6. The Rapier
Fleuret: French, a little flower or bud, after the button on the point of a practice sword; in English, the foil. London, autumn 1595: a young law student walks to an Italian fencing school in Blackfriars, and we follow the sword of the robe from Spain to Bologna, Rome, Madrid and Paris... Inside: officers at the city gate breaking off over-long rapiers, guards numbered one to four, the lunge, measure and time, an Englishman's challenge on a scaffold, the seven degrees of the lie, a geometry circle painted on a fencing floor, a duel in the most fashionable square in Paris, the real…
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