Customer Reviews

The History of Fencing : Foundations of Modern European Swordplay

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Maestro Gaugler's book does not copy Castle's pioneering work, rather, it complements it, filling in the history of the Italian tradition, as well as more recent fencing history, through the 20th century. The tack taken in the (unfortunately, relatively slim) chapters on the 16th and 17th century is more of the historical masters as antecedents to modern practice, in keeping with the central thesis that fencing has been a continuous tradition from the earliest times to the present. While this is undeniably an important and central truth, it unfortunately does not leave much room to tell us how, exactly, the swordplay of Marozzo or Agrippa was performed, and how, also, it differed from the modern. This lack of context, both social and martial, is somewhat bothersome. To those who are primarily interested in historical swordplay, though M. Gaugler makes clear the essential point that a firm foundation in classical modern fencing is indispensable, the paucity of historical trivia may be seen by some as a shortcoming. Finally, the entirety of the significant and fascinating Spanish school of rapier fence, la verdadera destreza, is glossed over.

This is the most fascinating mainstream fencing history since Egerton Castle's "Schools and Masters of Fence," which was written at the end of the nineteenth century. William Gaugler's writing, the product of both scholar and fencing master, is always clear and precise. "The History of Fencing" belongs in every fencing and sword library. I recommend it highly.

This book is unique in that it shows the development of modern fencing using the unique understanding of a man who is a fencing master and an academic. Using only orginal sources a complete picture of the development of fencing results. The only possible weakness is the neglect of post 1945 hungarian, polish, german and russian works. Although it can be argued that form the point of view of fencing technique these are a combination of the french and italian fencing schools, in practice they are different. As inclusion of these works would have either made the work too large, or reduced the details of the material covered, exclusion of these works is not really a problem. In itself this book should be required reading for all fencing masters and for all serieus practioners of the sport.

Don't let any of the so-called "shortcomings" I wrote of above stop you from buying this book-- you really will get an excellent education.

M. Gaugler is well known in the SF Bay region for his ethocentric devotion to the now archaic Italian handle for modern competition, and his ethnocentric devotion to his Italian history to the exclusion of the huge history of the development of fencing in France for example, where the second main school of fencing developed simultaneously to the Italian. M. Gaugler seems to have been on a one man lifetime mission to resurrect the abandoned Italian grip regardless to the detriment of his students who depart comepletely misinformed on reality. He seems to hate that the French handle has turned out to be superior for modern use rather than the Italian. Don't get me wrong, this is an excellent book, but don't think for a minute that it is the whole story - not a bit.