Comparing editions: Pecoraro & Pessina 1910 vs. 1912

The year 1910 is a pivotal one in the history of Radaellian fencing. For starters, less than a month into the year came the untimely death of arch-rival of the Radaellians, Masaniello Parise, aged only 59, which no doubt many Radaellians were hoping would provide an opportunity for the Rome Fencing Master's School to take on a new, non-Neapolitan direction. Four months later the vice-directors of the school, Salvatore Pecoraro and Carlo Pessina, announced their intention to publish a sabre treatise of their own, one which supposedly took into account the 'diversity of methods and views' followed in Italy at the time.¹ The book hit the shelves by August, a very respectable turn-around for a 255-page book.

Click *here* to view the 1910 edition and *here* for the 1912 edition.

The methodological foundation of Pecoraro and Pessina's work is undoubtedly Radaellian, even with their own additions and modifications which make them stand out from their contemporaries, which I have summarised previously. Nevertheless, their publication was subject to quite severe criticism from some of their Radaellian colleagues, in particular the formidable Ferdinando Masiello, who only a few months later published a 160-page book lambasting the treatise almost page-by-page.² The criticism clearly had an effect on the authors, as two years later they saw fit to publish a revised version (without ever labelling it as such). This must have been a sufficient enough improvement in the eyes of Masiello, as a decade later his judgement had noticeably tempered, deeming the second edition 'coherent and worthy of consideration'.³ I have compiled the following document which highlights the extent of the changes between the 1910 and 1912 editions of Pecoraro and Pessina's work.

*** Two-edition comparison ***

The vast majority of these changes will likely seem of little significance to modern readers, and indeed many are on an individual level. The single most profound and obvious difference between the editions lies in the preface, which was completely rewritten for the 1912 edition. To give a full appreciation of this, I have translated both of these prefaces below, starting with the original 1910 preface:

If Italian fencing, over a considerable period of time, and with heavy sacrifices, has finally been able to seat itself, a magnificent victor, on the glowing chariot of victory, this is in large part owed to sabre fencing.
However, as unfortunately happens in all human affairs, rather than raising a hymn to the shining steel which has managed to reap laurel branches in the most important tournaments and sought the perfection of the noble art in the unification of views and artistic principles, its importance has instead diminished, whether through the daily unveiling of new and always different systems, or with the acclamation, as almost everyone does, of foil and épée, to the detriment of the primacy which the sabre has been able to conquer for us.

It is very true that the foil and the épée offer considerable difficulties, both in the target area and in the execution of restricted movements, but one should not overlook the difference between the old and the modern method of fencing with the sabre.

One used to be forced to use protection for the legs, chest, thighs, and so on in order to not emerge from a bout in a battered state, while today, through the carriage and gradual balancing of the blade, the movements are performed almost with the lightness of embroidery, and with the same ease with which one performs wide movements, one performs those actions with the point which are characteristic of foil and épée.

One may therefore declare that the perfection of sabre fencing would implicitly mean the perfection of foil and épée, just as, by axiomatic truth, the whole comprises its parts.

Then why call the foil and the épée chivalric weapons par excellence, when the sabre belongs to the soldier, to whom the spirit of the knight, more than others, is suited?

What use would it serve if it were not used properly?

Fencing in general, and sabre fencing in particular, from the beginning of the century until to today has experienced the beneficial effects of a certain improvement, brought about on the basis of the different mechanical theories of the various pre-existing methods, but it is the task of those who harbour a lively and sincere affection for the noble art to perfect sabre fencing, considering that, in our opinion, it presents greater difficulties than foil and épée.

And since we have the full and profound conviction that, with respect to fencing, there are no absolutes, we have based ourselves on the relativity of execution of the various movements which make up the necessary whole of fencing.

We aim, therefore, for the unification of the various principles of different systems which, if on the one hand has practical importance for the perfection of our art, on the other will have the effect that, without distinction of regions or views, it may be fully called Italian fencing.

And here is the 1912 version:

In the first edition of this treatise we did not mention clearly enough the fundamental principles of our sabre method, believing that they would emerge by reading the first chapters, and perhaps this was the reason why the criticism was essentially limited to emphasising issues of pure form, in part acceptable and which we do not disdain to take to heart in this edition.

Here we offer, also for the suitable guidance of the reader, to express in a clear manner the principles our text is founded on and the aim which we have set ourselves in its publication.

Until now sabre fencing has been taught with different methods. There were those who based their system exclusively on wrist movements, thus creating an artificial, unnatural method; others, also keeping the system based on wrist movements, managed to improve its mechanics.

Redaelli was the one who understood the error of the aforementioned systems, and with a method based on forearm movements he came closer to the natural system of fencing with that weapon and had, in fact, results of an undoubtable superiority over the others.

Experience, however, has proven that all the fencers coming from the above-mentioned schools in practice carry out sabre fencing in a singular manner which is the most natural of all, and essentially consists of the Redaelli method combined with wrist movements rationally performed and always accompanied by the forearm.

But every fencer could not help but feel the effects of the received school and therefore frequently fall into the same errors: the Redaellians tended towards exaggeratedly wide and violent movements, those of the Parise school instead used movements that were tight in the wrist but wide with the point, with cuts not appropriately extended; meanwhile, most ended up adopting, with experience, a single system of fencing which is commonly called mixed.

Our treatise has the aim of ordering this mixed system and bringing it to its maximum perfection, making actions with the point as easily as those with the edge, adding actions never yet considered, however natural they are in sabre fencing, basing the system of execution on the naturalness and spontaneity of the movements.

Then with a series of preliminary exercises never before dictated, in those terms and in those lines, by any author, one will be able to achieve greater finesse and confidence in the mechanical execution of the various actions, a blade carriage which is not otherwise possible to obtain.

Thus our treatise, while for body carriage it is closer to what was masterfully dictated by Masaniello Parise, for blade carriage and the parries it is closer to Redaelli, in that the movements are performed essentially with the forearm but are based on a greater spontaneity and naturalness of execution.

This method of fencing—already generally known, as was said, in its broad outlines and with the improvements we have introduced—we hope will lead to the unification of the various systems, which will contribute to the development of this noble art.

The most immediately obvious difference in the 1912 version should be the repeated mention of Radaelli's method. While the original preface only refers vaguely to the aim of their method being 'the unification of the various principles of different systems', the updated edition makes it clear where their inspirations derive from, that being primarily Radaelli's foundation along with Parise's body carriage. The apologetic tone of the 1912 preface shows that they understood why a critical eye may have perceived the lack of credit to their masters in the original version as an attempt to pass off their method as something new and original. In the new preface they make it clear that their observations of Italian fencing at the time were that most people were already following a 'mixed' method similar to their own, and that the treatise was mainly an attempt at systematising this practical reality. The reference to their preliminary exercises as being 'never before dictated' in the same exact terms is likely a direct response to one of the many criticisms levelled by Masiello, who accused the two authors of copying Nicolò Bruno's 1891 work, which includes several elementary blade movement exercises that bear some resemblance to Pecoraro and Pessina's.⁴

Another obvious contrast between the two prefaces is the bemoaning in the 1910 version of the waning popularity of sabre fencing in favour of foil and épée, which was a common view among the older generation of Italian fencers at the time, particularly with regard to épée.⁵ The 1912 preface instead makes no allusions to a perceived decline of sabre fencing compared to the other disciplines. Along with the other changes mentioned, the overall result is that the latter edition takes on a much more positive, forward-looking attitude that does a much better job at setting readers' expectations of the rest of the material.

Looking beyond the preface, we find significantly expanded and revised explanations given to the section on the balance of the sabre, the explanation of how to grip the sabre, the introduction to the preliminary exercises (which goes from 135 words in the 1910 edition to 785 words in the 1912), and advice for bouting. Some material from the 1910 edition is simply rearranged within the book, such as the sections on invitations and the counter parries, while some were removed entirely. The blade transport in 1st is nowhere to be found in the updated edition, and the separate descriptions for the beat from each individual engagement is reduced to a single paragraph of general advice. Two completely new sections were added to the 1912 edition: a short section on beats followed by feints, and a full page of advice for actions to prefer in a duel.

On a much more general level, it is very easy to see an improvement in the general grammatical clarity of the writing in the 1912 edition. The first edition suffered greatly from poor copy editing, the authors being guilty of a serious overuse of commas and run-on sentences. Due to the sheer volume of these occurrences it was impractical to show this in my two-edition comparison, but is a single example taken from the section on the 'line of offence', translated literally to demonstrate the improvement in clarity made throughout the second edition:

1910 edition	1912 edition
It is called the line of offence, whenever the point of the sabre is found in a straight line with the chest, or with the flank, of the opponent, preventing the attack, without moving the blade.	The line of offence refers to that in which the point of the sabre is found in the direction of the opponent's chest or flank, in the natural act of threatening.

