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I Never Cared Much for Swords. Then I Had to Fight with One
Duelling makes a comeback
On a grey November afternoon, clad in a borrowed—and somewhat smelly—fencing outfit, I spent two hours going through the basics of the aspiring duellist: saluting before putting on the protective mask, pinching the grip of the sword with the thumb and index finger, gliding back and forth while keeping the feet planted. Popular ones include the longsword, a heavy weapon with a cruciform hilt permitting a two-hand grip; the long and thin rapier, a civilians’ favourite in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and its nimbler version, the smallsword; and the sabre, typically a single-edged curved sword often used by the cavalry and tracing its origins to West Asia. Though pistols became the more common weapon of choice, the allure of the swordfight endured in literature, especially in the nineteenth century, when Romanticism and the invention of cheap paper ushered in the era of historical novels—action-packed books full of musketeers, crusaders, and outlaws, Cohen writes.
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