French Tempo

Those familiar with any of my work likely know that I primarily focuses on the Italian sources when it comes to historical swordplay. I do a decent impression of a diestro and can name all of four guards in German, but otherwise that’s about as far afield as I tend to go. Recently, though, I decided to try out something new.

One of my pet projects for the past few years has been trying to figure out what being a fencing maestro entailed during the period I study. Sometimes the answer is just Marozzo complaining that it’s not like it was back in the old days and now people are just running around willy-nilly calling themselves maestri without any certifyinng body to evaluate them. Other times, though, I find something with a bit more substance.

This past week I finally finished a read through of the “Archives of the Masters of Arms of Paris”, translated by Chris Slee. The overview here is that the Masters of Arms of Paris were a similar body to the London Masters of Defense, an organization those of us in the English speaking world are more likely to have heard of. Essentially, they were a professional organization recognized by the state in 1567 and kept going until the French revolution. They existed as a way to standardize what testing for different ranks looked like and making sure that fencing masters in the area were of a certain caliber. At the same time, they also functioned almost like a medieval guild, ensuring that no one outside of their good graces could be employed as a professional fencing master in Paris.

My plan is to write a couple pieces based off what I found in this book, but there’s one thing I want to focus in on for today. Tempo.

Tempo is one of the main pillars of Italian (and later French) fencing, forming a way of thinking about the fight distinct from what the Spaniards and Germans of the time taught. In comparison to the other structures of measure (misura) and line/structure, tempo can often be the hardest to pin down as it’s something that only exists while the fencers are both moving and can’t just be pointed to in a freeze frame. In this book we get an essay from one Rene Francois, writing in 1622, entitled “Essay on the Marvel of Nature” that gives us a bit of an insight as to how the French took the Italian notion of tempo and brought it into their own fight.

Francois writes, “When one raises the right foot in order to advance, one calls that the tempo. From thjere, to take the tempo is about advancing. To gain the tempo is to anticipate your man and while he arranges himself to take his tempo you anticipate it” (page 94). While the Italians, most notably dall’Agocchie and Capoferro, only describe gaining the tempo as happening while your opponent is moving, here Francois is telling you to get yourself one step ahead before anyone has actually moved, similar to how Fabris encourages us to strike up a counter posture (contrapostura) even before we enter measure. As well, Italians often refer to tempo as the sword makes an action, but here Francois is primarily interested in what the foot is doing instead. He then continues, “Thus, to lose one’s tempo is when one knows not how to manage this advancing of his feet” (page 94). While the name “swordplay” inherently directs our attention to what you do with our swords, Francois here reminds us that it’s really footwork that does the most for us.

I remember an article years ago by a local kung fu school years ago talking about how all these martial arts magazines only had photos of people from the waist up. While what you do with your hands is generally the sexy part of fighting, it’s important to remember that it’s your feet which are really driving the bus. There’s a reason a lot of traditional schools, both in kung fu and in fencing, just have you do footwork for your first year. It might not be the most exciting part, but if you want to control the tempo of the fight, you’re not going to be able to do so with two left feet.