Individually these improvements may not mean much to readers today, but the awkward phrasing found throughout the 1910 edition could very easily have affected the perception of the authors at the time of publication. If the fencing masters were unable to convey their ideas well through text, it would be easy to accuse them of also being unable to teach these concepts to their students, whom the Ministry of War wished to portray as the best and brightest in all of Italy. It is unsurprising then that for the updated edition they shunned the publisher of the original edition, Giuseppe Romagna of Rome, instead employing G. Agnesotti of Viterbo in 1912. It is in this revised and greatly improved form that Salvatore Pecoraro and Carlo Pessina's treatise would be most widely read. Although the Master's School was closed in 1914 as part of the Italian government's war preparations, when it was finally re-opened in 1926 Pecoraro and Pessina's works on both sabre and épée were again used as the official textbooks, which were republished for the sole use of the school's students (although this time both books were only credited to Pessina).⁶

In the next few posts we will take a closer look at some of the initial reactions to the publication of Pecoraro and Pessina's treatise, which will, among other things, provide more context around why the authors felt pressured to revise their work so soon after publication, as well as help to identify the specific critiques behind individual changes.

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1 The announcement is 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 Ibid.^↩
3 Ferdinando Masiello, "L'insegnamento della Scherma in Italia," La Scherma Italiana: Giornale degli schermidori, 2 September 1923. Translation available here.^↩
4 Masiello, La Scherma di Sciabola: osservazioni sul Trattato dei Maestri Pecoraro e Pessina, 45. For Bruno's blade exercises, see Scherma di sciabola: risorgiento della vera scherma di sciabola italiana basata sull'oscillazione del Pendolo (Novara: Tipografia Novarese, 1891), 63–5.^↩
5 . To give just a few examples: Agostino Arista, "Coltiviamo la sciabola," La Gazzetta dello Sport, 2 February 1907, 3; Vittorio Sartori, "Decadenza dell'arte delle armi," La Gazzetta dello Sport, 11 October 1907, 4; Giovanni Franceschinis, "Schermisti italiani, ritornate alla sciabola!!," La Scherma Italiana, 28 February 1914, 25–6.^↩
6 Carlo Pessina, Scherma di Sciabola: trattato teorico pratico (per uso esclusivo della Scuola e fuori commercio) (Civitavecchia: Prem. Stab. Tip. Moderno, 1927); Scherma di Spada (Civitavecchia: Prem. Stab. Tip. Moderno, 1927).^↩

Mangiarotti on the Italian épée

If you have any preconceptions of what an Italian épée looks like, the first picture that probably comes to mind is the type with a crossguard, which was invented by Agesilao and Aurelio Greco at the beginning of the 20th century and subsequently came to be known either as the Greco or 'Italian' model épée.¹ Despite what this national designation would suggest, by the time Italy developed a mature and competitive épée fencing scene, the Greco model was not the go-to grip for the majority of Italian fencers.

The top example is the original Greco épée design, while the bottom is a later model with a canted grip and rotated quillons to allow a more comfortable grip.

While it would be difficult to argue that the Greco brothers did not play a significant role in popularising épée in Italy at the start of the 20th century, the same cannot be said in the period following the First World War, when the national scene became thoroughly dominated by a younger cohort of masters from northern Italy, chiefly Luigi Colombetti, Francesco Visconti, and Giuseppe Mangiarotti. As Greco became more and more detached from the international scene and lost relevance even within his own country, he nevertheless remained a vocal critic of the Italian competitive scene, with a constant point of contention being the popularity among his compatriots of the French grip instead of his beloved 'Italian' model épée.

The article translated below was published on 24 April 1941 in the Italian Fencing Federation's official magazine, then bearing the uninspiring title of Bollettino di Informazioni della Federazione Italiana di Scherma, and was written by the foremost member of the new guard of Italian épée fencing, Giuseppe Mangiarotti. Although he never mentions his opponents, the so-called 'theoreticians by profession', by name, it would have been clear to most readers at the time who Mangiarotti had in mind. He emphasises the results that he and his likeminded colleagues have achieved in spite of their aversion to the 'Italian épée', while Greco and his supporters have nothing to show for their efforts in the competitive sphere.

Giuseppe Mangiarotti (right) pommels his French épée grip against Filippo Fürst (left), while Luigi Colombetti (centre) acts as referee.

This should of course not mean that modern readers ought to completely discard the theories and inventions of Agesilao Greco, but given the larger-than-life image that is often painted of him, we would do well to put his writings into their proper context and understand what criticisms were offered by his contemporaries; and indeed there are few contemporaries more qualified to offer a rebuttal of Greco's complaints than Giuseppe Mangiarotti. After the master's death in 1970, an obituary for him published in the same magazine as his 1941 article asserted that 'it is more simple to say that the story of Italian épée, save for a few names, is the story, the fruit of [Mangiarotti's] work'.² The following year saw the publication of the Italian Fencing Federation's new official épée textbook, whose material was written by none other than Giuseppe Mangiarotti, then edited and prepared for publication posthumously by his son, Edoardo.³

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The épée and its champions

In the field of sports in general and fencing in particular there exist two forms of activity. On the one hand are those who work, perhaps in silence, on the other are those who limit themselves only to prattling and fencing with words and theories.

To the first group belong only the sportsmen worthy of this name: the champions who stand out and give prestige to the sport, and the good masters who have the will and ability to teach—in a word, the masters capable of forging champions. To the other group belong the theoreticians by profession who invent methods and waste paper and ink and time in meaningless empty talk.

The latest rare find of the season is the ridiculous question of the so-called 'French épée'. It is time this outcry against the supposed anti-Italianness of épéeists and Italian épée came to an end. It is time to stop accusing the greatest champions that Italian épée has ever had and the Italian masters who forged these champions of being anti-Italian. It is time that Italian sportsmen and fencers in particular learn to distinguish that which is a petty and empty business matter from a clear, incontrovertible, indisputable reality. In sport as in life, the only reality that counts is the result. It is not my intention to gossip or to get lost in disquisitions suitable only for laypeople.

The ridiculous matter of a presumed sporting anti-patriotism in regard to those who use the so-called 'French épée' has no reason to exist; the weapon that is commonly known by this name, while it should instead be called the 'sword without a crossguard', was not invented by the French, but is the derivation of the old Italian fiorettone,⁴ as it had been conceived—twenty years before épée competitions began in France—by the very famous Italian Maestro Enrichetti, founder, along with the great Radaelli, of the Milan Master's School.

However, the absence of the metallic cross on the weapon's hilt, the so-called 'crossguard', characteristic of the Italian foil and épée, cannot give a stamp of exoticism to a weapon which is used by the overwhelming majority of Italian épéeists, with a method and a school that is completely Italian.

What is there to be reproached in Italian épée? Perhaps for managing in a decade or so to emerge from absolute mediocrity and having by now been established as the best in the world? Do we perhaps reproach the Italian épéeists, the weapons, and the methods they adopted to successfully win the Olympiads in Antwerp, in Amsterdam, and in Los Angeles, and repeating this success in the most resounding manner at the greatest Olympiad in history, the Berlin Olympics?

A method and a means can be criticised only if it does not give tangible results and only if methods and means are devised which practice—and not theories—proves superior. Should we negate, disregard—or worse, accuse of being anti-Italian—the resounding and unequalled victories of the greatest fencer Italy has ever had: NEDO NADI, solely because the Livornese ace wielded a weapon which the famous theoreticians rushed to dub as French? We want facts, not words.

To the master of a series of methods and systems without results, and who today attacks our method and our system, we ask him as a teacher:

1. Who were and who are the students of yours who have even modestly distinguished themselves—speaking not of international competitions, but in simple national or even zonal competitions?
2. What are the names of your students who should logically appear at least in the lowest category established by the Italian Fencing Federation?
3. How many Italian épéeists wield the so-called Italian épée which bears your name?
4. How many Italian masters teach épée according to such methods and models?
5. What are the international results achieved in the past by épéeists with this épée?
6. Which fencing nations have adopted this épée model?

To all these questions which we know will be left unanswered, I answer: NONE.

To the great inventor I also ask how in the space of a few years he felt the need to substitute his famous and unused épée model equipped with hooks and wheels with a new and more perfect type passed off as his exclusive model and which is nothing other than the old Italian sword, an enlarged copy of the fiorettone abandoned and obsolete for many decades. But that is not all: the mania of criticism and deskbound victories mostly around the coffee table have brought this teacher to criticise all the real technical progress achieved by modern épée and, first and foremost, by the electric registering of thrusts, which has for once allowed the abolition of partisanship, incompetency and blind juries, and which has made the épée the most widespread and most popular weapon.

Even the new international regulations—studied through years of experience and imposed above all by Italians, and foremost by Nedo Nadi—are not resistant to the innovator's criticism, as if our successes did not also confirm the quality of our point of view.

I said it before, and I know I am right in asserting that the only facts that count in sport are results. If one had to follow the reasoning of the supposed anti-Italianness of a weapon's grip, it would be all the more necessary I say not to reform but actually abolish a series of foreign-imported inventions. At this rate, through a foolish concession to patriotism the whole world should abandon the use of the radio and the telephone invented by Italians and Italians in turn should walk and abandon railways because the locomotive was invented by George Stephenson, or cease shaving with a safety razor because Gillette invented it.

