By the Sword

by Richard Cohen

  They were as likely to do that as change their way of looking for hits. Competitors took to atavistically whipping off their masks in an effort to intimidate the machines. No less a fencer than Eduardo Mangiarotti had, in the early days of electric épée, once got down on his knees and invoked God to witness that the box had lied. For the more powerful nations, the objectivity of the machines seemed no improvement over “sympathetic” juries.

  Then there was the effect on foil fencing itself. One early critic worried that the new weapon would “always be clumsier than the normal foil, and … will favor the more robust play of the Italian school to the detriment of the finger play of the French.”13 Others saw épée “time” replacing the foil principle of right-of-way. Remises would multiply, given the tendency of fencers to look at the box, even in the middle of a phrase, then to jab away furiously until a light came on.

  What no one doubted was that a revolution had indeed come about. What kind of revolution? “The electric scoring system demands simplicity,” explained one Hungarian master. “Because of this simplicity the fencer must increase his speed, which makes his fighting more athletic. The high-speed lunge, the surprise flèche, the hurried retreat—all require athletic ability. These movements can be mastered and properly executed only by the practice of supplementary training in short sprinting, high-jumping, broad jumping, etc.”14a

  The French team at the 1955 championships was aghast. For the first time in the history of the event, they not only failed to win either the individual or team foil but left without a single gold medal, as if the failure of their foilists had infected the other weapons as well. As d’Oriola rationalized the loss, “France was the only country using foil blades to FIE regulations, but these frequently did not register hits”—the flat French points slipping off the smooth metallic lamé surface of the new jackets, while the “shaped” Italian points could register over approximately twice the area. For the individual event, some of the team changed to Italian points, others to Hungarian, and in the final, thus reequiped, they placed second, third, fourth, and fifth. It was a fine fight-back, and d’Oriola failed to win only by losing twice to a twenty-one-year-old Hungarian, József Gyuricza, in the final and in the fight-off for first place. A silver was no disgrace, but he had seen his title taken away from him.

  He was inconsolable. “The electric foil completely changed the technique of foil fencing,” he reflected many years later.15 “No longer did the hit have to be seen, and the possibility of hits on the back and so on [was] introduced. Technique in itself was no longer necessary, and some of the great fencers of the steam foil era … were unable to adapt to the new style. Speaking personally, fencing with an electric foil was not nearly as enjoyable.” He announced his retirement immediately after the championships. Then tongues began wagging: D’Oriola was not a great champion because he could not adapt to the new weapon. He had retired because he had neither the courage nor the skill to win where the electric box reigned impartially and individual referees could do little. That same year Aldo Nadi’s autobiography, initially entitled Mask Off, was published. Its fifty-ninth chapter, “Comparisons,”16 begins with typical directness:

  To judge by the results in recent years in the most important international contests such as the Olympics, world championships and others almost as significant, one man seems to emerge above all fencers. His name: Christian d’Oriola, a Frenchman obviously of Italian blood, and Olympic foil champion. True, I have noticed that he is not always the winner—anything but. Once, for example, in the Coppa Gaudini fought every year between the six best Italians and the six best Frenchmen, M. d’Oriola had no less than four defeats in six bouts—something that simply cannot happen to a great fencer. Also, in 1954, he was defeated many times by Manlio Di Rosa, who was world champion back in 1951, and positively past his prime.

  Nadi then glides in the stiletto: “I shall merely add that a great fencer wins with any kind of weapon and with any jury.”

  If anything could have been calculated to goad d’Oriola, this must have been it, although he insists he never read the book. He announced his comeback; he wished to fence at the Games in 1956 and was soon traveling with the French team to Melbourne. He could not stop the Italians from winning the foil team event, although in the final he won all his bouts with just seven hits against him. Two days later came the individual. Gyuricza could manage only fifth; Giancarlo Bergamini and Antonio Spallino, both of Italy, took the silver and bronze; the gold went to d’Oriola. He retired again, petitioning to the FIE that electric foil be discontinued—“it is decadent fencing.” He had won in Melbourne, he said, only to prove that an able fencer could master that “inartistic game,” adding, “I naturally had to alter my game to be more efficient.”

