La verdadera destreza — the Spanish attempt to make swordsmanship a demonstrable science

From Jerónimo de Carranza's book of 1569 the Spanish masters tried to replace the secret thrust sold by a guild master with something argued from causes: a geometry of the imagined circle between two bodies, published so a reader could learn without a master. The same pages carry a method for separating two men already fighting. It was mocked in its own century — Quevedo made the scientific swordsman ridiculous — and it lost at home to the French foil, and both belong on the record beside it.