Precisely to explain the quality of a means and a system which have proven to be the best, I feel it necessary to trace, for those who ignored it or in case they forgot it, a brief summary of the history of Italian épée.

No one has ever dreamed of forcing our épéeists not to use the épée with a crossguard. It was the fencers themselves who, feeling ill at ease with this weapon when facing foreigners, gradually and voluntarily abandoned it, preferring the sword without a crossguard, the Visconti, and the San Malato. In fact, many years ago when our best épée champions of the time were participating in the championships at Nice, Montecarlo, and the London Olympics while wielding the weapon with a crossguard against the French and Belgians, they never managed to succeed (see the official results of the individual and team competitions that were played out in the distance years of 1900 to 1916).

Having personally participated in all these competitions, I unfortunately had to convince myself that the sole cause of our disappointments and continuous defeats was precisely the inferiority of the weapon furnished with a crossguard, using which one could not carry out a varied and profitable game against a weapon which lends itself magnificently to exploiting all the technical and anatomical possibilities.

Bearing in mind the observations deriving from personal experience and being firmly convinced that the weapon without a crossguard allows a more varied, less rigid, and more complete game (a conviction which was then confirmed by the brilliant successes achieved by my students), I forged my method by adapting this weapon to the needs and the mentality of Italian épéeists.

It is immediately apparent that this is not a case of an imported exotic method, but a very Italian method which only makes use of a weapon more practical than the one with a crossguard, with which we did not manage to achieve tangible success. The most flattering results did not take long to yield rightful satisfaction, indeed my students began to distinguish themselves even in the most famous international encounters. Immediately after the war a long series of uninterrupted, resounding victories began.

In 1919 at the extremely important International Championships in Ostend, in which the strongest French and Belgian fencers took part, I won the individual competition and, together with my excellent students Basletta and Pracchi, also the team competition. The following year at Antwerp Nedo Nadi, after having triumphed in the individuals at the Olympics, led the Italian team to victory, while in 1923 in Ostend Basletta won the very important international tournament in which over 350 fencers took part.

At the Paris Olympics, my students Mantegazza and Cuccia and Maestro Colombetti's students Canova and Bertinetti distinguished themselves, among others, all wielding the weapon without a crossguard. At the Amsterdam Olympics came confirmation of the quality of my method, of my school, with the resounding success achieved in the team competition by my four very young students Cornaggia, Riccardi, Agostoni, and Minoli, who, along with Basletta and Bertinetti, were proclaimed Olympic champions before the strongest fencers in the world.

Nor did the continuous achievements of my students stop there: indeed at the Los Angeles Olympics Cornaggia won the individual Olympic title, and Agostoni placed third. Meanwhile the Italian team, after an uninterrupted series of victories abroad, won the international Gautier-Vignal Cup for the first time in 1931 and confirmed their own superiority in all other successive trials; thus the international tournament in Nice, until then undisputedly dominated by foreign épéeists, was won twice by Nedo Nadi, and once by my student Battaglia followed in the ranking by Edoardo Mangiarotti. And then more individual and team victories in innumerable other smaller trials.

At the last Olympics came the apotheosis: after winning the team tournament with Cornaggia, Ragno, Riccardi, E. Mangiarotti, Brusati, and Pezzana, the three Italians participating in the individual competition—Riccardi, Ragno, and Cornaggia—were classified in the top three places overall with a success that has no precedent in the history of fencing.

All these successes, to which one may add other very import international victories on the world's pistes, were achieved exclusively by fencers who used either the weapon without a crossguard or a Visconti model Italian épée, also lacking a crossguard, but with a grip moulded to the shape of the hand. Indeed it was not for nothing that, out of sixteen épéeists classified in the first category, a good twelve people fence with the sword without a crossguard, four with the Visconti, and none uses or dreams of using another type of épée. But no one can doubt that all their victories bring the glorious seal of the unmistakable style of Italian épée fencing.

M° Giuseppe Mangiarotti

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1 For the earliest mention of it I have found so far, see "Aurelio Greco a Milano," La Gazzetta dello Sport, 11 December 1903, 2. Many subsequent articles attribute the sword to Aurelio alone, but he himself makes it clear that the design involved the contributions of both brothers. See Aurelio Greco, "Tra due spade," La Gazzetta dello Sport, 9 May 1904, 2.^↩
2 Giorgio Rastelli, "Sempre all'attacco: in pedana e nella vita," Scherma: mensile della FIS, December 1970.^↩
3 Giuseppe Mangiarotti, La spada ([Rome]: Scuola Centrale dello Sport, [1971]).^↩
4 Translator's note: A pseudo-historical term meaning 'large foil'.^↩

Italian foil blade length in the 19th century

Foil fencing equipment from Enrichetti (1871).
Source: KU Leuven

When comparing a French and Italian foil as they are commonly made today, it is solely the hilt which differentiates them. Until the turn of the 20th century, however, many considered blade length to be another key differentiating feature for both schools, with the Italians said to prefer the longer variety. How significant an effect these differing preferences alone had on the fencing is an interesting topic in itself, but for this particular study I will be focusing solely on determining exactly what blade lengths were used and recommended in Italy during the 19th century. The majority of this information comes to us now through fencing treatises, which cannot always be assumed to reflect the opinions of most fencers at the time. They are nevertheless often indicative of what experienced practitioners considered ideal in a doctrinal or traditional sense.

Before consulting the treatises, it is worth first providing a reference frame for readers so that any subsequent comparisons can be put into context. Today in Olympic fencing, as regulated by the International Fencing Federation (FIE), blade length from guard to point cannot not exceed 90 cm.¹ Foil blades at or near enough to this limit are now ubiquitous among adult fencers in competitions. This largest size blade is known as a size 5 blade; the modern blade size numbering was popularised by the French, and is now based off British imperial inches. A size 5 blade measures around 35.4 inches (89.9 cm), and each smaller size takes off one inch, so a size 4 blade is 34.4 inches (87.6 cm), all the way down to size 0, which is 30.4 inches or 77.5 cm.² These smaller sizes are mainly reserved for children today.

Foil dimensions for international competitions
Source: fie.org

Prior to the 19th century, if we are lucky enough to find an author stating their preferred blade or sword length, it will most often be given relative to the individual's height. A good example is Paolo Bertelli's treatise from 1800, where he states that a proportionate blade length is one that comes up to the height of the belt, i.e. the natural waist.³ Helpfully for us though, from this point onward specific measurements become the norm, starting with Rosaroll and Grisetti in 1803. While they do clarify that the blade should be proportional to the wielder, Neapolitans and Sicilians supposedly prefer the longest blades of all the Italian peoples at 4 palmi or 105.5 cm, which is what they say is customary in duelling; throughout the rest of the peninsula shorter blades of 3 ½ to 3 ⅔ palmi (92.6 to 97 cm) are more common.⁴ It is possible these measurements include the ricasso, so if we subtract a typical ricasso length of 5 cm that would leave the Neapolitans with roughly 100 cm of blade from guard to point, and 87 to 92 cm for the rest of Italy.

The scarcity of sources in decades following Rosaroll and Grisetti's publication makes it difficult to verify how broadly their preferences may be applied to their own camp, but they were a convenient enough reference point four decades later for Alberto Marchionni to use as an upper limit on the blade lengths used by Italians. In giving advice to the reader on what kind of foil blades to use in both lessons and bouting, he remarks that the length of foil blades at that time can vary anywhere between 28 and 33 pollici. We can get a rough idea of what Marchionni's pollice is equivalent to in centimetres from earlier in the book where he equates 29 pollici to 85 cm and 30 pollici to 90 cm, which reveals that 1 pollice is equivalent to just under 3 cm, making his range of blade lengths in the area of 84 to 99 cm. Marchionni himself recommends a mid-length blade at 31 pollici or ~93 cm.⁵ Since the type of foil used in Marchionni's system is of the 'mixed school' type—which lacks the ricasso of the Neapolitan foil—it might be assumed that all the provided figures refer to only the length of blade between the guard and point, in which case these figures would line up very well with those given by Rosaroll and Grisetti.

The reason why northerners were more partial to shorter blades was directly related to the prevalence of the mixed school, which incorporated both traditional Italian and French techniques into one method.⁶ Since some aspects of French fencing, in particular those techniques used at close measure, were less viable with longer blades, especially when using a ligature, proponents of the mixed school shied away from the upper limit of blade lengths purely out of practicality. A mid-range blade did not put one at too much of a disadvantage against a long Neapolitan blade, but gave an advantage against them at close measure as well as a reach advantage over the average French practitioner (who preferred blades on the shorter end of the scale, as discussed later). Southerners, on the other hand, whose long blades made their weapons heavier and more unwieldy, commonly made use of ligatures to mitigate this.⁷ As always in fencing, the weapon could be both a determiner of and determined by the method its wielder used.