  Recently I spent almost four hours in Eduardo Mangiarotti’s neat offices in central Milan. At one point he reached for a substantial volume published in 1904. “Nearly a hundred years ago. Yet it lists all the Italian masters who left Italy to teach in other countries. And it takes a whole book.”17 He regards his own record as “probably now unbeatable.” What of d’Oriola; how would he judge between them? Well, he, Mangiarotti, had superb technique; “but d’Oriola had technique too, and he was always better than I.” A strikingly generous admission. How so? “He had something I never had—fantasy.”

  Christian d’Oriola’s extraordinary lunge, seen here in 1947 during a ten-hit match against the French professional champion, André Gardère. For once d’Oriola came off second best, Gardère triumphing 10-7. The referee is Roger Crosnier, later British national coach. (illustration credit 16.7)

  Was this d’Oriola’s view too? I met him in 2001, when he was seventy-three and living in Montpellier, in the grip of Parkinson’s disease. Thinking that it would please him, I opened with Mangiarotti’s comment. “Non, non, non,” he interrupted sharply. There was no sign of weakness in his voice, just the forceful tones of the skilled insurance specialist he had become. It wasn’t fantasy that had led to his victories, “c’était flexibilité.”

  Flexibility: the quality Aldo Nadi had invoked to describe his own fencing. Later, in correspondence, d’Oriola corrected himself: “It is not ‘flexibility’ that should be quoted but the word ‘anticipation.’ My main weapon against all my opponents, including Mangiarotti, was anticipation.” Best to leave it there.

  D’Oriola died in 2007, leaving no son or daughter to continue his name, and while Mangiarotti’s daughter Carola fenced for her country, it was without her father’s success. With the coming of electric foil the hold of the French and the Italians was broken. In 1960 the foil gold and silver medalists came from the Soviet Union; over the next twenty-four years the Soviets would win twelve world and Olympic titles. A new tradition was taking form, led by the Belorussian Alexandr Romankov (five times world champion between 1974 and 1983) and the Ukrainian Sergei Golubitsky, winner of three consecutive world titles, 1997 to 1999. A recent issue of the French magazine Escrime grandly describes Golubitsky as “today considered the best foilist ever.”18 But d’Oriola was the winner of eighteen world and Olympic medals. For me, it is no contest.

  SHORTLY BEFORE HIS DEATH, ALDO NADI LEARNED THAT THE ITALIAN authorities were to honor Mangiarotti as the country’s all-time outstanding fencer and immediately challenged Mangiarotti to a duel; not with swords, as the sixty-two-year-old had recently injured his neck, but with pistols. Mangiarotti replied that he used guns only to shoot pigeons, and nothing further came of it; but Aldo’s outburst was not entirely unjustified. All Mangiarotti’s silver and bronze medals, he asserted, were tokens of defeat. Conveniently ignoring Nedo’s fifth place in saber in 1912, he recited his brother’s unblemished roster of Olympic victories—six medals, all gold: what could be better than that? So to the end Aldo attacked, fashioning his argument to get the result he wanted. Fantasy? Flexibilité? Or anticipation?

  Is there in fact some common denominator for champions? Barbara Tuchman, in a revealing essay on “Generalship,” quo
tes the Maréchal de Saxe (himself drawing on Aristotle): “Courage is the first of all qualities.” Without it other qualities are of little value since they cannot be used. She goes on: “I think ‘courage’ is too simple a word. The concept must include both physical and moral courage, for there are people who have the former without the latter … physical courage must also be joined by intelligence, for, as the Chinese proverb puts it, ‘a general who is stupid and courageous is a calamity.’ Physical, combined with moral, courage makes the possessor resolute, and I would say … that the primary quality is resolution. That is what enables a man to prevail.”19

  * It would take—and has taken—separate treatises to describe the main differences between the French and Italian schools, but a few pointers may be useful.

