S10.c. Deladrier's Sabre Parries

Maitre d'Armes Clovis Deladrier was a Belgian Army Fencing Master trained at the Belgian Normal School of Physical Education.  From 1927 until his death in 1947 he served as the Fencing Master at the United State Naval Academy.  His book, Modern Fencing, published in 1948, is a predominantly a representation of the French School at the very end of the classical period, although Deladrier notes that he incorporated certain elements from other schools that he found useful.  Perhaps because he was training fencers who engaged in intercollegiate fencing, he is notable for his belief that fencers could be trained from the start in any weapon, not just foil.

Deladrier included a wider range of specific parries than found in the evolution of sabre fencing at this date:

• Head parry (see discussion in another post in this blog)
• Left flank parry (prime)
• Right flank parry (although he does not number this parry, it appears to be essentially the second parry executed with the arm at shoulder height)
• Tierce parry
• Low tierce parry
• Quarte parry
• Low quarte parry
• Seconde parry (a low outside parry executed with the hand at waist height)
• Quinte parry (an inside low line parry similar to the foil fifth parry)
• High right cheek parry (outside line)
• High left cheek parry (inside line)

With the exception of the two cheek parries, Deladrier identified the movement patterns for the counterparry (circular parry) for all of these parries.

Deladrier divided the parries into two parrying systems, a point down system and a point up system. The point up system, operating from a guard of tierce, consisted of the following parries:

• Tierce
• Quarte
• Low tierce
• Low quarte

The point down system, based on the high guard (Deladrier did not identify which guard was the high guard, but it seems likely to have been the right flank parry), consisted of the following parries:

• Head
• Prime (left flank parry)
• Right flank  
• High tierce 
• High Quarte

Deladrier believed that the point down system was superior because it allowed parries to better exploit the strength of the forte of the blade, to take the parry closer to the body increasing the distance travelled by the attack, and to better protect the head.  In contrast the point up system was viewed as allowing foil fencers to learn about sabre fencing without having to change their style of fencing.  However, the parries were weaker and, especially in the low tierce and low quarte, were vulnerable to hits that simply overpowered the parry.      

Source:

Deladrier, Clovis; Modern Fencing; [fencing manual]; United States Naval Institute, Annapolis, Maryland, United States of America; 1948.

Copyright 2020 by Walter G. Green III

Deladrier's Sabre Parries by Walter G. Green III is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.