the authors' replies in his 1910 booklet of commentary on the treatise (the main subject of a later post), which we will avail ourselves of here.
The saga begins in April 1910 when Masiello received two letters from Pecoraro and Pessina announcing the imminent publication of their new sabre treatise:
Dear Colleague,
So that sabre fencing may be held in the regard it deserves and so that the diversity of methods and views do not hinder it or retard its gradual improvement, we have decided to compile a theoretical-practical treatise, which will bear the title:
Sabre Fencing
and will be published by the publishing house Giuseppe Romagna of Rome.
With this we do not intend to make a vain display of theories or untimely rhetoric, nor do we attempt speculation of a commercial nature, but we aim to bring the modest contribution of our experience for the complete triumph of the art which has constituted the ideal and the sole aspiration of our whole life.
To better achieve our aim, we count not only on your kind assent—of which we do not doubt—but also on that of your friends who are sincerely devoted to our art.
S. Pecoraro - C. Pessina
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Dear Colleague,
We confirm to you what we already said in the published circular which you will now certainly have received regarding the publication of our theoretical-practical treatise: 'Sabre Fencing'.
We will be grateful if, for the triumph and perfecting of the art so dear to us, you will assist us in the aim of unifying the various pre-existing systems and methods.
We also hope that, in time, that is to say after having examined the treatise, you will us give your sincere and impartial opinion on it.
Thanking you for everything, we are glad to reaffirm ourselves as,
Rather than waiting patiently until read the book was published, Masiello immediately penned a harsh response to the aspiring authors, which first appeared in the Roman newspaper La Tribuna on 1 May 1910 and then in Florence's La Nazione on 3 May.2 Masiello begins by reminding readers that he is someone who has been fighting for his views in the public sphere since 1876, and that as a result of his tireless efforts he has produced a well-regarded treatise of his own and seen his method be officially adopted in the British and German armies. He had spent his entire public career 'glorifying' Radaelli and fighting against both 'Enrichetti, my master' and Masaniello Parise purely for the sake of the art, not personal interest. In contrast, Pecoraro and Pessina had instead spent the last 20+ years supporting Parise and training young fencing masters in accordance with Parise's method. He is therefore unable to conceal his sense of 'pained astonishment' on reading their announcement where they call on Masiello specifically to assist them in 'unifying the various pre-existing systems'.
Masiello clearly feels a sense of betrayal, as he feels that Pecoraro and Pessina have abused their high positions in the Master's School to push their own theories and deny recognition to those such as Masiello who have achieved so much outside of official Italian spheres. If their work were simply a compilation of the best Italian sabre had to offer, then why had Masiello and his colleagues not been asked by the Ministry of War or even the nascent Italian Fencing Federation (founded only one year prior) to contribute to this new method, even anonymously? If the work were not in fact a simple compilation, then that would mean Pecoraro and Pessina were attempting to impose their original work on the country's fencers; yet would provide no benefit to Italian fencing, because thanks to the labours of Masiello and his colleagues, 'nothing truly new, nothing truly useful and rational, and therefore nothing substantially practical and combative can now be added'.
If the authors intend to follow 'pure Radaellian theories', then this would simply be a return to the outdated theories of 30 years prior, thus negating all subsequent developments; if they were to follow the theories of Parise, then their method would be immediately ostracised as fundamentally flawed, just as Parise's was. A middle road between these two paths would also be impossible, because they are too contradictory on a fundamental level. After all this speculation, Masiello unsurprisingly did not have high hopes for the new treatise, but he now had no choice but to sit and wait for its publication.
In the meantime, Pecoraro and Pessina chose to respond to Masiello's hasty judgement and provide some clarification to hopefully temper attitudes and preconceptions prior to the book's publication. On 4 May in La Tribuna the two authors address Masiello directly and assure him that they have not simply resorted to republishing outdated Radaellian theories, but have followed the inevitable evolution and development that the field has since experienced. They also claim to have no pretence of creating an original work, because just like Masiello himself, they are only building on what has been written by those who came before. This does not mean, however, that their book is a 'simple compilation', because they are convinced that they have presented some ideas not yet contemplated in Masiello's work, and that the era they are writing in marks a new phase of fencing's evolution. So, in their own view, their treatise has 'no originality, but only improvement, which brings us closer to a relative perfection, in the belief that, strictly speaking, absolute perfection is never achievable.' They again ask for readers to withhold further judgement until the book is released.
Masiello granted them at least this wish, since it was only after the book was published a few months later that he gave his response, in the form of a lengthy review of the work. The article occupied more than half a page (just over three of the page's six columns) of La Nazione on 19 August, which indicates the respect the newspaper's editors must have had for Masiello and how important the topic was among some sections of Italy's literate public. Given his negative preconceptions prior to the treatise's publication, it should be unsurprising that after a thorough reading Masiello found within it 'nothing truly useful, substantially new and practical which has not already been said'. So extensive was his criticism that he admitted being already in the process of writing a standalone booklet which will go into greater detail on all the treatise's flaws and omissions. Thus his article in La Nazione should only be considered a summary of his full thoughts.
