‖ After learning about this I came across these lines from Ben Jonson’s Introduction to Shakespeare’s First Folio, “To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author Mr William Shakespeare and what he has left us”:
His Art doth give the fashion. And, that he,
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat,
(Such as thine are) and strike the second heat
Upon the Muses anvile: turne the same,
(And himselfe with it) that he thinkes to frame …
Swordmaking as a metaphor for wordcraft evidently has a long history.
a A simple domestic test is to heat a razor blade until it is cherry red, then plunge it into water: when it emerges, it will have become brittle. The eleventh-century alchemist Theophilus Presbyter proposed an alternative experiment: “Take a three-year-old black goat and tie him up for three days within doors without food: on the fourth day give him fern to eat and nothing else. When he shall have eaten this for two days, on the night following enclose him in a cask perforated at the bottom, under which holes place another sound vessel in which thou wilt collect his urine. Having in this manner for two or three nights sufficiently collected this, turn out the buck and temper thine instruments in this urine.” He adds for good measure, “Iron instruments are also tempered in the urine of a young red-headed boy harder than in simple water.” The relevance of the redheadedness is puzzling but may refer back to the time when red hair was associated with choler, one of the four elements—and so with fire.13
b A village in Tennessee (just 1,100 souls) chose its name during the American Civil War, when it made arms for the Confederacy, and in homage to the original grandly titled itself Damascus. Toledo, Ohio, another swordmaking town, has a local newspaper called The Toledo Blade—a nice nod to the German word “Blatt,” which meant both blade and a newspaper.
c Few writers seek to evoke the sound of swordfights, but this is well caught by J. R. R. Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings: “Presently the noise of fighting broke out near at hand, just above their hiding place. He could plainly hear the ringing grate of steel on steel, the clang of sword on iron cap, the dull beat of blade on shield.… ‘It sounds like a hundred blacksmiths all smithying together,’ said Sam to Frodo.”18
d Their purpose was ceremonial and symbolic; nevertheless, upon the outbreak of war the British War Office sent out the order “All officers will sharpen swords.” The U.S. Field Manual of June 30, 1942, included directions for unarmed defense against an opponent wielding a European-style sword, based on the assumption that a GI would encounter an enemy trained in classic Western swordsmanship: “An individual trained in the use of the foil or épée will approach you in the manner illustrated in Figure A.”—surely the last occasion on which a military manual gave such advice (see p. 269).
e To give some idea of the contrast in standards: during the Peninsular War of 1808–14, the French were baffled to see their soldiers returning from action with hideously dented faces. It transpired that the British cavalry, despairing of the cutting capacity of their sabers, were swinging them flat-on, using them as coshes or maces. British infantrymen, for their part, were inserting Japanese blades into their British-made hilts; these made the end product too rigid, but this was generally not noticed at parades.
f The historian Richard Storry improves even on Getsu’s record: “There exists in Japan a film showing a machine-gun being sliced in half by a sword from the forge of the great fifteenth-century maker, Kanemoto II. If this seems improbable, one must remember that smiths like Kanemoto hammered and folded and rehammered, day after day, until a sword blade contained something like four million layers [thus twenty-two folds] of finely forged steel.”23
g And great rivalry: the most famous of early Sakoku-period swordsmiths was Kotetsu Okisato (1599–1678). He was a maker of battlefield helmets, and it was proposed that one of his products be tested by a sword forged by Kiyomitsu, a famous swordsmith. In front of a large audience, Kiyomitsu bowed to Kotetsu’s helmet, which had been placed on top of a special wooden stand, drew his sword, and assumed jodan no kamae (an overhead combative engagement position). Kotetsu panicked and before his rival could strike cried out for him to halt. Kiyomitsu did so but was visibly unnerved—“the greater portion of his spiritual energy dissipated.” Kotetsu apologized for the interruption and made a minor adjustment to the helmet.
When at last Kiyomitsu dealt his blow, it did only superficial damage, and Kotetsu was feted as a great armorer; but he was so overwhelmed by shame that he offered his apologies to his rival, abandoned the armorer’s profession, and became a bladesmith.
