Today we understand the target at sabre as stopping at a line drawn across the points of the hips. However, this has not always been the case. Early in the classical period, the forward leg was considered by a substantial part of the fencing community to be part of the sabre target, with some debate as to whether parries or evasions should be used to protect it. There are three solutions that appear to be in play during the period:
(1) Evasion only: The French Ministry of War's 1877 Fencing Manual directs that cuts to the leg or thigh should not be parried, but rather evaded by a slip (or voiding action). This same evasion appears in Rondelle (1892).
(2) Evasion combined with a parry: Vendrell y Eduart (1879) suggests that the low line leg parries of 3rd (outside low line) and 4th (inside low line) must be performed with evasion by a leg slip.
(3) Parry only: Merelo y Casedemunt (1862) describes the low line parries that defend the forward leg as 5th (outside low line) and 6th (inside low line). In 1889 Hutton specifies Low Prime or Septime to defend the low inside and Seconde or Octave to protect the low outside. By 1891 he had simplified the choices to Septime and Seconde.
The evasion of choice was the slip, a voiding of the leg and thigh by withdrawing the front foot and leg to the rear past the rear leg. The final position depicted by the 1877 French manual and by Vendrell y Eduart in 1879 was with the feet approximately the same distance apart as they would have been in a normal guard. As a result the torso was rotated to a position at right angles to the line of direction in order to preserve some reach with the weapon arm.
Sometime during the 1890s it appears that the slip started to be deleted from the lexicon of classical fencing movements. It is worth asking why? We have not located an authoritative statement, but by 1889 rules included in Hutton's Cold Steel limit the target to above the waist. If the rules commonly used eventually eliminated the forward leg as a target, there would have been no requirement to defend it.
Note that Hutton in both Cold Steel (1889) and The Swordsman (1891) still uses the term "Slipping," to decsribe two actions: (1) the withdrawal of the arm to evade an attack and (2) what is termed in later years of the classical period as a reassemblement.
However, it may be just as likely that the slip limited the ability to riposte and exposed additional target. A step back with the rear foot meant that the foot had to regain its original position before the riposte could reach full extension. As a result more movement was necessary to execute the riposte and thus that the arrival on the opponent's target was slower. A second consideration may have been that the rotation of the torso required during the slip to keep the blade as far forward as possible exposed the entire torso as easily reached target for point thrusts or banderole and girdle (abdominal or belly) cuts.
Sources:
France. Ministry of War; Fencing Manual; translation by Chris Slee; [fencing manual]; reprint
by Long Edge Press, no place; 1877 reprinted 2017.
Hutton, Alfred; Cold Steel: The Art of Fencing with the Sabre; reprinted edition with added introduction; [fencing manual]; William Clowes & Sons, Limited, London; reprint by Dover Publications Inc., Mineola, New York, United States of America; 1889 reprint no date.
Hutton,
Alfred; The Swordsman: A Manual of Fence for the Foil, Sabre, and Bayonet; [fencing manual]; H. Grevel & Company, London, United
Kingdom; reprint by The Naval and Military Press, Uckfield, East Sussex, United
Kingdom; 1891, reprint no date.
Merelo y
Casedemunt, Jose; Manual of Fencing: Compilation of the Most Principal
Techniques that Constitute the True Fencing of the Spanish Saber and of the
Foil; translation by John Jakelsky; [fencing
manual]; Typography Establishment of R. Labajos, Madrid, Spain; translated
and reprinted by John Jakelsky, Xativa, Valencia, Spain; 1878, reprinted 2019.
Copyright 2021 by Walter G. Green III
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