With very few exceptions, Italian sources from this point on favour similar mid-range blade lengths as what Marchionni recommends. Beginning with Paolo De Scalzi's treatise in the early 1850s, we find a simple way for a fencer to determine whether nor a sword or foil is correctly proportional for their height. Standing upright, the fencer collapses their sword arm and places the palm of that hand on the same shoulder, keeping the elbow pointing towards the ground. Resting the point of the sword on the ground underneath that same arm, the pommel of the sword should lightly touch the folded elbow.⁸ This method of measuring a proportional sword length can also be found in two treatises on duelling written by fencing masters, the first one co-authored by the aforementioned Alberto Marchionni along with Cesare Enrichetti published in 1863, and the other by Pasquale Cicirelli in 1873.⁹ The first treatise states that this measurement applies to both duelling swords and foils, and in both texts this measuring technique is specifically said to correspond to a proportionate Italian sword. Given that the average height of Italian adult men born in the mid-19th century could be lower than 165 cm, depending on which region one was born in, such a method would probably yield a blade length on the lower end of the range Marchionni gave in his 1847 fencing treatise.¹⁰

De Scalzi even provides a quick rule-of-thumb to estimate this correct length, saying that a correctly proportioned sword, using the above method, should end up being 3/5 of one's total height.¹¹ For a 165 cm person De Scalzi's rule-of-thumb means a correctly proportioned sword would be about 99 cm, leaving a blade length from point to guard of around 84 cm if the sword had a ricasso, as they do in De Scalzi's illustrations. This is particularly interesting in Cicirelli's case, since at the time of publishing he was teaching in Reggio Calabria, a city deep within Southern Italy. He also provides a maximum allowable length for a duelling sword, 'not exceeding four palmi (1.06 m) from the pommel to the point.'¹² While this 'four palmi' measurement is familiar to use from Rosaroll and Grisetti, and the unit conversion to metric which Cicirelli provides is certainly nice confirmation for my own, it is important to note how it is now being used to refer to the total length of the sword, not just the blade, as Rosaroll and Grisetti did.

Returning to the north of the peninsula, masters Vittorio Lambertini and Cesare Enrichetti, who published their respective treatises within a year of each other at the start of the 1870s, echo the intermediate preferences outlined first by Rosaroll/Grisetti and Marchionni, and this may reflect the early stages of a narrowing range of blade lengths. The former recommends a blade between 90 and 100 cm long from point to incassatura (probably where the blade meets the shell) and states a preference for long blades, while the latter splits the difference and recommends 95 cm, not including the ricasso. In a discussion earlier in his treatise, Enrichetti declares that while in fencing different blade lengths between opponents is permissible, this is not so for a duel, in which a 'correct length' would be an average of the Neapolitan/Sicilian school, who use 'not less than 4 palmi', and the French, whose blades 'do not exceed 3 palmi [79 cm]'.¹³

Before going any further, this a good opportunity for a brief tangent regarding French foil blades, since they commonly served as a lower-end reference point for Italian authors throughout the 19th century. Compared to the ranges we have seen earlier on in Italy, French treatises generally agreed on a relatively narrow range of 80 to 90 cm, as seen in the table below.¹⁴ While this data does support the assertion that the French did prefer shorter blades than Italians in general, Enrichetti was likely exaggerating the reality.

Author	Blade Length
Saint Martin 1804	2.5 French feet [81.2 cm]
Chatelain 1818	30 to 32 pouces [80.6 to 86 cm]
La Boëssière 1818	at least 31 pouces [84 cm]
Gomard 1845	varies from 81 to 89 cm
Brunet 1884	no. 4 [84 cm] and no. 5 [88 cm] blades are most common

In the following decade and a half, the disparity between Italian and French blades would diminish even further, converging towards a relatively narrow range by the end of the century. The first appearance of what would quickly become the new normal in Italy was in the treatise of Masaniello Parise, the young Neapolitan who was placed at the head of the Military Fencing Master's School in Rome when it opened in 1884, the same year his treatise was published. Parise provides no range of typical blade lengths, just a single number: 'The length of this blade, calculated from the shell to the point or button, should be 90 centimetres.'¹⁵ Even including the 6 cm long ricasso, we are still about 10 cm off the 4 palmi measurement which Enrichetti gave as a supposed lower limit for Neapolitans just a decade earlier.

Given that the government approval of Parise's treatise was seen by many to be a return to tradition, we would expect the Neapolitan Parise to have preferred longer blades, but his prescribed 90 cm is much more akin to the compromise blade lengths seen in the north during the preceding decades. Nor do we find any of his critics, of which there were many, bringing up blade length as a point of contention, even when the state of Italian fencing in the late 1890s was described by one particularly virulent opponent as a 'Frenchified mess' thanks to Parise's efforts to modernise the old Neapolitan school.¹⁶ The cultural dominance of the north post-unification may go a long way to explain the shift in Neapolitan preferences in the latter half of the century. Longer blades may also have just become harder to come by, since most fencing blades towards the end of the century were from foreign manufacturers who no longer wishes to cater for a niche market. Whatever the reason for this change, by the 1880s it was evidently not considered important enough for either Parise's supporters or detractors to mention.

Further evidence that Parise was simply reflecting the common preference of the time can be taken from the fact that even two of his fiercest ideological opponents, Radaellians, soon published their own treatises also prescribing 90 cm blades. First was Giordano Rossi in 1885, who also clarified the blade should be 95 cm including the ricasso and the overall sword length 106 cm.¹⁷ Second was Ferdinando Masiello in 1887, who himself started out his foil fencing education under Neapolitan masters before later studying under Enrichetti and Radaelli. His excruciatingly detailed foil specifications produce a weapon that is 108 cm long in total and with a centre of gravity only 4 cm from the guard, as opposed to the typical 'four fingers' preferred by Rossi.¹⁸

The parts of a foil, from Masiello (1887).
Source: KU Leuven

The outlier for the 1880s comes from the only other treatise published in this decade, written by Sicilian master Antonino Guglielmo. He makes suspiciously similar remarks as Enrichetti regarding how Neapolitans and Sicilians do not use blades shorter than 105 cm and the French no longer than 80 cm, both being roughly equivalent to 4 and 3 palmi, respectively.¹⁹ Given that Guglielmo was not averse to plagiarising parts of several other Italian authors throughout his book, such as Settimo Del Frate, Giuseppe Cerri and unsurprisingly Giuseppe Rosaroll and Pietro Grisetti (leaning particularly heavily on the latter two in his section on foil), he may have simply been out-of-touch with contemporary practice and relying mostly on his readings.

Also beginning in the 1880s was an increasing amount cooperation and competition between Italian and French fencers, such that by the end of the century it is easy to find commentators comparing both the stylistic and materialistic tendencies of the two countries. The frequent interaction between the schools may be one of the key reasons why we also see the common blade lengths used by the two schools converge to within only a few centimetres by the late 1890s. Italian sports journalist Alberto Cougnet noted in 1894 that Italian blades were 90 cm from point to guard, with a typical ricasso of 5 or 6 cm, whilst the blade on a French foil was 87 cm, 'therefore it has three centimetres less than our Italian blades.'²⁰ Similarly, French military master Émile Coste's analysis of Italian fencing, relying heavily on Masaniello Parise's work, remarked that the 90 cm blade of Italians was 'longer than ours by four to five centimetres', and that Italian blades were also flatter and much more flexible, which gave their masters the advantage of not having to use a plastron when giving a lesson.²¹ This is a notable change from the 'long heavy blade, broad and perfectly rigid' that Baron de Bazancourt described on Italian foils less than four decades earlier.²²

A poster promoting the first Franco-Italian team foil
tournament in 1895.
Source: Gallica

So while the difference in blade lengths was noteworthy for commentators of both countries by 1890s, it was by no means as considerable as it apparently was in the middle of the century, yet this difference still seems to have been too much for some. At the very first Olympic games in 1896, the questionably-worded rules targeted Italianate fencers with the rule that those who chose to use an Italian foil 'may only use foils measuring less than 0.85 centimetres', which I can only presume meant a maximum blade length of 85 cm rather than mandating 9 cm foils.²³ This measure proved unnecessary in the end, as not a single Italian fencer ended up competing.

Subsequent foil competitions were much more accommodating though, with the Paris games in 1900 and Athens in 1906 mandating no. 5 blades, which by that point were likely very close or equivalent to 90 cm, and then at Stockholm 1912 the maximum blade length was explicitly set at 90 cm, with a maximum total weapon length of 110 cm.²⁴ This seems to have been the maximum length that the International Fencing Federation decided on for both foil and épée when it approved its first regulations in 1914, which is still the upper limit to this day.²⁵ This convergence was an inevitable effect of international competition and the agreements which arose to standardise such encounters. Since the French and Italian schools were the two most prominent at the time of the FIE's founding, as well as already using blades that were relatively similar in length, it is natural that they were the one who determined what should be considered acceptable, and it just so happened that by the time a decision had to be made, they were more or less in agreement over most of the general points.

