C.1. de Bazancourt and Burton - Two Naturalist Curricula

The classical period is distinguished by a very large body of blade actions, ranging from one to four tempos in duration.  This selection is documented in the Academy's Classical Fencing Actions Project, at the time of this post 45 pages in length and continuing to grow.  However, not all fencers and Fencing Masters believed this variety and complexity was necessary or even desirable.  There was a significant movement toward simplification of technique by a group called variously the Naturalists or Naturists.  Cesar Lecat Baron de Bazancourt (1810-1865) and Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890) appear to have been in this camp.  Both men were familiar with the sword, de Bazancourt as a military historian and veteran of several campaigns on the staff of Emperor Napoleon III, and Burton as a soldier, explorer, and reputedly Fencing Master.  Both wrote remarkably similar stories about an evening dialog among gentlemen discussing fencing, and both provided curriculum for fencing instruction with the foil that fit the Naturalist model.   

Baron de Bazancourt's Les Secrets de l'Epee was first published in 1862, reprinted in 1875, translated by C. F. Clay in 1900 as Secrets of the Sword, and reprinted by Laureate Press in 1998.  This volume is an important exposition of the arguments for the simplification of fencing instruction and technique, preceding even the classical period, but seen as valuable during it.   In de Bazancourt's system there are four classifications of actions which form the principles of fencing:

(1)  Simple attacks

• Straight thrust
• Disengagement

(2)  Simple parries

• Quarte
• Tierce
• Seconde
• Low Quarte, or Quinte

(3)  Composite attacks

• One-Two
• Beat Straight Thrust
• Beat Disengage
• Feint Disengage
• Feint Cut-Over
• Cut-Over and Disengage in either Tierce or Quarte

(4)  Composite parries

• Counter-Quarte
• Counter-Tierce
• Circle

Note that Quinte and Low Quarte were the same parry in some sources, and de Bazancourt does not distinguish them apart.  The composite parries present a challenge.  Clay's translation describes counter-quarte and counter-tierce as identical to the movement patterns of the cut-over and disengages in the same line.  This is not a common description, and, if accurate, will require some practice to reliably perform.  It would appear to require a fairly high raise of the blade in the coupe, consistent with some of the descriptions of the coupe in the first years of the classical period.  The circle parry appears to be the more common circular parry.

Burton's The Sentiment of the Sword: A Country-House Dialogue was published in 1911 after his death.  It is a copy of the form, story-line, and many of the literary devices of de Bazancourt's work, but with changes to an English environment and the addition of detail and discussion.  Although today we would view this as close to plagiarism, copying the form of other writer's work was not uncommon in the 1700s and 1800s.  Burton adopts the same classifications of actions, arranged differently but makes substitutions in the actual techniques.

ATTACKS

(1)  Simple attacks

• Straight thrust - especially in carte against the right handed opponent
• Disengagement
• Cut-Over

(2)  Compound attacks

• One-Two
• Beat Straight Thrust
• Beat Disengage
• Liement (binding the opponents' blade from high to low line)

PARRIES 

(1)  Simple parries

• Tierce
• Carte
• Seconde (Low Carte)

(2)  Compound or counter parries 

• Counters or Demi-Circle (half-circles in Tierce and Carte)
• Full Circles

When we compare the two curricula, we find that:

• The simple attacks are the same with the addition of the coupe by Burton. 
• The simple parries both include fourth and third, de Bazancourt has what appears to be a traditional second, and both have a form of low fourth.
• The greatest variance is in the compound attacks with one-two, beat straight thrust, and beat disengage being common to both.  Burton adds the bind.  De Bazancourt two attacks prepared by feints and the action which is later termed Tour d'Epee, the coupe-disengage.
• The compound parries both include the circular parry, but appear to vary on what a counter parry is.

In summary, both of these approaches share a significant portion of the same techniques.  Both generally consider the same types of actions as simple or compound/composed.  The high number of techniques is 15 (de Bazancourt) and the low 12 (Burton).  And two experienced and reputedly quite skilled fencers believed that this limited set of techniques was sufficient to be successful in classical period fencing.  If you are looking for a curriculum to teach as the core of a classical fencing program, these may be a useful starting point.

Copyright 2019 by Walter G. Green III.
  

de Bazancourt and Burton - Two Naturalist Curricula by Walter G. Green III is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.