Cudgeling, or European stick fighting, is an umbrella
term that covers various similar practices around the
world.
Fencing with sticks for sport is probably as old as
warfare. The Egyptians have the oldest known record of
a fencing match in the form of a temple relief from
1200 B.C.E. It depicts two fencers with blunted sticks
and masks, one of whom says: “On guard, and admire,
what my valiant hands shall do!”—an old but always
popular way of boasting.
History
Asia
The Indian art of silambam emphasizes the use of a
1.2-meter (4-foot) staff. After seven years’ training,
practitioners advance to other weapons and may use
their bare hands. Gatka is a stick- and knife-based
martial art from India and Pakistan. Gatka is the traditional fighting art of the Sikhs, a religious group in the
Punjab, neither Muslim nor Hindu. It is practiced today
by members of the 3H Foundation, the followers of Yogi
Bhajan, a Sikh leader and teacher. Sikhs have traditionally filled rolls of military and police in India. British
influence is seen in the use of a singlestick (a meterlong piece of bamboo with a leather handle) in place of
the sword for the lower levels of training. The techniques are practiced to drumbeats and performed with
a high stepping movement that is taught with a chanted
mantra. Horseback techniques are still taught.
Kalaripayattu, based in the southern Indian state of
Kerala, is a composite martial art. After two phases of
weaponless training, the third phase of Kalaripayattu
training is training in the use of various weapons,
which begins with the short staff and quarterstaff and
progresses to weapons such as the spear and shield,
sword and shield, daggers, knives, battle axes, and so on.
In the Philippines, when Fernando Magellan was
killed by the sharpened stick of a local chief during a
failed landing attempt on his round-the-world voyage
in 1521, the Spaniards had made their first bloody experience with “arnis.” Arnis, kali, and escrima are the
national weapon arts of the Philippines. All three have
in common the use of the stick in combat, either as itself or as a replacement for or representative of the
sword or knife. They have had full contact events with
stick that is much like old cudgeling or backswording
in 18th-century Europe. After conquering the island
group, the Spanish tried to root out this art. It was
passed on for centuries only in secrecy or family circles. But with Philippine independence after World
War II arnis appeared in public again, now as a stick
fencing sport with 0.76-meter (30-inch) long rattan
sticks.
Europe
The cudgel or singlestick was the practice weapon for
military sword, broadsword, or saber. The earliest
known manual of European fencing delineates techniques that are illustrated in other medieval documents depicting the training of knights or squires
and entertainments conducted with stick or sword
indiscriminately.
In England, from the Middle Ages, the common
man had to train at cudgel and buckler. Singlestick and
cudgel play was a bulwark of rugged English manliness
in the 19th century, according to Tom Brown’s School
Days, in which a backswording event that involves two
men trying to draw blood from each others’ scalps with
cudgels is recounted with relish. As recently as 1886,
the British army used singlestick drill to train recruits
for combat.
The quarterstaff, a stick 1.8 meters by 3 centimeters
(6 feet by 11/4 inches), was also a medieval weapon that
survived to modern times. Developed from a common
peasant weapon, it was mentioned in the training manuals of many countries. It formed the basis of training
with two-handed weapons. The pugil stick fights that
the U.S. Marines were force to drop from training in
1985 for reasons of safety appear to be from the same
set of techniques.
Stick fighting remained popular until Italian masters formalized saber fencing into a nonfatal sporting/training form with metal weapons in the late 19th
century. Few of these “extinct” fencing styles remain
from a long tradition of European fencing. Those that
survive in the main are subsumed with the styles studied in association with savate, a French form of unarmed combat.
Modern Sport and Combat
The survival of European stick fighting is associated
with savate—French footfighting. Savate may have
originated in pancration, a sport in the original
Olympics that combined wrestling, boxing, and other
techniques. Roman legions carried it and cestus, an armored glove for punching, along with them. Many local
styles existed; and some, like Cornish wrestling and
lutte breton, survive.
The link between the French stic and foot fighting
systems began in the early 1700s with chausaun (from
the name of the deck shoe worn by sailors), a combat
system that includes the use of the belaying pin (a shipboard tool shaped something like a bowling pin and
used to manage the rigging), along with kicks and
hand strikes practiced by sailors on ships. In other
parts of France foot fighting systems were called savate, for shoe.
Savate itself was established in the 1800s. It started
as a unification of many of the different foot fighting
styles across the various provinces of France, along with various hand defense techniques. Canne is the use
of one or more short sticks, each held in one hand.
Many of these stick fighting arts did not survive the
transition to the saber foil and the end of carrying
canes in public and the sword in war.
La canne de combat is still practiced by about
10,000 people in France as well as a few hundred in Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, and the United
States. The Association Française de Boxe Française,
Savate et Disciplines Assimilés has a committee dealing with the sport. World championships are held
yearly and attract players from all over Europe. La
canne de combat is basically fencing using a small (tapered) stick handled with one hand.
Baton is taught as an exercise and timing drill. This
uses an opposing hand grip about a foot wide. The
stance and grip is very similar to the greatsword
stances illustrated in German woodcuts and to the halberd guard position of Swiss woodcuts. It is slower
than la canne but the strikes are very powerful.
The current French association has attempted to
suppress or limit the influence of the combative lines to
make savate popular as a sport and reduce the danger of
training. This involved limiting both kicks and strikes,
separating la canne, and dropping the study of lutte
parisienne, baton, fouette, knife, and panache. These
changes came at the cost of much of the old tradition,
although a few enthusiasts still teach the combative
form. In the 1980s several of these formed a group dedicated to preserving combative style of savate, which
they called Savate Danse Du Rue. In Marseilles a school
of chaussoun preserves the art as a cultural activity and
a rough sport called chaussoun Marseilles rather than
as a functional fighting system. The Academy of French
Martial Arts in Dallas continues the French fighting tradition in the United States. That cudgeling will pass into
history, however, seems a distinct possibility.
—STEVE HICK