French school of fencing

There are medieval predecessors, such as the Burgundian Le jeu de la hache ("The Play of the Axe") of ca.

One master produced by this school was Henry de Saint-Didier, author of a 1573 treatise titled Traicté contenant les secrets du premier livre sur l'espee seule (Treatise containing the secrets of the first book on the single sword), dedicated to Charles IX.

[1][2][3] Earlier, in 1597, the great traveller Seigneur de Villamont translated Girolamo Cavalcabo of Bologna’s treatise into French, along with a shorter piece by Paternostrier of Rome.

The modern foil was developed in France as a training technique in the middle of the 18th century; it provided practice of fast and elegant thrust fencing with a smaller and safer weapon than an actual dueling sword.

German students took up that practice and developed the Pariser ("Parisian") thrusting small sword for their academic fencing bouts.

Pariser small sword, derived from the French foil