Thankfully for everyone, Masiello decided in his critique to overlook the 'many inaccuracies of language which, together with a true deluge of commas, render the reader asthmatic, and often obscure the author's intentions for those who are not well acquainted with the material.' This still left plenty for Masiello to remark on of course, with a particular bugbear being the authors' definitions, which he finds to be either poorly stated when they are not absent entirely. For one example, Pecoraro and Pessina chose to use the phrase 'in the full hand' to describe their method of gripping the sabre (a phrase also used by Settimo Del Frate in his 1868 book which later proved to be controversial), which by all appearances was likely intended to be the standard Radaellian method. Other instances of poor or imprecise language maligned by Masiello are the authors' use of non-metric units such as dita, palmi, and piedi, or their description of the sabre blade as 'slightly curved'. The fact that the authors would prescribe something as old-fashioned as a curved blade was itself a sin to Masiello (apparently even the army had ceased using curved blades), but they could at least have been precise in what an appropriate amount of curvature should be!
In instances where the authors are more precise, even then their decisions are questionable. Masiello finds it absurd that the lunge is discretely described as extending the foot 40 cm from the guard position, which surely cannot apply to both children and adults. The authors state that there are five invitations and that same number of engagements, yet simultaneously they add that low 3rd and low 4th can be performed as invitations, so would that not mean there are in fact seven engagements and invitations? Masiello's nit-picking extends to the terminology introduced for various techniques, such as the authors replacing the term 'coupé' with the nebulous 'fendente' or their referring to the thrust as a 'colpo di punta'. Nor could they even be consistent with this terminology, such as their many different phrases throughout the book (Masiello counts at least five) to refer to the 'azioni circolate di punta', which are themselves never defined very well. Masiello wonders why the authors did not simply use his well-thought-out terminology rather than their own inconsistent and imprecise versions.
Aside from just word choice, Masiello still finds much to criticise in the more technical details. Pecoraro and Pessina's first innovation, the preliminary exercises, are only detrimental for students, claims Masiello, as they habituate them to move the sabre without any coordination with the body, a key feature of the traditional Radaellian exercise molinelli. Although he admits that movements very similar to Pecoraro and Pessina's preliminary exercises are very commonly done by Italian fencers prior to bouts, just as a singer does vocal exercises before a performance, such warm-ups have no place in a formal fencing course. He also points out the close similarity to exercises first proposed by Nicolò Bruno in his 1891 treatise (where they are called 'flexion exercises'), perhaps implying a degree of plagiarism.
A more obvious appropriation by the authors is the inclusion of what they call 'parries in the opposite direction' from what Masiello calls the 'old Radaellian school' (which Del Frate simply designated 'counter parries'). This is clear evidence of their poor judgement, as these parries had supposedly been 'discarded' by other Radaellians by then. As for perceptible elements of Parise's system, Masiello recalls that the 'fili sottomessi' (forced glides) described by the authors were jokingly referred to as 'fili compromessi' (compromising glides) when they were first introduced by Parise, due to them being so dangerous for the one attempting them. Parise was at least lucid enough to only include them in his foil material, while Pecoraro and Pessina inexplicably consider them perfectly serviceable in sabre fencing too. The same could be said for their inclusions of the contrazione and the inquartata, which Masiello points out are lacking in the vast majority of Italian sabre treatises released up to that point, clearly indicating their unsuitability. Masiello assumes that these (supposedly ill-advised) inclusions are what the authors were referring to when they claimed in their May article that the treatise contained some ideas and views 'not contemplated' in Masiello's work. Masiello asserts that the reason he did not include such techniques was not because he never considered them, but because his judgement and experience showed that they were altogether unsuitable for sabre fencing, judgement which Pecoraro and Pessina do not seem to possess themselves.
At several points in his critique Masiello compares his own publications with that of Pecoraro and Pessina to emphasise that they have not improved on what has already been written. One example Masiello points to is the lengthy justification provided in the 2nd and 3rd editions of his sabre treatise for why a fully-inclined lunge is to be preferred over the fully upright posture adopted by Pecoraro and Pessina, for which they provide no explanation. Masiello also gives a list of ten concepts which are not explained in any significant detail, such as the method of wielding the sabre, its mechanics when considered as a lever, nor whether the cuts should be done by slicing (as per Parise) or as hammer blows (Radaelli). These are, of course, all things which Masiello asserts to have expounded on in great detail in his own work.
Although Masiello cannot completely refute the assertion made by Pecoraro and Pessina in their article from La Tribuna that even his treatise did not reveal anything truly original in the field of fencing, in his concluding remarks he maintains that he at least replaced 'baroque empiricism' with rational rules, using physical, anatomical, and physiological reasoning. This, in his eyes, was at least an original approach, and for the past 25 years nobody had been able to incontrovertibly invalidate any of his conclusions, even if many did disagree with them. Pecoraro and Pessina, on the other hand, have not evolved the field, only retrodden old paths and committed the errors of previous authors, while adding their own new errors.