So to summarise the trajectory we can observe in Italian foil fencing across the 19th century, the upper end of Italian blade lengths was set by the traditional fencers of Southern Italy at around 100 or 105 cm long. These were likely in common usage until the second half of the century, where they were slowly replaced by shorter and shorter blades until settling on 90 cm, probably by the late 1870s. In the north of the peninsula, a diversity of blade lengths matched the diversity of opinions and influences, most notably from the French. In the first half of the century, blades anywhere from 80 cm to the Neapolitan 105 cm could be found in use, but as the century wore on, particularly after unification, northerners gravitated towards the middle ground of 90 to 95 cm, and then eventually 90 cm during the 1870s. There are of course significant gaps and uncertainties left in this time, most notably regarding the practices of the Neapolitan school and its interactions with fencers from the north, so the conclusions I have been able to draw together here should only be considered a broad starting point for the evolution of the modern Italian foil blade.

*******

1 The most recent equipment rules from the FIE can be found here.^↩
2 Ben Paul, "Choosing the Right Size of Blade: A Simplified Guide," Leon Paul, 19 December 2023, https://www.leonpaul.com/blog/choosing-the-right-size-of-blade-a-simplified-guide/.^↩
3 Paolo Bertelli, Trattato di scherma ossia modo di maneggiare la spada e sciabla (Bologna: Ulisse Ramponi, 1800), 53.^↩
4 Giuseppe Rosaroll and Pietro Grisetti, La scienza della scherma (Milan: Giornale Italico, 1803), 4. For the conversion of palmi to centimetres, I have referenced Tavole dei pesi e delle misure già in uso nelle varie proncie del regno col peso metrico decimale (Rome: Stamperia Reale, 1877), 447. I have assumed that the authors were using Neapolitan palmi.^↩
5 Alberto Marchionni, Trattato di scherma sopra un nuovo sistema di giuoco misto di scuola italiana e francese (Florence: Tipi di Federigo Bencini, 1847), 143; 187.^↩
6 Marchionni, Trattato di scherma, 62.^↩
7 For a discussion on the use of ligatures, see Sebastian Seager, "Binding the Sword," Radaellian Scholar (blog), 18 August 2024, https://radaellianscholar.blogspot.com/2024/08/binding-sword.html.^↩
8 Paolo De Scalzi, La scuola della spada, 2nd ed. (Genoa: Tipografia e Litografia di L. Pellas, 1853), 26.^↩
9 Alberto Marchionni and Cesare Errichetti, Norme sui duelli e attribuzioni dei padrini (Florence: Tipografia di P. Fioretti, 1863), 18; Pasquale Cicirelli, Riflessioni sul duello seguite dalle norme per l'esecuzione pratica dello stesso e doveri del giurì d'onore (Reggio Calabria: Lipari e Barile, 1873), 52.^↩
10 Maria Enrica Danubio, Elisa Amicone, and Rita Vargiu, "Height and BMI of Italian immigrants to the USA, 1908–1970," Economics & Human Biology 3, no. 1 (March 2005): 33–43, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ehb.2004.11.001; Brian A'Hearn, Franco Peracchi, and Giovanni Vecchi, "Height and the Normal Distribution: Evidence from Italian Military Data," Demography 46, no. 1 (February 2009): 1–25, https://www.jstor.org/stable/25476004.^↩
11 De Scalzi, La scuola della spada, 26.^↩
12 Cicirelli, Riflessioni sul duello, 52n.^↩
13 Vittorio Lambertini, Trattato di scherma teorico-pratico illustrato della moderna scuola italiana di spada e sciabola (Bologna: self-pub., 1870), 28; Cesare Enrichetti, Trattato elementare teorico-pratico di scherma (Parma: Pietro Grazioli, 1871), 29–30; 62.^↩
14 J. de St. Martin, L'art de faire des armes réduit a ses vrais principes, (Vienna: Janne Schrämble, 1804), 4; Chatelain, Traité d'escrime a pied et a cheval (Paris: Magimel, Anselin et Pochard, 1818), 13; La Boëssière, Traité de l'art des armes, a l'usage des professeurs et des amateurs (Paris: Imprimerie de Didot, 1818), 13; Gomard [A. J. J. Possellier], La théorie de l'escrime enseignée par une méthode simple basée sur l'observation de la nature (Paris: J. Dumaine, 1845), 302–3; Romuald Brunet, Traité d'escrime: pointe et contre-pointe (Paris: Rouveyre et G. Blond, 1884, 21.^↩
15 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), 34.^↩
16 Luigi Barbasetti, "La miglior parata è la botta," La Gazzetta dello Sport, 20 August 1897.^↩
17 Giordano Rossi, Manuale teorico-pratico per la scherma di spada e sciabola con cenni storici sulle armi e sulla scherma e principali norme pel duello (Milan: Fratelli Dumolard Editori, 1885), 24.^↩
18 Ferdinando Masiello, La scherma italiana di spada e di sciabola (Florence: Stabilimento Tipografico G. Civelli, 1887), 174–6. The preference of a 'four fingers' centre of gravity on foils was shared by the aforecited Lambertini, Enrichetti, Parise, and Rossi.^↩
19 Antonino Guglielmo, Sunto ed innovazioni sulla scherma di spada e di sciabola (Messina: Tipi Caporal Fracassa, 1888), 7–9.^↩
20 Alberto Cougnet, La scherma di spada (nel metodo italiano e francese) (Reggio Nell'Emilia: G. Degani, 1894), 38–41.^↩
21 Émile Coste, Fleurets rompus... ([Paris]: R. Chapelot, 1899), 260–2.^↩
22 Baron de Bazancourt, Secrets of the Sword, trans. C. F. Clay (London: George Bell, 1900), 168.^↩
23 Jeux olympiques Athènes 5-15 avril 1896: sous la présidence de monseigneur le prince royal de Grece: Règlement du championnat international d'escrime (n.p.: [1896?]), 8.^↩
24 D. Mérillon, Exposition universelle internationale de 1900 à Paris: Concours internationaux d'exercices physiques et de sports, vol. 1 (Parisç Imprimerie Nationale, 1901), 144; Jeux olympiques internationaux a Athènes (22 Avril - 2 Mai 1906): Réglements: Première partie: Sports athlètiques, gymnastique, escrime, foot-ball, lawn-tennis (Athens: 1905), 35; Erik Bergvall, ed., The Official Report of the Olympic Games of Stockholm 1912, trans. Edward Adams-Ray (Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1913), 1017.^↩
25 The earliest full set of FIE regulations I have found so far was published across several issues of the magazine L'Escrime et le Tir, from February to July 1923.^↩

Teoría de la esgrima by Horacio Levene

Although it has been well over two years since I had an opportunity to talk about Italian fencing in Argentina, my silence on the fascinating history of fencing in South America has primarily been caused by the difficulty in obtaining copies of the relevant works from the early 20th century. To address this drought I present today Horacio Levene's Teoría de la esgrima, a foil treatise published in 1929 in Buenos Aires.

*** Click here to view ***

As Levene states in the preface, this book was adopted as the official text of the Argentinian military's fencing and gymnastics school, of which he was the director at the time of publication. Born in 1883, Levene was himself a graduate of the school, first entering its halls in 1901, after which he was posted to several different regiments, military schools, and at one point even a navy frigate, all of which he lists at the beginning of the book along with the civilian clubs he had taught at.¹ His diligent work was rewarded in 1923 when he was appointed as the army's inspector of gymnastics and fencing, and three years later he became director of the fencing and gymnastics school itself. In addition to his work on fencing, Levene made notable contributions to the field of gymnastics in Argentina and also wrote a duelling code that saw several republications during his lifetime.² He died in 1960.

As would be expected, Levene's method inherits much from the father of Italian fencing in Argentina, Eugenio Pini, and it retains a distinctly Italian character.³ Levene mostly repeats much of Pini's particular terminology, such as the term reccoglimento for the envelopment and the distinction between counter and half-counter parries, but includes some of his own modifications, such as the additional parries of 6th (a supinated 2nd) and 5th (equivalent to that used in Italian sabre).

The most unique feature of this treatise is in the second half, which was written almost entirely by Levene's 3rd-year students at the Argentinian military master's school. The first technique is described by Levene, who provides the structure that is then repeated by his students. Each one outlines the tactical applications of a specific technique (or combination thereof) and give notes for the instructor to take into account when teaching it.

The final page of the book refers to synoptic tables of actions that were supposed to follow, but these are missing in my copy. I presume that they were either removed at some point in this book's life, or, alternatively, they were perhaps never present at all. As the title page of the book states, this particular printing was the 'provisional edition', thus there may have been later printings that included the tables, but this is of course mere conjecture. If readers are aware of any other exemplars of this seemingly rather rare book, I would be very interested to know if they differ at all.

