Épeé: Bastard Child of Foil.

[I fence epee]

Basically, an epee is a small/court sword with a different guard.

[cornflower]

Yeah, of course, foil came first! Everybody needs a rough draft, don't they?

[peet]

I always tell people:

Yeah, foil is a training weapon.
But not training for epee.
Training for Killing People!

(As in a simulation of a duel in which you were actually trying to kill each other, and not just make the other guy bleed.)

Ok, back to your regularly scheduled religious debate!


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I still say:
Foil: My turn, your turn, my turn, your turn, my turn.
Epee: My turn, my turn, my turn, my turn, my turn.
Saber: ..................... MY TURN!
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-p

[Purple Fencer]

Originally Posted by Inquartata

I've never heard of him either, but FWIW what he says accords generally with what I've read elsewhere: the modern foil was invented as a practice tool for the smallsword, not the epee.

Think of foil and epee the way we do of hominids: there is more than one "line", not everything is necessarily descended from one common ancestor...

Well....that certainly explains the long held belief that sabeurs are knuckle-dragging Neanderthals..."uhn uhn....Thag lunge!!"

[parrythis]

Originally Posted by esskreemr

Many people seem to be laboring under the false impression that foil is merely a training tool for épeé.

Don't worry. It's no labor at all.

[esskreemr]

Originally Posted by needle

It's about sport reflecting reality, not about which weapon is older.

In that case, the reality is that 99.99% of us will never fence in a duel with real swords. If, by some chance, it does happen, I would be willing to bet on my ingrained instinct to stick 3-4 inches of steal through a vital target area over a scrape on the wrist...

[Black Jeebus]

Originally Posted by esskreemr

In that case, the reality is that 99.99% of us will never fence in a duel with real swords. If, by some chance, it does happen, I would be willing to bet on my ingrained instinct to stick 3-4 inches of steal through a vital target area over a scrape on the wrist...

And to parry those shots to our hearts in favor of just trying to pick off their hand before they hit us!

What I find funny is when epeeist claim they have the most realistic weapon. There was an epeeist at our club who made that claim and then proceeded to take a shot to the mask after picking off the opponents hand just cause they knew the mask hit would be timed out.

[grotto]

Originally Posted by esskreemr

In that case, the reality is that 99.99% of us will never fence in a duel with real swords. If, by some chance, it does happen, I would be willing to bet on my ingrained instinct to stick 3-4 inches of steal through a vital target area over a scrape on the wrist...

Ess,

that's fine so long as you don't start with your point in the air and expect the dueling sword to magically bend like a foil does for a flick. As for the "scrape on the wrist" having a sharp point go through your forearm I suspect will stop your opponent almost as effectively. and my training to make sure an attack does NOT land at all will serve me much better than but I had right of way!!!!! as my last dieing breath.

[Black Jeebus]

Actually you would be surprised I think about what happens when the weapon penetrates the arm. If it is an even remotely substantial individual the arm might continue on its course just sliding down your weapon. Particularly with a point weapon with no edge to it, instead of severing anything that would force someone to drop a weapon you might just lose the ability to move your own weapon while your opponents tip continues on to its target.

Fencer A lunges for the heart/head/whatever
F B picks off wrist
F B's weapon drives into Fa's forearm but doesn't actually sever anything
Fa's weapon arm though impaling itself on Fb's weapon and taking considerable damage is not actually stopped by Fb's attack because of momentum, and continues into Fb's head/heart/whatever.

Remember one of the problems point weapons had was that they had a tendency to get stuck in people without actually immediatley stopping them. This is particularly true of limb hits (arms/legs).

They are however extremely effective at hitting vital areas that those silly edged weapons cannot

[Epee_Pox]

Holy cow, both Ess and Inq are right! Countdown to armageddon...

The best summation, though, came from Needle:

Originally Posted by needle

Foil as a sport evolved into "let's compete to see who follows the proper training routine (ROW) better",

whereas epee evolved into "let's fence a safe duel (well, series of duels) to see who's more likely to win if we did it for real".

(Of course the epee rules have since been corrupted to remove much of the incentive to protect oneself. But that's a recent change to the history.)

[Black Jeebus]

They should go back to one touch epee with ties being double elimination. Of course this would really only slow each individual phrase down, since they only get one life and they have to make sure when they take the other guys he doesn't take theirs. But on the bright side their bouts would probably start to be nearly as short as a sabre bout, and maybe shorter than a foil one!

[Dan H]

At the risk of bringing up a... somewhat outmoded fencing pedagogue, how do you reconcile your claim that fencing duels were fought with the small sword with Aldo Nadi's firsthand accounts from the early 20th Century of fighting duels with fencing epees? If I remember his text correctly, they dueled with the same epees with which they practiced. They simply removed the buttons at the tips to expose a sharp point.
Hmm... we need to find someone who's been fencing for 100 years or so and ask him about this. Who's the ol... er, most distinguished member of these forums?