Masiello expresses great doubt in the stated aim of the publication. If the treatise were to be adopted by the Master's School, not only would it worsen the confusion around sabre fencing that supposedly already exists in the army, but it would also be an insult to those who were ranked below Parise in the government's infamous fencing treatise competition of 1882 and 1883. That is, the last time a fencing treatise was officially adopted by the Italian military, it ostensibly underwent a process which placed it in contrast with works submitted from around the country. In mentioning this event, Masiello assures he cannot be accused of self-interest, since, as he claims, he never submitted a work of his own to that competition.
When looking past the rather nit-picky character that Masiello's critique often assumes, one must note how his remarks could just as easily be aimed at other Radaellian authors who had published works prior to 1910. Many of the elements Masiello was critical of in Pecoraro and Pessina's treatise, such as their inclusion of the 'parries in the opposite direction', the upright lunge, imprecise terminology, brief definitions, and so on, can all be found in the treatises of Giordano Rossi, Nicolò Bruno, and Luigi Barbasetti, yet he never took such a strong public position to denounce these perceived flaws. Despite the fact that these authors had all published their works over a decade ago, the main reason Pecoraro and Pessina received such a harsh reaction from Masiello was likely due to their positions as vice-directors of the most authoritative institution in Italian fencing, the Military Fencing Master's School in Rome. The stakes were simply too high for Masiello to remain silent.
In part 2 we will read criticism from another Radaellian, Giovanni Pagliuca, as well as hear how Pecoraro and Pessina were reacting to the lively debate around their work.
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1 Reproduced in Ferdinando Masiello, La Scherma di Sciabola: osservazioni sul Trattato dei Maestri Pecoraro e Pessina Vice-Direttori della Scuola Magistrale militare di Scherma (Florence: G. Ramella, 1910), 17–8.↩ 2 The full article was also reproduced in Masiello, op. cit., 18–20.↩
Two years ago on this blog we took an in-depth look at the 1902 editions of Masiello's treatises for foil and sabre and compared what changes were made from the first edition, published in 1887. While I remain satisfied with the thoroughness of that comparison, at the time of writing I had unfortunately not yet gained access to a copy of the 2nd edition of Masiello's sabre treatise, published in 1893. Now, thanks to the Museo delle Arti Marziali in Brescia, I am pleased to say that this gap can at last be filled. Below are scans of this 1893 edition as well as a document comparing all the changes between the various foil and sabre editions (noting again that, in contrast with sabre, there were only two editions of the foil treatise, published in 1887 and 1902).
In Masiello's preface to the 1893 edition, instead of justifying the publication of his treatise as being a response to Masaniello Parise's government-approved 1884 treatise (which he did in the 1887 edition), here he has removed all mention of Parise and the events of the previous decade, as well as throughout the rest of the treatise. He instead maintains that in this new edition, in response to the criticism he received from readers of the 1st edition, he wanted to make more explicit the foundational concepts shared by both sabre and foil, as well as provide more expansive discussions of key concepts throughout the book. Thus a significant amount of the added material in the 1893 was originally located in the foil section of the 1887 edition, which has been rearranged in a way that better suits the sabre-only nature of this publication.
The structure and order of material is the same that would be seen later in the 1902 edition, with no long historical summary and the section of mechanical discussion being broken up and distributed throughout the rest of the treatise. In two cases in the introductory discussion there are parts of the 1887 edition which disappear in the 1893, but then reappear in the 1902. In general, however, most of the large additions, such as the discussion on the guard, the lunge, and cutting mechanics were first introduced in this 1893 edition, as I had postulated in my original comparison of the 1st and 3rd editions.
Perhaps the most glaring omission in the 1893 edition is the illustrations of the various fencing positions. In his preface, Masiello states that readers are advised to consult those from the 1st edition. Yet two new illustrations are still included, these being the labelled illustration of the fencing sabre (now the newer 2nd model Masiello sabre with a perforated sheet steel guard) as well as the separate illustration of the gripping method; both of these illustrations appear in the 3rd edition a decade later, along with the new illustrations of the sabre-wielding Adonis. Thus while the 2nd and 3rd editions are very similar, the latter edition was intended for a wider audience of new and younger readers, while the former was for those already familiar with the first edition of his work. It is also worth noting that the first place that these 3rd edition illustrations appeared in print was in fact in the British Army's 1895 Infantry Sword Exercise, which is essentially a condensed version of Masiello's sabre method.
The presence of all the major changes to Masiello's method in the 2nd edition, such as the more exaggerated leaning in the molinelli and the prohibition of wrist flexion in the cuts, demonstrate that it was relatively soon after the publication of the 1st edition that Masiello began re-evaluating his views and teachings. Masiello's willingness to modify and update his method in response to his own reflections and the critique of his readership serve as a good reminder that the fencing methods we find preserved in the treatises are indeed merely a snapshot of a moment in fencing culture. The three editions of Masiello's work also reflect the active engagement of the author with the Italian fencing community, indicative of his significance within the cultural debates of the time.
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 its own fencing culture, 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.↩