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1 Alejo Levoratti and Diego Roldán, "Los batallones escolares de la patria. Estudio comparado de las representaciones sobre el cuerpo y el entrenamiento de los maestros de esgrima del centenario en la República Argentina," Revista História da Educação 23 (2019): 23–4, https://doi.org/10.1590/2236-3459/88977.^↩
2 Some of Levene's other publications: La esgrima y el duelo: espada de combate (Buenos Aires: n. p., 1914); Duelo: manual de procedimiento (Buenos Aires: Fueyo, 1917); Gimnasia metodizada (Orientación integral humana, 1939).^↩
3 See Eugenio Pini, La esgrima de espada (Buenos Aires: Félix Lajouane, 1902). The treatise was subsequently republished in 1905 by Maucci in both Barcelona and Buenos Aires. The Italian version edition is Trattato pratico e teorico sulla scherma di spada (Livorno: Raffaello Giusti, 1904).^↩

The Early Career of Luigi Barbasetti

In the Radaellian tradition, no other fencing master boasts quite the same level of name recognition as Luigi Barbasetti. As a result of his trailblazing work introducing Italian fencing to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as well as boasting the only Radaellian sabre and foil treatises to be translated in their entirety into English prior to the 21st century, Barbasetti's work was what introduced many Europeans to Radaellian fencing in the late 19th and 20th centuries, and it continues to do so for many fencers around the world today.

Less known to modern readers are the many articles Barbasetti wrote across many periodicals throughout his career, particularly those written in the two-year between him leaving military service in 1892 and his fateful move to Vienna in late 1894. By nature of the period in which these articles were written, they give significant insight into Barbasetti's motivations as well as his perceptions on the development of Italian fencing up to that point.

In the document below I have provided a selection of sixteen articles from the magazines La Rivista Sportiva and Scherma Italiana, ten of which were authored by Luigi Barbasetti himself, signed either with his full name or more commonly merely his initials 'L. B.', and in one instance simply 'B.' The remaining six articles provide the context for those Barbasetti references and responded to.

*** Supplementary articles ***

Other articles of Barbasetti's appeared in these two magazines during this period, but those presented in the provided document are the most pertinent in understanding the frustrations and disillusionment which undoubtedly gave Barbasetti the motive to leave Italy for greener pastures abroad. What follows in the rest of this article is my own attempt to provide a biographical background for Barbasetti's writings and highlight how they were influenced by his prior experiences.

——————

Giuseppe Luigi Barbasetti was born on 21 February 1859 in the city of Udine.¹ As a teenager he joined the military, receiving training as a non-commissioned officer at the 3rd Training Battalion in Verona, where he quickly distinguished himself in fencing under the tutelage of Carlo Guasti. Due to his fencing talents, Barbasetti was selected to become a fencing master, for which he spent an additional year at the Training Battalion with Maestro Guasti and then in 1880 he entered the great Fencing Master's School in Milan, whose acting director at the time was Giovanni Monti, in place of the ailing Giuseppe Radaelli. Barbasetti's personal copy of the fencing textbook used at the school, along with all the meticulous notes he wrote alongside it, is still preserved today at KU Leuven in Belgium.²

Barbasetti's first master, Carlo Guasti.

After graduating in 1881, Barbasetti became the regimental fencing instructor of the 36th infantry.³ Soon after his assignment to this regiment it transferred to Palermo, which proved to be a fruitful experience for Barbasetti. While stationed here he had the opportunity to train with the highly regarded amateur fencer Antonino Palizzolo, who ran a popular fencing club in Palermo. Although Barbasetti's regiment was stationed in Palermo for less than two years, under the guidance of Palizzolo Barbasetti greatly improved his foil fencing and developed an appreciation for the Sicilian fencers, whom he described as being particularly adherent to their traditional methods and equipment.⁴

By the start of 1885 the 36th infantry regiment had moved, as had the Military Fencing Master's School, which had its new seat in the Italian capital under the direction of the young Neapolitan master Masaniello Parise, a significant controversy in the Italian fencing world. Before the Rome school could resume the task of training fencing masters, the new, non-Radaellian, fencing method that formed the curriculum at Parise's school had to be taught to the military's existing masters. In April 1885 Luigi Barbasetti began his 3-month conversion course in Rome, where he made enough of an impression on the new director that he, along with several other Radaellians, was asked to remain at the school as an assistant instructor. This role had the benefit of providing a slight pay increase as well as being a more fulfilling role, as instructors here would be teaching students who were much more interested in learning fencing than the average officer in a regimental fencing hall would be.⁵

Barbasetti first came to the attention of the fencing public in 1887 at the 'international' tournament in Florence, his first such appearance. Although overshadowed by others in the foil elimination competition (he did not compete in sabre), his classification bouts resulted in him receiving the second highest score among 42 fencing masters in foil and fourth out of 61 masters in sabre. In addition to the two gold medals he received for these rankings, Barbasetti was also awarded a yataghan, one of 28 special prizes donated by various clubs, politicians, and nobles.⁶

Barbasetti's reputation continued to rise over the following years, repeating similarly noteworthy performances at no fewer than seven tournaments by 1892 in addition to his first Florentine outing. By 1891 Barbasetti was one of the longest-serving instructors at the Master's School, alongside his old master Carlo Guasti and Carlo Pessina. Despite this apparent loyalty, however, Barbasetti's later writings show that at this point he was growing increasingly frustrated and resentful of the institution he served. Rather than being loyal to Parise and his method, Barbasetti was in fact adamantly opposed to the sabre method he was being forced to teach, and had never abandoned his Radaellian principles. By mid-1891 Barbasetti had been transferred to the Modena Military School. It is unclear why this happened—one journalist later wrote that Barbasetti left voluntarily 'in order to not share moral responsibility deriving from fallacious teaching'—but it is likely that by this point he was greatly disillusioned with his role at the Master's School.⁷ At the Modena Military School Barbasetti found a brief reprieve from this feeling, being able to teach alongside a large cohort of like-minded Radaellians free from the watchful eye of Parise.

What separated him from his colleagues at the military school, however, was the fact that his efforts at the school had not yet been rewarded with a promotion to civil master. 'Civil master' was the designation the Ministry of War gave to fencing masters under their direct employ as civilians, distinct from regular military instructors like Barbasetti, who were first and foremost soldiers and who were for the most part attached to a specific regiment or, in rare cases such as Barbasetti's, temporarily assigned to a military school or college to act as an assistant instructor. The relevance of this particular promotion here is the effect it had on a given fencing instructor's willingness to remain in military service.

Long-term retention of military fencing masters was dismal in the late 19th century. Several commentators, including Barbasetti, asserted that most masters left the military at the end of their five-year mandatory service period. This service period included the time spent training at the Master's School, so given that the course lasted two years until 1890, and thereafter three years, most masters would only be required to serve for a couple of years after graduating.⁸ If the instructor achieved a civil master promotion, however, it is almost certain that they would keep that position for many years, often decades. The position of civil master was greatly coveted as with it came: the benefit of a much higher starting salary which increased further with seniority; a generally more enthusiastic group of students; the consistency of being attached to an institution rather than a regiment which was constantly redeployed; freedom from the menial day-to-day tasks foisted on military instructors (such as delivering mail and acquiring firewood); the ability to also give private fencing lessons outside of regular work hours, among several other factors.

From a purely practical standpoint, military instructors found themselves in a contradictory position in their role as an instructor: every day they had to act as teachers to officers as well as NCOs, but they were unable to discipline students on their own, having to rely on the hall supervisor, who was not always present. While civil masters had no rank, given that they were civilian employees, they were nevertheless free of the military hierarchy and had the ability to engage with officers in more informal social contexts outside of their work. This put them on a much more equal social level than they would be had they remained soldiers, one much more in keeping with the respect they themselves felt they deserved.

To reach the rank of civil master, military instructors had to undergo an examination similar to those the masters would have undergone to graduate from the Master's School, which consisted of giving example lessons, answering questions about the regulation fencing text, and bouting. However, since all the competing candidates had several years of experience by the time they applied for the position, the level of competency required to rise above the crowd was understandably very high. The sum of the scores candidates received for each exam element would create an overall ranking for all candidates, and soon after the highest ranking candidates would be given any civil master positions vacant at the time. Any other positions that became vacant in the following two years would be awarded to the next highest-ranking candidate, provided they were still serving in the military. If a candidate did not end up receiving a promotion at the end of this period, they were considered unsuccessful, and would have to go through the exams again if they still wished to earn a promotion. However, individuals were only permitted to apply for the civil master promotion twice; if they did not receive a promotion after two attempts, they could not apply again and had to either be content as a lowly military instructor or, as most eventually did, leave the military altogether.⁹

This was the position our Barbasetti found himself in when, in October 1892, he returned to the Master's School one last time, this time not as an instructor, but as a candidate for civil master. Given that Barbasetti had been a military instructor for over a decade now, this was probably his second (and final) chance to get the promotion. At the end of the civil master exams, Barbasetti ranked a respectable 5th out of likely several dozen candidates. Unfortunately for Barbasetti though, this ranking was not high enough to secure him one of the two already vacant civil master positions, which instead went to two younger masters, Agesilao Greco and Vincenzo Drosi.¹⁰ To add insult to injury, not only did all the other masters who ranked higher than Barbasetti have less experience than he, as per the regular rules governing who could apply to the civil master role Greco would not have had the requisite seniority, so he would have had to receive special permission from Parise to take part in the exams.¹¹

Despite spending six respectable years as an instructor at the Military Master's School, Parise and the army had implicitly deemed Barbasetti's teaching skills to be lacking in comparison to several of his less experienced peers. This proved to be the last straw for Barbasetti, and a few months later he left the army entirely. Curiously, if Barbasetti had remained in the army for another year, he indeed would have received his promotion. From when the exams took place in October 1892 and until the possible advancement period ended in September 1894, a total of 8 civil master vacancies were filled, a high but not unprecedented number. Since he had already been discharged from the army, however, he was no longer eligible to receive the promotion, and it instead went to one of his Radaellian colleagues.¹² Barbasetti was likely aware of this possibility when he received his discharge papers, thus it cannot be said for certain that the results of the civil master exam were the deciding factor for Barbasetti.