If any fencing expert can invent an attack which it is impossible to resist, or a parry which is impossible to deceive, I should advise him to take very good care to secure the patent rights of his invention without a moment’s delay. He would certainly have no difficulty in floating a company to put it on the market in all the capitals of Europe.
—BARON DE BAZANCOURT, Secrets of the Sword
Don Jaime put the pencil down and imitated the movement of the foil with his hand, studying his shadow on the wall.… He always ended up with familiar, classical moves that could easily be predicted and avoided by an opponent. The perfect thrust was something else. It had to be as swift and precise as a bolt of lightning, unexpected, impossible to parry. But what was it?
—ARTURO PÉREZ-REVERTE, The Fencing Master
SURFERS BELIEVE THAT SOMEWHERE OUT THERE ROLLS THE PERFECT wave; Reichean sexologists seek the perfect orgasm; physicists long for everything to be reducible to one equation; executioners once spoke of the perfect beheading. Any skillful activity invites the notion of its distillation into an absolute ideal. For swordsmen, this has manifested itself in the quest for the perfect thrust.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, recognized masters sought to enhance the mystique of their profession by encouraging the belief in a botta segreta, a special thrust that would guarantee victory. The term is Italian because the leading theorists were Italian; but throughout Europe masters cultivated a reputation for such wizardry, while also making a conscious mystery of their lessons. Pupils were made to swear never to reveal their masters’ teachings, and lessons were held in the strictest privacy, with masters examining every part of a room, the furniture, and even the walls, to guard against the presence of intruders. The secret moves imparted to the fortunate initiates were called “traccheggie” (“acts of concealment”) by the Italians and “coups de maître” (“masterstrokes”), “bottes secrètes” (“secret thrusts”), or, less politely, “coups de malin” (“sly cuts”) by the French.
That one’s adversary might use a botta segreta was frightening—it must have been like battling a magician—and swordsmen, declaring that it was beneath a gentleman’s honor to employ them, chose to discount these secret moves by publicly scorning them. The same argument was leveled at perhaps the most famous user of a botte secrète: Guy de Chabot, Comte de Jarnac, who deployed his celebrated “Coup de Jarnac” against François de Vivonne, Duc de Chastaigneraie, on July 10, 1547. Their encounter, said to be the last judicial duel in Europe, contained elements of trial by combat, duel of chivalry, and duel of honor. The quarrel had begun in the reign of François I, who had refused to permit these two of his favorite knights to risk their lives. When Henri II succeeded to the throne, the two asked again, and the new king acquiesced.
Jarnac, an unwilling duelist with no great reputation for swordsmanship, was fighting only because Chastaigneraie had put it about that Jarnac had taken his own mother-in-law as his mistress, leaving Jarnac no alternative. Chastaigneraie, by contrast, was reputedly the finest swordsman and wrestler in France, a brilliant and arrogant twenty-six-year-old of exceptional strength. Jarnac took what instruction he could from one Caizo, an Italian master much favored by the court, who had his own botte secrète, called a “falso manco,” a left-handed cut at the inside of the knee.
Jarnac was well aware that the longer the bout went on the
less chance he had. He used the choice of arms as a delaying tactic, proposing some thirty different weapons for combat mounted or on foot and specifying different horses with different kinds of harnesses and saddles. “This man means to fight both my honor and my wallet,” sighed Chastaigneraie with bemused contempt. So sure was he of victory that he had organized a special banquet for the evening of the duel, to which the king and 150 of his courtiers were invited.
The duel was staged at Saint-Germain and attended by king, court, and a large, eager crowd. The two men exchanged courtesies, and the fight began. The opening moves were cautious as each tested for an opening. Suddenly Chastaigneraie attempted a deadly lunge. Jarnac dodged the blow, coming back at his opponent’s face, and, as Chastaigneraie raised his shield, swung downward at his right knee instead, severing the right hamstring. Too proud to reveal his pain, Chastaigneraie attempted a second, desperate thrust, at which Jarnac severed the other hamstring, forcing his adversary to the ground.
