Vanishing Echoes of Violence

Early modern fencing manuals are an unusual group of texts. Simultaneously conduct manuals and instructional texts for martial artists, these texts deserve their own classification not only because they are generically different from other documents in the period, but also because the writers and audiences for these artifacts run the gamut from Old Money English aristocrats to hopeful immigrants from all across Europe. Early modern England was a sword culture, through and through, and at the turn of the seventeenth century, changes in military doctrine and the role of the aristocracy would fundamentally alter the way early modern Englishmen would relate to their swords, which would in turn change the way masculinity was defined. As sword combat became increasingly decentralized on the battlefield and aristocrats started taking a backseat role in the actual fighting, 1 the weapon that had stood as emblematic of traditional masculinity started to highlight the fragility of masculinity itself. Nobles who had used the battlefield as an opportunity to engage in one-on-one duels with opponents from the other army and prove their masculinity through victory were now serving bureaucratic functions for the army. Without that mechanism to prove themselves, young men began seeking new ways to prove their worthiness. As these changes were taking place during a time of upheaval and xenophobia, the conversation quickly took on not only the valences of masculine comportment but also of ethnocentrism. While England was trading traditional weapons of war and battlefield frays for private brawls using rapiers in the public streets, controversy quickly exploded regarding the status of English masculinity.