French School of Fencing

French School Of Fencing

The history of fencing in France begins in the 16th century, with the adoption of Italian styles of rapier fencing.

There are medieval predecessors, such as the Burgundian Le jeu de la hache ("The Play of the Axe") of ca. 1400, but the history of the classical French school begins with the foundation of the Académie des Maistres en faits d’armes de l’Académie du Roy (also known as the Ecole Française d’Escrime) by Charles IX of France in December 1567.

Henry de Sainct Didier was a 16th century French fencing master, author of a 1573 treatise, titled

Traicté contenant les secrets du premier livre sur l’espée seule, mère de toutes armes, qui sont espée dague, cappe, targue, bouclier, rondelle, l’espée deux mains & deux espées, avec ses pourtraictures, ayans les armes au poing por se deffendre & offencer à un mesme temps des coups qu’on peut tirer, tant en assillant qu’en deffendent, fort utile & profitable por adextrer la noblesse, & suposts de Mars: redigé par art, ordre & practique

(Treatise containing the secrets of the first book on the single sword, mother of all weapons, which are the sword-dagger, cappe, targe, buckler, shield, two-handed sword & dual-sword, with pictures, including handweapons for defence and attack, and thrusts that can be made both attacking and defending, very useful & profitable for the increased dexterity of the nobility and the adherents of Mars: refined by art, order and practice.)

Sainct Didier was from a Provençal noble family. His treatise is dedicated to Charles IX.

Fencing in France was developed into a sport during the 17th century, with codificaion of rules and terminology and a system of teaching, by masters such as Le Perche du Coudray (1635, 1676, teacher of Cyrano de Bergerac), Besnard (1653, teacher of Descartes), Philibert de la Touche (1670) and Labat of Toulouse (1690).

The foil was invented in France as a training technique in the middle of the 18th century; it provided practice of fast and elegant thrust fencing with a smaller and safer weapon than an actual dueling sword. Fencers blunted (or "foiled") its point by wrapping a foil around the blade or fastening a knob on the point ("blossom", French fleuret). German students took up that practice and developed the Pariser ("Parisian") thrusting small sword in Academic fencing.

By the 18th century, the French school had become the western European standard to the extent that Domenico Angelo, an Italian-born master teaching in England, published his L'Ecole des Armes in French in 1763. It was extremely successful and became a standard fencing manual over the following 50 years, throughout the Napoleonic period. Angelo's text was so influential that it was chosen to be included under the heading of "Éscrime" in the Encyclopédie of Diderot.

The emergence of classical sports fencing in the 19th century was a direct continuation of the French tradition.