Despite these no doubt demoralising circumstances, it was as a free agent that Barbasetti would finally receive the recognition and remuneration he felt was owed to him, in all likelihood surpassing anything he might have achieved by staying in the military. The opportunity to employ this highly experienced and reputable young master was quickly seized by the the popular and well-funded Trieste Fencing Society, and in December that same year Barbasetti arrived in Trieste to a rapturous welcome. Although still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at this time, Trieste had a significant and growing Italian minority who was well up-to-date on the latest fencing trends in Italy. Even before Barbasetti's arrival, the fencers of Trieste were by no means ignorant of Radaellian fencing, indeed the city was somewhat of a Radaellian outpost in the late 19th century. The famous master Salvatore Arista had spent a couple of years in Trieste in the same role a decade earlier, and by the time Barbasetti arrived in 1892 two other ex-military Radaellian masters, G. T. Angelini and Augusto Garagnani, were teaching in the city. Barbasetti's reputation naturally overshadowed the two incumbents; a banquet was held to celebrate his arrival, which was billed as the beginning of a revival of fencing activity in the city.¹³

As well as marking a new era in his teaching career, Barbasetti's move to Trieste resulted in the emergence of his public persona through the Italian sporting press. His first forays into writing appeared in mid-1893 in the pro-Radaellian fencing magazine Scherma Italiana, responding to comments made about a recent exhibition of his with Eugenio Pini and discussions on duelling codes and ongoing efforts at their standardisation in Italy.¹⁴ But it was at the end of the year when he truly came to the attention of the literate fencing public by becoming an editor of Trieste's La Rivista Sportiva. This magazine had been in circulation since the beginning of 1893, featuring only a modest and intermittent fencing column, but in December the Rivista began an ambitious shift and published a 6-page special edition fencing supplement to inaugurate the addition of Luigi Barbasetti to the magazine's editorial staff.¹⁵

For the last five months of La Rivista Sportiva's existence, fencing became the largest single section of the magazine, often comprising half of an individual issue's total material. The magazine boasted of having received commitments for the collaboration of many other prominent Radaellians, but very few of them (at least in name) would actually contribute an article in the magazine's short lifetime. While the magazine did not manage to serve as the collaborative and enduring platform that some Radaellians had hoped for, it did at least provide an effective soapbox for its newest editor, Barbasetti, who immediately took to expounding his views on the current state of fencing in Italy, declaring that it is 'on the path of regression, perhaps primarily because of the teaching method introduced in the army, which we cannot declare to be in agreement with.'¹⁶

Barbasetti was highly critical of his old boss, Masaniello Parise, and the oppressive institution he ruled over. Although Barbasetti had spent 6 years teaching at the Master's School, this had not made him more amenable to Parise's teachings, at least not with respect to sabre fencing. He makes explicit his regret at having attempted to make change from within the system:

Parise's collaborators, or rather the executors, all pure Radaellians, wanted to repaint something…decayed and covered in patches, so as to make a ramshackle thing pass off as new. It was junkyard business and for my part I now deplore having lent a hand.¹⁷

Barbasetti depicts Parise and the school as oppressive and detrimental to the development of fencing in Italy; adherence to the defective official method stifles the artistic freedom of fencing masters in the army, whom Barbasetti asserts are all of a lower quality than those who emerged from the schools of Radaelli and Enrichetti. His first example of this oppression was the fact that the famed Ferdinando Masiello had in late 1893 resigned from his respected teaching position at the Florence military college. This followed only a few months after another master, Barbasetti's dear master Carlo Guasti, left the halls of the Rome Master's School and was transferred to a military academy in Turin.¹⁸ Barbasetti believes both events to be proof that more and more masters were becoming disillusioned with the curriculum and being subordinate to Parise.

Today it is Masiello who renounces government teaching. Tomorrow, who knows? But if we go on at this trot we can hope for at least one thing: which is that soon nobody will receive a master's licence from the state without proving that they have hung Masaniello Parise's treatise at the foot of their bed and that every morning they recite this prayer: 'I believe in the impeccable, infallible official fencing treatise and I renounce all other authors and common sense if by chance I find it.'¹⁹

Barbasetti asserted that in the past eight years 'not one truly strong sabre fencer has emerged from the Master's School', which immediately caught the ire of at least one of Parise's disciples, Antonio Conte, whose response to Barbasetti's diatribes appeared on the front page of Scherma Italiana.²⁰ Conte points to the recent competitive successes of himself and his fellow graduates as proof of the school's accomplishments, a point which the Radaellians themselves made in defence of the Milan school in previous years. In his response, Barbasetti shows himself to be fiercely protective of his reputation as a competitor, downplaying Conte's victories by asserting that most of his victories took place when he did not have to face someone like Barbasetti. When he is willing to concede that a graduate of Parise's school is worthy of praise, it is mostly because their instructor at the school deviated from the regulation method (as was supposedly the case with Carlo Guasti) or because of their own extraordinary physical attributes (e.g. Agesilao Greco).²¹

Regular readers of this blog may also appreciate the additional details Barbasetti provides on the Parise-Pecoraro reforms from a few years prior. While the actual substance of Parise's reformed sabre method is well known to us through later sources, Barbasetti directly credits General Giovanni Corvetto, then Undersecretary of State at the Ministry of War, for initiating this process. Barbasetti claims that Corvetto was 'a bitter enemy of the Parise system' and attempted to replace Parise with Pecoraro as head of the Master's School, but he was overruled by others in the government. As a compromise, Pecoraro was permitted to make changes to the cavalry's sabre instruction, the result of which was the Parise-Pecoraro method that was taught to the cavalry and students at the Master's School from 1891 onwards.²² Yet these changes were evidently insufficient for Barbasetti, as they did not address the underlying problems with how the Italian military trained its fencing masters.

In expounding on how to improve what Barbasetti perceives to be a decline in the quality of sabre fencing and fencing masters in Italy, he draws inspiration partly from his personal experience of over 12 years of military service. He has positive memories of the 'training unit' model that he experienced in his youth, where the Master's School acted more as a finishing school rather than one which takes up the burden of providing a comprehensive training programme.²³ Yet there is one new perspective that Barbasetti has recently gained greater access to with his move to Trieste, and that is the fencing programme of the Austro-Hungarian army's school in Wiener Neustadt.

Several articles in the Rivista Sportiva strongly suggest that Barbasetti was interacting with Austro-Hungarian military personnel and those who had close knowledge of the kind of fencing carried out in both military and civilian circles.²⁴ These contacts gave him the strong impression that life for a fencing master in the Austro-Hungarian military was far better than in Italy, for several reasons. The first was due to the fact that Austrian military fencing masters are officers, and they can continue receiving promotions while acting as fencing masters. The second factor was that the fencing course at Wiener Neustadt lasted only a year, which meant the empire was able to produce fencing masters quickly, albeit with less training than an Italian master. Barbasetti's imagined emulation of the Wiener Neustadt system would have seen the Modena Military School turned into a training unit of 'fencing specialists', with this location most likely being selected as a result of his personal experience there two years earlier.²⁵

The most fruitful aspect of Barbasetti's interaction with Austrian military personnel, however, turned out not to be the importing of new ideas into Italy, but rather the beginning of the exporting of Italian fencing to the rest of Europe. In the penultimate issue of La Rivista Sportiva in April 1894 Barbasetti mentions a visit from Eugen Bothmer and Amon Gregurich, both fencing masters in the Austrian army. These masters had given Barbasetti an invitation to hold a course on Italian fencing at the cavalry school at Mährisch Weißkirchen (Hranice na Moravě, today part of Czechia), where they had already begun teaching in accordance with the Italian method, likely learnt through their contact with Gustav Ristow and Pietro Arnoldo.²⁶ He was then taken to the Wiener Neustadt school where he gave another demonstration of the Radaellian method, which was so well received that already in August 1894 some were claiming that Barbasetti's method was to be adopted by all military schools in Austria-Hungary.²⁷

By the end of the year, Barbasetti had packed his bags and moved to Vienna, and thus began a new and remarkable period in European fencing which saw the Radaellian spread rapidly across the continent. The last issue of the Rivista Sportiva was published on 10 May 1894, but this was by no means the end of Barbasetti's writing career. Aside from his books—namely his duelling code (1898), sabre treatise (1899), and foil treatise (1900)—Barbasetti continued to contribute the occasional article to various newspapers and magazines both in Austria and Italy, but he never again assumed such a direct role in affecting the public discourse like he did with the Rivista.

