British Infantry Officers Battle Swords in the 19th C...and up to 1914

[Peter Hudson]

Great replies... but hold on... ...
I have posed the question at post 1 in bold letters and now is the time face it... What was the problem? People were being trained were they not?

But were they being trained to Fence or Fight? This was the dilema ...

Trainers were teaching Fencing skills ..How could that fail?

And now I will place before you the situation... caused by the failure to teach fighting compounded by the wrong sort of sword ...often called a spike with I beams and hardly any cutting facility and the abject failure by the mainly two separate forms of Fencing and never the twain shall meet..and the infighting and disagreement ending in the whole thing being... The End of Swords...Fighting wins wars ...Fencing does not.

I turn to Matt Eastons brilliant paper and ask you all to read it to the end ...where you will see that the whole thing failed because ... we failed to teach Fighting and taught Fencing instead.
Please see https://www.google.com/books/edition...&kptab=getbook

Regards,
Peter Hudson.