Schools and Masters of Fencing: From the Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century

The standard reference on historical swordsmanship since its 1885 publication, this volume is still widely considered the definitive work on fencing history and the art of European swordsmanship. The author, Egerton Castle, traces fencing from its roots in the unschooled brawling of the Middle Ages to its latter-day precision and refinement, focusing particularly on the 16th-century development of the rapier and the weapon's popularity in Renaissance Italy, where Italian masters founded the mode…