Much has been said about Barbasetti's fascinating career over the past 130 years, and surely much more remains to be said, particularly regarding the years following his departure from Vienna at the outbreak of the Great War. What I hope to have provided here at least is a deeper insight into the events which shaped Barbasetti's decisions in the early 1890s, events which eventually led to him becoming one of the most recognised names in the history of both Italian and Austrian fencing.

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1 Unless stated otherwise, biographical details regarding Barbasetti are drawn from the following sources: Fleuret, "Luigi Barbasetti," Allgemeine Sport-Zeitung, 5 January 1896, 19; Roderico Rizzotti, "Luigi Barbasetti," Scherma Italiana, 1 October 1896, 47–9; Camillo Müller, "Barbasetti," Allgemeine Sport-Zeitung, 1 March 1903, 220–1.^↩
2 KU Leuven Libraries Special Collections, R4A552b.^↩
3 Cesare Francesco Ricotti-Magnani, "CIRCOLARE N. 47. — Corsi eventuali presso la scuola magistrale militare di scherma. — (Segretariato generale). — 11 aprile," Giornale Militare 1885: Parte Seconda, no. 17 (15 April 1885): 196–7.^↩
4 Luigi Barbasetti, "La miglior parata è la botta," Gazzetta dello Sport, 20 August 1897; Barbasetti, La Scherma di Spada (Milan: Tipografia Alessandro Gattinoni, 1902), 24.^↩
5 On the salary of military instructors at the Master's School, see Jacopo Gelli, Brevi note sulla scherma di sciabola per la cavalleria (Florence: Tipografia di Luigi Niccolai, 1889), 9^↩
6 Daily reports on the tournament can be found in the Florentine newspaper La Nazione between 5 and 18 May 1887.^↩
7 "Accademie, tornei e notizie," Scherma Italiana, 17 December 1894, 91–2.^↩
8 For some examples of contemporary discussion regarding the poor morale of military fencing masters, see Giuseppe Perez, "I Maestri di Scherma nell'Esercito," Baiardo: periodico schermistico bimensile, 16 May 1891, 4; D'Artagnan, "I Maestri di Scherma nell'Esercito," Baiardo: periodico schermistico bimensile, 1 June 1891, 4; Ricasso, "Il grado ai maestri di scherma militari," Lo Sport Illustrato, 20 August 1891, 406; Luigi Barbasetti, "La Scuola Magistrale Militare di Scherma in Italia," La Rivista Sportiva, 25 March 1894, 63. On the mandatory service period of military fencing instructors, see Raccolta ufficiale delle leggi e dei decreti del regno d'Italia, vol. 97 (Rome: Stamperia Reale, 1890), 2366.^↩
9 Giovanni Corvetto, "CIRCOLARE N. 129. — Norme per l'esame di concorso alla nomina a maestro civile di scherma. — (Segretariato generale). — 22 agosto," Giornale Militare 1888: Parte Seconda, no. 40 (25 August 1888): 496–8; Ministero della Guerra, Regolamento per la scuola magistrale militare di scherma (Rome: Voghera Enrico, 1897), 23–4.^↩
10 Results on these exams are mentioned in "Accademie, tornei e notizie," Scherma Italiana, 27 October 1892, 70. The promotions of Greco and Drosi are announced in Ministero della Guerra, Bollettino ufficiale delle nomine, promozioni e destinazioni negli uffiziali dell'esercito italiano e nel personale dell'amministrazione militare, no. 48 (24 December 1892): 612.^↩
11 Candidates had to have a seniority dating prior to 1 January 1882. See Luigi Pelloux, "CIRCOLARE N. 96. — Concorso per la nomina a maestro aggiunto di 1a classe nel personale dei maestri civili di scherma. — (Segretariato generale). — 19 agosto," Giornale Militare 1892: Parte Seconda, no. 28 (20 August 1892): 250–1.^↩
12 The civil master promotions that were awarded between 1892 and 1894 are announced in the Bollettino ufficiale delle nomine, promozioni e destinazioni negli uffiziali dell'esercito italiano e nel personale dell'amministrazione militare.^↩
13 "Luigi Barbasetti," Il Piccolo, 1 December 1892, 1.^↩
14 "Sfida Barbasetti-Pini," Scherma Italiana, 8 May 1893, 31; "Il codice unico," Scherma Italiana 20 July 1893, 50–1; "Ancora sul codice unico," Scherma Italiana, 1 November 1893, 78.^↩
15 The copy of this first fencing supplement for the Rivista Sportiva I consulted bears no date, but given that it cites letters from the end of November 1893, a publication date in December seems likely.^↩
16 Luigi Barbasetti, "Ai miei lettori!," La Rivista Sportiva, [December 1893], 1.^↩
17 Luigi Barbasetti, "Commenti e.... Commenti," Scherma, La Rivista Sportiva, 10 January 1894, 3–4.^↩
18 Fieravespa, "E due!....," Scherma Italiana, 19 June 1893, 41.^↩
19 Luigi Barbasetti, "Ancora uno che se ne và," La Rivista Sportiva, [December 1893], 1–2.^↩
20 Luigi Barbasetti, "La decadenza della sciabola," La Rivista Sportiva, [December 1893], 4–5; Antonio Conte, Scherma Italiana, 15 February 1894, 17.^↩
21 Luigi Barbasetti, Scherma Italiana, 15 March 1894, 21–2.^↩
22 "Comunicati," Scherma Italiana, 5 August 1894, 65–6.^↩
23 Luigi Barbasetti, "La Scuola Magistrale Militare di Scherma in Italia," Scherma, La Rivista Sportiva, 25 March 1894, 63.^↩
24 In addition to the above-cited article, see Cap. Otto, "La scherma di sciabola in Austria," La Rivista Sportiva, [December 1893], 4; Cornelio Agrippa, "I maestri di scherma nell'esercito austro-ungarico," Scherma, La Rivista Sportiva, 25 January 1894, 13; Burlone, "La Scherma in Austria," Scherma, La Rivista Sportiva, 10 February 1894, 33–4.^↩
25 Luigi Barbasetti, "La Scuola Magistrale Militare di Scherma in Italia," Scherma, La Rivista Sportiva, 25 March 1894, 63.^↩
26 Luigi Barbasetti, "La Scherma Italiana in Austria," La Rivista Sportiva, 25 April 1894, 87–8. On Pietro Arnoldo's work in Austria, see this article.^↩
27 "Comunicati," Scherma Italiana, 5 August 1894, 65–6.^↩

Das Säbelfechten mit dem leichten Säbel auf Hieb und Stich by Walther Meienreis

Due to a steady influx of Italian fencing masters in the first half of the 20th century, Germany was particularly fertile ground for the spreading of Radaellian sabre. The text I am sharing today is one of many products of this expansion, this being a short German-language sabre treatise written by one Walther Meienreis titled Das Säbelfechten mit dem leichten Säbel auf Hieb und Stich ('Cut and thrust sabre fencing with the light sabre'), published in Leipzig in 1914.

*** Scans ***

Meienreis' sabre book was published alongside a separate foil volume of similar length, which I have yet to obtain an original copy of, but the sabre material alone is interesting enough on its own thanks to its strong close adherence to Radaellian theory. Meienreis was likely familiar with Barbasetti's work, as he makes use of the term pattinando (advance lunge) which was not used by other Italian authors, and the photos showing the various sabre positions are more characteristic of Barbasetti's posture than, say, Masiello, whose work was also well known in Germany by this time thanks to the work of Luigi Sestini.

As per the title page of this book, Walther Meienreis was a university-trained engineer. Almost nothing else is known about him aside from the fact that he was born in 1877 (see portrait above) and that by the time he published his works he was a lieutenant in the German reserve army, having previously served in the Landwehr, and likely lived in Berlin. He was active in the local fencing scene, particularly military tournaments, and even took part in the épée and sabre events (both individual and team) at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics.¹ I have found no mentions of him after 1914 aside from advertisements for his books, so it is possible that he was one of the many many casualties of the Great War.

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1 Sport im Bild, 17 December 1909, 1387; Les escrimeurs à la V^ème olympiade a Stockholm 1912 (Stockholm: W. Tullberg, 1913), 21; "Das II. Armee-Fecht-Turnier," Sport im Bild, 2 January 1914, 20–1.^↩