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.
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| 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.
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| 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
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:
- 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?
- What are the names of your students who should logically appear at least in the lowest category established by the Italian Fencing Federation?
- How many Italian épéeists wield the so-called Italian épée which bears your name?
- How many Italian masters teach épée according to such methods and models?
- What are the international results achieved in the past by épéeists with this épée?
- 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'.↩
