By the Sword Reviewed

BY THE SWORD
By Richard Cohen
Random House Publishers

This is a most curious book to review.

The author is a fencer, and is greatly in love with the sport. As long as he is writing about movie fencing, sport fencing and the history of sport fencing, he does a good job. He recount some old duels, and although I do know that he has some of them right, (No, I wasn’t there, but I have read many of the same sources he uses.)

But the discussion of the Vidalia Sandbar fight and the brief discussion of the Bowie knife should have been left out. His knowledge is sketchy at best.

However it is the historical comments as he furnishes a history of the sword that contains the most errors. These are errors of knowledge as well as errors of judgement. As an example, he talks about the Battle of Adrianople. The Romans had attacked the Goths, being unaware that the Gothic cavalry was out raiding. The Gothic cavalry returned, drove off the Roman cavalry, then penned the Roman army up against the Gothic encampment. The Romans were literally crushed and unable to move and the butchery was enormous.

Mr Cohen states “The simple but revolutionary invention behind this terrible rout was the stirrup, a device until that moment was unknown to the Romans, which gave horsemen the power to maneuver quickly and the leverage to strike with greater force, a formidable advantage. For the first time in history the sword was no longer secondary to the lance or spear.”

The Romans knew of the stirrup, but it had not yet been placed into service. Not that that would have made a difference, as the victory was a tactical one and did not rely on any one thing. In should be noted that people had been fighting with swords on horseback for many years before the invention of the stirrup. (Believed to have been invented in Central Asia about 1-200BC) But the biggest advantage of the stirrup was allowing better use of the lance or spear. It could be couched, used to stab either overhand or underhand, and not worry about being knocked off of the horse.

As for the sword being equal or better than the lance or spear, that is entirely dependent on how the weapons are used. But a line of knight charging with leveled spears against horsemen armed only with swords…..I’ll take the knights.

He also quickly names all sorts of weapons in the following paragraph, none of which occur in the following decades as he says. Aside from that, he also gets them all wrong to boot. There is one section that drove me up the wall. He does give the origin of the term “mail” and also states there was never any such thing as “chainmail”. Then he turns right around and uses the term “plate mail”which not only never existed, it can’t exist. If it is plate, then it is not a net which is what mail looks like.

He also talks about how clumsy some of the early cutting swords are, and how poorly balanced. True, if you’re a fencer and you try to use one as you would an epee, the it is clumsy and poorly balanced. But I can also say that a revolver makes a lousy hammer, as it is clumsy and does not hit hard He also states that “swords were used to bludgeon their opponents” .Curious, as there are many swords that still retain their sharp edges, and there are also excavated skulls showing the effects pf sharp edges.

IN the manufacture of swords he also leaves a lot to be desired. Seemingly he doesn’t seem to understand that Damascus was a trading post, and the really super blades were made elsewhere, usully from Indian steel or Yemeni steel.

He section on the Samurai also reflects just some cursory research. In short, this book overreaches it self by a great deal. Had Mr. Cohen dealt with movies, sport fencing and the history thereof, it would have been a good book. As it stands now, too much misinformation and myth.

- Hank Reinhardt