  Italian foils and épées had as their principal characteristic the crossbar, a direct descendant of the Spanish sword, but with the ends cut down so that they did not pass beyond the edges of the guard. In the old days the extended crossbar was used to snag an opponent’s sword against one’s bar and blade, allowing the fencer to close the distance and attack with his “free” hand—which often held another weapon. The purpose of reducing the crossbar was to give greater strength both to parries and to attacks on the opponent’s blade.

  The French eliminated the crossbar completely when they discovered that skillful use of the fingers could compensate for and surpass the use of the wrist. The Italians would bind the pommel of their foil to the wrist, making finger-play almost impossible. In an Italian en garde the arm would be extended, as in the old Spanish style, bending only in order to parry. At the outset, the French called for the arm to be held no more than three inches from the body, the elbow bent, the weapon pointed at the opponent’s eyes. The legs were also positioned slightly differently, and the two countries developed different systems of parries. The Italians seldom made attacks with a simple lunge, but always began by advancing and “taking” (that is, hitting or otherwise controlling) the blade, the movement being initiated from outside lunging distance and often completed by a coupé (passing over the opposing blade). The stiffness of the arm, another legacy of the Spanish school, made force an essential component.

  The French advocated deep, long lunges, and advancing only to get close enough for an attack. Actions on the blade were unusual. Against Italians, the stop-thrust was often used, but rarely against fellow Frenchmen.

  † An Italian rulebook on etiquette in the salle runs: “Article 2: On entering, as on leaving, it is necessary to shake hands with everybody in the room; Article 5: It is absolutely obligatory every time when one is hit to announce the touch, saying “Toccato”; Article 6: if a fencer is by chance disarmed, the other, regardless of his social rank, must pick up the weapon and hand it to his adversary by the guard, in order to avoid even the idea of haughtiness.”1

  ‡ Agesilao had his rivals even in Italy, chief among them Eugenio Pini from Livorno, who could be just as short-tempered. When he fought Rue “The Invincible,” the French master who, hit twice in succession, failed to acknowledge being hit as etiquette dictated, Pini pulled the button from his foil and with his next attack ripped open Rue’s jacket. He then tore off his mask and shouted, “I suppose that one didn’t arrive either?”3

  § While from 1921 on the world’s fencers came together each non-Olympic year, no world title was at stake: no one thought of calling these championships anything other than “European,” since the main fencing nations were all to be found in Europe. Then, in 1937, the competitions were rechristened “World Championships,” and for a curious reason. At that time Italy, under Mussolini, was energetically pursuing sporting success for national prestige. Anyone who carried off an Olympic or world title received decorations and considerable privileges, such as free travel and free seats at state theaters. Italian fencers found that the European titles they won were not considered for such rewards, and mainly to oblige them the FIE—of which Italy was one of the most powerful members—accorded the European championships “world” status.

  ‖ Even the Italians are hard on their great champion. An international sabreur from Padua explains, “You must understand that Mangiarotti was an épéeist—the dead weapon of the dueling tradition. As the saying goes, Italy has always liked épée, but she is fascinated by saber and loves foil as her son.” Claude Lévi-Strauss has also noted, it doesn’t matter how much an activity claims to be a brotherhood against the rest of the world: there is always a hierarchy—and an enormous amount of concealed hostility.

  a The following conversation, supposedly overheard at the first “electric foil” championships, was widely quoted: First bystander: “What a beautiful counterriposte!” Second bystander: “Yes, old habits die hard.”

  Az okos gazda a kárt is jóra fordítja. (A clever master turns even a loss into a gain.)

  —HUNGARIAN PROVERB

  If you want to find out about fencers, go up behind one as he faces a practice target. Burst a balloon behind his back. The foilist will immediately lunge at the pad. The épéeist will stand his ground, immobile but alert. The sabreur will swing round and assault you.