The Comte de Jarnac’s duel against the Duc de Chastaigneraie in 1547, re-created by a nineteenth-century engraver. (illustration credit 6.1)
Chivalry dictated that if a defeated man asked for mercy his conquerer could grant it, but the mortified Chastaigneraie kept a furious silence. Jarnac begged him to yield in the acknowledged way. Still Chastaigneraie refused. Jarnac fell to his knees before the king and beseeched him to intervene to command the younger man’s submission. When eventually surgeons came forward and dressed his wounds, Chastaigneraie was so humiliated at his overthrow that he tore off his bandages and bled to death. Henri swore never to authorize another trial by battle and issued an edict forbidding them. Jarnac found that, quite unjustly, his coup had passed into a proverb as a dirty trick or foul blow.
Was “the perfect thrust” by definition a secret move? Inevitably Burton takes up the question, and equally inevitably finds an answer. When he died in 1890, he was at work on a manuscript that appeared twenty-one years later as The Sentiment of the Sword. The book takes the form of a country house colloquy between himself and a group of interested friends, organized into nine evenings, on the seventh of which his interlocutor “Lord B” asks, “What is your opinion of what the French call les bottes secrètes, and why are they not taught in the schools?”
Burton replies that if such were taught they would no longer be secret.
But I hasten to say that I do not believe in a botta segreta, any more than in the parata universale or in the Philosopher’s Stone. Par parenthèse, the word botte has lately been pronounced too trivial for the art of arms, and we are ordered to say coup; the Italians are not so fastidious.… In France we often hear of a master who “possesses, they say, bottes secrètes.” A challenge has passed, and one, perhaps both, of the combatants will go to him for advice, and both probably learn the same. These passes, improperly called secrets, are mere irregularities that do not belong to everyday practice. So far I admit them, but no farther.1
Later in the evening, Burton yields sufficiently to list actions that fall into this category. He begins with the effective but illegal action of “pommeling one’s enemy,” then goes on to describe the “parries of contention,” the volta and the circolata (vaulting), the inquarto (the sideways leap), the sbasso (the downward slide), the sparita di vita or effacement du corps (turning the body), the incocciatura (clashing of hilts), and the balestrata (plain tripping).
For all his proclaimed disdain, Burton had his own special attacks, perfected when he was twenty-eight and living in Boulogne. Years later his widow would write, “To this day, the Burton une-deux, and notably the manchette [an upward slash disabling the sword arm] are remembered.” No doubt Burton would have characterized these as trademark moves, not actual bottes secrètes.
There were plenty of other actions to choose from, and examples of secret moves range across continents and over centuries. In his 1825 Traité des Armes, the French master L.-J. Lafaugère lists 1,272 different thrusts and combinations. A move known as the “imbroccata” (a downward thrust over an adversary’s sword arm) was in vogue in Shakespeare’s day, and he employs it in at least five plays. “From one truculent personage,” records a nineteenth-century historian, “Tappa the Milanese, you could learn how to cut (if it so took your fancy) both eyes out of your adversary’s face with a rinverso tondo, or circular reverse of the point.”2 Then there was “la botte de Saint-Evremonde,” named after another celebrated duelist, unfortunately undescribed, and the “botte de Nouilles,” also called the “botte de Nevers,” a jerky counterattack delivered between the eyes, a specialty of the Nouilles family invented by the Parisian master Le Flamand (and a recognized move in Chinese swordplay, known as “Paint a Red Dot Between the Eyebrows”). We do have details of the “Boar’s Thrust,” the special killing maneuver of the eighteenth-century Scottish master Donald McBane, which involves a swordsman dropping beneath the attacking blade by going down to the ground on his free hand, simultaneously bending his knee and thrusting upward.* McBane’s signature thrust was similar to the favorite move of the Italian master Salvator Fabris, the passata sotto—which he would teach his pupils for a price, on condition they would not employ the action against him. (A pupil who had handed over his money for a worthless move was not likely to come back for a refund.)
