The Dreyfus Affair’s Connection With Modern Fencing

Until the period of the Dreyfus Affair duels, swordsmanship training was with either the smallsword or the saber.  There was, as yet, no such thing as epee.  The word “l’epee” was, simply, the French way of saying “sword”.  Just as in pistol dueling, in which there were matched sets of dueling pistols, during the mid to late nineteenth century, there were some matched sets of dueling swords.  The purpose of matched sets being to make sure that neither duelist had a weapon advantage over the other.

During the period of the Dreyfus affair, much controversy raged throughout France.  The big question was, “Was Dreyfus guilty of treason, as charged and convicted, or was he an honorable soldier who was made a scapegoat by anti-semites and those who wished to find excuses for France’s utter humiliation at the hands of Prussia, during the Franco-Prussian War?”

Whatever the case, passions ran very high throughout France, and even beyond.  In every part of France, there were heated arguments and demands for satisfaction.  Between 1896 and 1901, many duels were fought over the question of Dreyfus’ innocence or guilt, or insults suffered during arguments over the same.  Most of these duels were fought with the nineteenth century equivalent of the smallsword.

Since the early eighteenth century, the smallsword had been the weapon of choice of the European aristocracy and, as a result, of the gentry generally, or of those who pretended to gentility.  Nowhere was this more true than in France.  As a result, nearly all young French gentlemen, or those who pretended to gentry, were trained as a part of their education, in the art of the smallsword.  Their training weapon was what is, today, called the foil.

But, there was a complication!  Dueling, in France, had been illegal for more than two hundred years.  Before the French Revolution, however, it was approved, even encouraged, by the aristocracy, and accepted by the public.  But, after the revolution, things began to change.  Now, it was seen as elitism, the opposite of egalitarianism.  Now, dueling was discouraged, and sometimes harshly so.  For killing a man in a duel, one could be imprisoned for life, and sent to Devil’s Island, off the coast of French Guiana.

Now, in order to avoid a charge of murder, duelists began to duel to “first blood”, as opposed to death or disablement, as previously done.  But, they continued to duel with the smallsword, using the techniques traditionally taught for the smallsword, which meant to attack the torso, which often resulted in death.

Like us, today, when the young men finished their schooling and started seeking wealth and success, they left their school training and athletics behind them, including their fencing lessons.  Out of school for years and pursuing careers, when these same young men found themselves challenging, or being challenged, to a duel over arguments about the Dreyfus affair, they found themselves out of practice and out of shape, their fencing skills rusty.  It was then that they rushed back to their old fencing masters in droves, to prepare themselves for their forth coming duel.  Hundreds were either killed, or severely wounded, and they found little sympathy in the courts if they won their duel by killing someone.

It was then that one or two fencing master began to realize that their students didn’t have to kill their opponents.  All they had to do was draw blood.  This began a search for new methods and techniques.  A few fencing master began teaching their students to aim their points at their opponents wrists, arms, or legs, rather than their torsos.  After all, they could draw blood as easily from those targets as from the torso.  And further, there was a much lower chance of killing someone or spending the rest of their lives in prison, or as a fugitives as the result of a duel.

This new technique proved very successful.  Those who were trained in this new method won 80% of their duels.  As a result, many others rushed to the new system, learning new techniques from the fencing masters who had invented them.  Then, as suddenly as they had started, the Dreyfus Affair duels ended.  The last duel connected with the Dreyfus Affair, is said to have been fought in 1901.

A few years later, a group of fencers with a London fencing club, while discussing the Dreyfus Affair duels, suggested, “Why don’t we try to re-create the atmosphere of the Dreyfus Affair duels?”  As a result of this challenge, a fencing competition was held in a London park, using the techniques and weapons (blunted) of they Dreyfus Affair era.  The result was a new fencing discipline (and weapon) called “dueling sword,” or epee.

The epee proved to be a popular fencing weapon, and was added to the list of weapons (foil, epee, and saber) used in modern Olympic style fencing.  It was the first of the three to be successfully adapted to electrical scoring.  With it’s cup style bell guard, it bears a strong resemblance to the cup guard rapier of the seventeenth century.  But, like the foil, it was actually derived from the nineteenth style small sword, of the Dreyfus Affair era, known generally as dueling swords, now more commonly called epees.

The Tulsa Fencing Club teaches both foil technique and epee technique.  The Tulsa Dueling Society keeps alive the historical effort to reproduce the atmosphere of the Dreyfus Affair duels by sponsoring periodic Duels At Dawn, in which the duelists compete in outdoor one touch (simulated drawing of blood) epee competitions.  These competitions are, like the Dreyfus Affair duels, regardless of the weather.  Unlike the Dreyfus Affair duels, these duels are with blunted points and electrically scored, rather than by the actual drawing of blood.

[Roger Van Denhende, Chairman Emeritus, September 2, 2011]

The Political Scandal

The Dreyfus affair was a political scandal that divided France in the 1890s and the early 1900s. It involved the conviction for treason in November 1894 of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish descent.  Sentenced to life imprisonment for allegedly having communicated French military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris, Dreyfus was sent to the penal colony at Devil’s Island in French Guiana and placed in solitary confinement.

Two years later, in 1896, evidence came to light identifying a French Army major named Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy as the real culprit. After high-ranking military officials suppressed the new evidence, a military court unanimously acquitted Esterhazy after the second day of his trial. The Army accused Dreyfus of additional charges based on false documents fabricated by a French counter-intelligence officer, Hubert-Joseph Henry, who was seeking to re-confirm Dreyfus’s conviction. Henry’s superiors accepted his documents without full examination.

Word of the military court’s framing of Alfred Dreyfus and of an attendant cover-up began to spread, chiefly due to J’accuse, a vehement public open letter published in a Paris newspaper in January 1898 by the notable writer Émile Zola. Progressive activists put pressure on the government to reopen the case.

In 1899 Dreyfus was brought back to Paris from Guiana for another trial. The intense political and judicial scandal that ensued divided French society between those who supported Dreyfus (the Dreyfusards), such as Anatole France, Henri Poincaré and Georges Clémenceau, and those who condemned him (the anti-Dreyfusards), such as Hubert-Joseph Henry and Edouard Drumont, the director and publisher of the anti-semitic newspaper La Libre Parole.

Eventually, all the accusations against Alfred Dreyfus were demonstrated to be baseless. In 1906 Dreyfus was exonerated and reinstated as a major in the French Army. He served during the whole of World War I, ending his service with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.

[From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]