[Inquartata]

Different time periods. The smallsword was a thing of the past by Nadi's time. By then the duelling sword and later the epee had supplanted it as the main weapon for the ( sword ) duel, just as the smallsword itself had supplanted the earlier rapier...

[cfaustus]

Ess, you are half right.

Foil did come first and was originally the training tool for foil. However, the very technology which went into making foil an excellent training tool also was the reason it eventually deviated from being used to train for the serious encounter. The foil with its rectangular cross section was an advancement in metalurgy. It was possible to make a very light weapon and also forge in a nice foible for safe practice. The lightness of the foil allowed it to be used for repetitious drilling without fatiguing the hand. After some time a new trend started in the world: the wearing of swords in public began to decline. Fencing masters who needed to maintain an income began to market fencing as an athletic activity, rather than self defense. The foil was the perfect tool for promoting fencing as a hobby. Due to its lightness it could be manipulated through many prolongued and intricate phrases. It became fashionable in the salle to simply try to fence beautifully for these prolongued phrases. It can be argued wether such academic fencing came before or after the marketing of fencing as an artistic athletic game for the noblese, however it is clear from Masters from Angelo to Barbasetti as well as from other contemporaries of this transition such as Bazencourt, that a dichotomy had begun to exist in the fencing salle between those studying to defend themselves in the serious encounter and those simply interested in the academic game. The later were the predecessors to modern Olympic fencing, so yes, we do have the foil to thank for the modern sport.

Those who were still practicing for the serious encounter soon came to realize that foil practice as it had become to be taught, no longer corresponded to skills which would be needed in a serious duel. They needed a new weapon, one which could train them properly for the duel. Better still if they could train with the same weapon that they would use. Of course, at the same time, the duel had become more of a 'safe' enterprise (perhaps influenced by many of the same factors which made foil fencing so academic). Duels were now fought to the first blood. One could get into serious trouble in most countries in Europe if one killed another person in a duel. Both the Church and State were getting pretty sick of the old duels to the death. As such one did not need the weapon to be so stiff to necessarily penetrate deeply. Metalurgy had continued to improved and they could now produce a blade with a similar cross section to the smallsword but with a more flexible foible for safer practice. Thus was born the dueling sword, or as it was originally know in France: the epee du combat (later shortened to just 'Epee' which simply means 'sword') In addition, the use of the pointe d'arret, a pronged stopping point further allowed the use of the dueling sword for duels to first blood rather than death. The point would prevent deep entry to the body, however against bare skin, would draw the requisite blood necessary to satisfy one's honor. As a measure of protection, the guard on the epee was larger than its predecessors, the smallsword, precisely because of the custom of going for the arm to end the duel by first blood.

So yes, the epee is the only one of the three modern weapons which bears a close resemblance to a true dueling weapon (The sabre is a scaled down version of an already scaled down training weapon - the Raedellian sabre... the modern sabre is closer to the foil than the epee, which is why both are conventional weapons... in form they were intended for academic practice and in use, they were developed to be used eventually only as equipment in a game). The modern epee with its electric or rubber tip and more whippy blade is, however, not quite the same as its original form. Add to that what has been already noted, that changes to the rules of epee have removed its use from serious practice (Barbasetti even noted a divergence in the use of the epee for a 'game' and for the serious encounter at his time). It is mostly the rules, however, and not the weapon itself which remove modern sport epee from its martial origins. If the rules were rolled back (discouraging double hits first of all - so scoring points against) the modern epee would still serve as a pretty good training weapon for a duel with one to first blood. Add a pointe d'arret and voila!

As a traditional fencer of classical pedagogy, I must say, I DO NOT IN ANY WAY PROMOTE OR CONDONE THE FIGHTING OF DUELS. We have better ways to deal with such things, such a fairly just Civil court system. If you don't agree and decide you want to duel anyhow, you may find yourself subject to our less than just Criminal court system.

[cornflower]

Originally Posted by Purple Fencer

"uhn uhn....Thag lunge!!"

I prefer 'Eeehnq'

[Inquartata]

Originally Posted by cornflower

I prefer 'Eeehnq'

All women of taste and discrimination do.

[Zilverzmurfen]

Originally Posted by Inquartata

All women of taste and discrimination do.

None of them to be found in the desert..?

[Inquartata]

Precious few, alas.

[cfaustus]

Originally Posted by cfaustus

Ess, you are half right.

Foil did come first and was originally the training tool for foil

Ack! I meant: Foil did come first and was originally the training tool for smallsword. I really must refrain from writing these things while I am at work... I never have time to proofread them!