In Poland, cavalry officers of the eighteenth century developed the “Nyzkiem cut,” a move especially effective when delivered on horseback. One of Poland’s leading postwar sabreurs, Wojciech Zabłocki, showed me how the cut was made, using a replica of a hussar’s saber. He turned over his wrist, palm facing down, then cut upward at an angle, as if slicing a tennis ball, so that the blade would slice from lower belly to midchest, traveling almost vertically. “It is impossible to parry with normal tierce or quarte,” Wojciech explained. “You can protect yourself only by going into an exaggerated seconde”—he mimed a low-line parry, the blade pointing downward—“but made differently, with one’s hand pushed out more to the left, to be strong enough against the cut.” And we were not even making the cut from a horse.
The botte de Nouilles turns up again in the 1999 film Le Bossu (En Garde in the United States), directed by Philippe de Broca from a nineteenth-century French novel. Le Bossu is a well-made swashbuckler about a master sworn to avenge the death of a close friend. The “secret thrust” itself as performed is highly impractical: the move ends at the top of the bridge of the nose, where allegedly there is a small space of soft tissue. One French critic, reviewing the original book, was outraged: “The ‘hit between the eyes’ is of all hits the most dastardly, a total absence of dueling fair play, a mistake of chivalric honor … ‘a tartufferie of the closed battlefield.’ ”3
Another French film, The Revenge of the Musketeers (1997), takes a tongue-in-cheek approach. Its leading villain, Crassac de Merindol, practices his range of secret moves in front of his henchman (later revealed to be the musketeer Athos in disguise). “I’m good in the arms room,” Crassac says, then executes a doublé doublé and lunges while down on one knee. The Cahuzac twist? The Nemours slink? No, the Montparnasse viper, and it leaves Athos unimpressed: “It really works only with the sun behind you.” At the climax Crassac tries the move on d’Artagnan’s daughter, Eloïse (Sophie Marceau), to her yet greater contempt: “Everyone knows that secret thrust. You need the sun behind you.” As Crassac fails and realizes that his adversary is about to get the better of him, he finally asks, “Would you by any chance be using a longer blade?”—a secret recourse indeed, if not quite a fair one.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries duelists were not at all worried about such notions; they wanted to learn the actions that would bring them victory. Egerton Castle observes that all these moves were “to the fencer of those times what the philosopher’s stone was to the alchemist”—a phrase he coined just before Burton wrote The Sentiment of the Sword, with its disparaging reference to philosophers’ stones. One senses a rivalry between the two men for primacy among historians of swordplay.
/> Castle lived by his pen, turning his hand to any topic from English bookplates to landscape gardening. He wrote plays for Sir Henry Irving, for nearly a decade was on the staff of the Saturday Review, and together with his wife, Agnes Sweetman, penned more than twenty historical romances, several of which became best-sellers. Some had splendid titles—his last, posthumous novel was Pamela Pounce: A Tale of Tempestuous Petticoats—and several drew upon his love of swordplay, one dealing explicitly with the botte secrète. At the climax of his short story “The Great Todescan’s Secret Thrust” its hero confronts the evil Todescan: “Never, for smallest breathing-space, did the provost’s terrible long blade release his own. He felt it gliding, seeking to bind, fiercely caressing; felt the deadly spring behind a tiger’s crouch; felt the invincible, unknown thrust ready against his first weakening.”4 Homoeroticism may be on fine display here, but what of the secret thrust itself? All we learn of Todescan’s special move is “the fierce jerky binding, the incredible turn of the wrist inwards, the infallible estocade [from the French word “estoc,” a longsword; thus “a blow from a longsword”] that was to have driven the point irredeemably under the armpit”: hardly enough for any master to make use of in the salle.
Nearly a century on, Umberto Eco invented his own botta segreta, the “coup de la mouette,” in The Island of the Day Before, but again it is unclear what the actual move entails.5 Obviously there is a difference between a surprise move and a secret thrust—although, as Burton noted, even a botta segreta is no longer secret after a few outings. Just as the successful general knows that his victorious strategies will first be imitated, then superseded, the fencing master gets set in his ways and does not envision the step beyond them. Like any system, fencing evolves under the steady pressure of failure.†
By the Sword Page 18
