12/03/2026
Here's a quick update on the Ivanowski translation project. It's changed. A lot. It's morphed into something much, much bigger.
The Ivanowski translation is on hold. There's already a great translation of this text by Maciej Bojarski with an essay on its context within the history of Polish sabre fencing.
In its place, I writing a history of how the French cavalry developed its official training manual from nothing, the legal battles and table flipping that occurred as veterans and returning émigrés fought to have their texts chosen by the government as the official training manual, and finally the publication of the Ordinance by the Ministry of War. Some work has been done on this period in French, particularly by that dead-set legend, Julien Garry, but I can find nothing on it in English. It's history which deserves to be remembered.
To give you a brief taste of what will be included in the volume, let's have a quick look at the timeline.
• In 1804, the Napoleonic administration published the "provisional" ordinance for cavalry training, which was roundly criticised for not including exercises for training the cavalrymen to use their sabres.
• After its publication, different folks tried to fill the gap. I've translated the notes of Desmichels, colonel of the 31st Chasseurs-a-cheval, as they were mobilised for deployment to Spain in 1811.
• Alexandre Muller, a Napoleonic veteran appointed as an instructor at the cavalry schools at Luneville and Saumur, wrote a fencing manual which he tried to get accepted as official since he was already teaching it with approval.
• Comte de Durfort, a returning émigré from a family that had a cavalry regiment named after it in the Ancien Regime, was appointed head of the cavalry school at Saint-Cyr. He tried to get his translation of a German training manual accepted as official.
• Others, such as a Napoleonic veteran named Chatelain, fell back on what they knew of fencing salles before the Revolution. Chatelain wrote a training manual in a very classical smallsword style on foot with notes on how it could be adapted to mounted swordsmanship.
• Finally, in 1829, the Ministry of War published the official Ordinance which outlined a method for training mounted swordsmanship which was in service until the Franco-Prussian War in 1870.
Translations of the key texts from Desmichels, Muller, Durfort, and Chatelain outlining how to fight with sabres on horseback will be included in the volume along with an extensive historical narrative, an comparison of the different fencing systems, and snippets showing the absolute madness of the very acrimonious 14-year long feud between Muller Durfort.
The translations and comparison will be of vital interest to practitioners and scholars of late Napoleonic and Bourbon Restoration fencing systems.