  —HUNGARIAN AXIOM

  IN THE EARLY 1950S THE SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY BOARD OF THE U.S. Atomic Energy Commission convened in Washington, D.C. A first count of the members showed a minority absent, but still a quorum; another count enabled the chairman to ask his colleagues, in his faultless native Hungarian, “Shall we conduct this meeting in the mother tongue?” Agreed and done.1

  Hungary doesn’t just produce—and export—nuclear physicists. Hungarians have consistently proved good at odd things: water polo, a branch of mathematics involving game theory, boxing—and fencing. As Giorgio Santelli, the Italian master brought up in Budapest, said, “The Hungarians are a very warlike people with martial traditions. After all, they have been fighting the Turks for centuries.” Hungary remains the only country with a sabreur—a resplendent nineteenth-century hussar on horseback—on one of its banknotes. (Though Denmark has a centaur brandishing a short sword.) Yet the country failed to win independence from the Hapsburgs in 1848 and was defeated again in 1956; maybe as a nation accustomed to defeat the Hungarians are more adaptable, and able to get their own back.* Anyway, and above all, Hungary is a nation of sabreurs. This chapter tells the story of Hungarian saber, and of an extraordinary exodus.

  In Hungary saber is accepted as the national weapon, the chosen arm of the country’s wars against the Tartars, Ottoman Turks, and other invaders, ever since the conquering Turks introduced them to the curved weapons of the East in the sixteenth century. The scimitar, with its keen arc-shaped edge, is the child of the Persian shamsheer, and by the late eighteenth century both Hungarian and Polish cavalry were armed with versions of it. Hungarian duels were consequently fought with cavalry sabers, and the first sporting sabers were derived from this heavy and powerful instrument.

  The first modern school of fencing opened its doors in 1851, when “the father of Hungarian saber,” Joseph Keresztessy (1810–72) began to teach his students simple, short swings and parries that emanated from circular wrist motions, pioneering a new Hungarian style. Not long after, an Italian master, Carlo Pessina, went to Russia to study Cossack swordsmanship. He returned home convinced that the Steppe horsemen were so accurate with their sabers because they were cutting not from the wrist, as was being taught elsewhere, but from the elbow, holding the wrist “in one piece” with the forearm, this enabling them to perform astonishing feats with absolute sureness and precision. This style was taken up throughout Italy and documented in a widely disseminated book by the northern Italian master Giuseppe Radaelli.2 It was Radaelli who invented the light sporting saber, giving Italians a priceless advantage against opponents armed with the heavy conventional military weapon. The target in saber fencing is restricted to everything above the hips, a fact that is generally attributed to the mistaken notion that mounted cavalry would not strike the enemy’s legs or horses. The truth is that the leg remained a valid
target in both combat and competitive saber well into the second decade of the twentieth century.†

  Part of the attraction of this new style was that it followed the actions of actual duels. Cuts were made with “draw”—in other words, they were made to penetrate an adversary’s skin. Any attack had to be firmly parried or completely avoided, just as in a real fight. The cuts, when they arrived, were so powerful that fencers had to wear padded clothing and line their masks with iron and leather to avoid being knocked out. Sabreurs looked more like deep-sea divers than lithe athletes.4 The sabers were correspondingly heavier than anything used today: the blades at this stage being 10 millimeters wide, contracting successively to 6 millimeters, then 4 millimeters, until finally the ultrathin, V-section blade evolved. The weapons of the 1880s literally required strong-arm tactics.

  Hungarian fencers, increasingly frustrated at the lack of opportunity to test their skills against foreign competitors, constantly debated which style was better, their own or that of the Italians. Until the 1930s Hungarians trained only at saber: parents sent their children to clubs specifically to learn the weapon, to prepare them to win duels.

  In 1896, the year of the first modern Olympics, Hungary elected not to take part. Instead, the Hungarian Athletic Club (MAC) organized a Millennium Exposition tournament (to mark the Hungarian Conquest of Central Europe) in foil, épée, and saber; it would transform Hungary’s standing in the sport. All the leading European fencers were invited, amateurs and professionals alike—and they came. The Italians and French carried off the laurels, with Hungarian amateurs picking up the occasional victory. A Hungarian actually came second-best amateur among the forty-four contestants in the saber event, but Hungary’s outmoded techniques meant its fencers otherwise languished well behind those from the leading nations.