Martial Arts Of The World - Webs
Martial Arts Of The World - Webs Martial Arts Of The World - Webs
cavalry fencing side by side on horseback; his inspirations included the Continental equestrian techniques performed at Philip Astley’s London circus. Real cavalrymen were of course dismayed. “I, myself, as an ex-cavalryman who participated in cavalry charges during the First World War,” sputtered Vladimir Littauer, “can assure you that the success of an attack does not depend on refinements of equitation but rather on the moment being rightly chosen” (Littauer 1991, 100–101). Of more interest to military professionals was the program that Pehr Ling developed in Sweden. A graduate of Franz Nachtigal’s academy, Ling believed that schoolchildren and soldiers needed to do exercises that made them respond quickly to their superiors. Furthermore, they needed to be graded in everything they did, and performances needed to show measurable improvement over time. Finally, physical training was something that both children and soldiers did for the nation, not for fun. So, with the support of the French general who was the Swedish crown prince, Ling established a Royal Central Institute of Gymnastics in Stockholm in 1813. Swedish military officers were required to attend this school, and in 1836 Ling, a noted fencer, published a manual on bayonet fencing for the Swedish Army. For Ling, sticking the target with the point of the bayonet was especially important. If the opponent also has no bullets and the fighting is oneon-one, then his reasoning is sound, as thrusting provides the soldier with a better defensive posture and also protects the firearm’s mechanism. However, in practice, the soldiers most likely to use bayonets were infantrymen suddenly ambushed by horsemen. Here, Richard Francis Burton explained in his 1853 Complete System of Bayonet Exercise, the bayonet was not used by one man working alone or even by a mass of men in a charge, but instead by four men working together in what was called a rallying square. Furthermore, the bayonet was not rammed deep, but instead used to slash. First, the victim was inconvenienced similarly either way, and more importantly, the slashing motion did not cause the bayonet to become stuck in the target. But this approach assumed that the bayonet was being used for combat rather than to teach aggressiveness, which was not always the case. Of equal (and more enduring) interest to nineteenth-century military reformers were Ling’s “Swedish gymnastics.” Essentially modern calisthenics, Swedish gymnastics differed from German gymnastics mainly because they did not require bars, rings, and other equipment. Thus they were cheaper and easier to organize. Plus they had the advantage, at least to the Lutheran mind, that they were not much fun to do. Fun, after all, was the work of the devil. Hardship, on the other hand, built character. Similar exercises became part of Swiss military training during the 1840s (a Swiss physical culturalist coined the word calisthenics) and British and German military training during the 1850s. The French followed suit 84 Combatives: Military and Police Martial Art Training
during the 1870s, as did the Japanese during the 1880s and the Americans during the 1890s. In all cases, the reforms coincided with the establishment of centralized training depots. Perhaps more than physical fitness, a key learning objective was conditioning recruits to respond instantly and appropriately to shouted commands. Although nationalism played a part in choosing the exercises used (thus Germans and Japanese wrestled while Americans and British boxed), other arguments were also given. One was the nineteenth-century belief that physical training in boxing and similar sports built character, which in those days typically translated into reduced male sexual desire. (Sexually transmitted diseases were a serious problem in nineteenth-century militaries, causing 37 percent of hospital admissions in the British Army in India in 1888 [Hayton-Keeva 1987, 76–80].) Another was that such sports provided commanders with a tool with which they could demonstrate superiority over other commanders. And as always victories could be orchestrated for political purposes; as early as 1929 the Nazis staged a boxing tournament between French Algerians and German “Aryans” for the express purpose of inciting race hatred. During the late nineteenth century, swords and bayonets fell into disfavor with most professional soldiers. The reason was that cavalrymen came to prefer revolvers and shotguns and infantry came to prefer breechloaded firearms. Unfortunately, Japanese successes during the Russo- Japanese War of 1904–1905 convinced some politicians that the spirit of the bayonet was a key to victory. So when ammunition stocks fell low at the beginning of World War I, Allied conscripts were trained to attack with bayonets rather than shoot. Ammunition expenditure was reduced, but casualties were enormous. As early as 1908 Colonel Sir Malcolm Fox of the British military gymnastics department claimed to see correlation between boxing and bayonet fighting, so throughout the 1910s the British, Canadians, and Americans recruited professional boxers as combatives instructors. Privately, the boxers were appalled, as most had enough experience in rough parts of town to know that anyone who brought a bayonet to a gunfight was going to end up dead. Still, the methods were easily taught to huge numbers of men, and the bayonets were effectively used by Allied military police to quell the British, French, and Italian mutinies of 1917. For their part, the Germans and Austrians never devoted much effort to teaching bayonet fighting; as a German officer named Erwin Rommel put it, “The winner in a bayonet fight is he who has one more bullet in his magazine” (Rommel 1979, 59–60). Instead, at mass levels the focus was on squad and team development, while at the individual level the focus was on teaching picked sharpshooters to use cover, concealment, and bolt-action Combatives: Military and Police Martial Art Training 85
- Page 54 and 55: A 74-year-old Buddhist monk practic
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cavalry fencing side by side on horseback; his inspirations included the<br />
Continental equestrian techniques performed at Philip Astley’s London circus.<br />
Real cavalrymen were of course dismayed. “I, myself, as an ex-cavalryman<br />
who participated in cavalry charges during the First <strong>World</strong> War,”<br />
sputtered Vladimir Littauer, “can assure you that the success of an attack<br />
does not depend on refinements of equitation but rather on the moment being<br />
rightly chosen” (Littauer 1991, 100–101).<br />
<strong>Of</strong> more interest to military professionals was the program that Pehr<br />
Ling developed in Sweden. A graduate of Franz Nachtigal’s academy, Ling<br />
believed that schoolchildren and soldiers needed to do exercises that made<br />
them respond quickly to their superiors. Furthermore, they needed to be<br />
graded in everything they did, and performances needed to show measurable<br />
improvement over time. Finally, physical training was something that both<br />
children and soldiers did for the nation, not for fun. So, with the support of<br />
the French general who was the Swedish crown prince, Ling established a<br />
Royal Central Institute of Gymnastics in Stockholm in 1813. Swedish military<br />
officers were required to attend this school, and in 1836 Ling, a noted<br />
fencer, published a manual on bayonet fencing for the Swedish Army.<br />
For Ling, sticking the target with the point of the bayonet was especially<br />
important. If the opponent also has no bullets and the fighting is oneon-one,<br />
then his reasoning is sound, as thrusting provides the soldier with<br />
a better defensive posture and also protects the firearm’s mechanism. However,<br />
in practice, the soldiers most likely to use bayonets were infantrymen<br />
suddenly ambushed by horsemen. Here, Richard Francis Burton explained<br />
in his 1853 Complete System of Bayonet Exercise, the bayonet was not<br />
used by one man working alone or even by a mass of men in a charge, but<br />
instead by four men working together in what was called a rallying square.<br />
Furthermore, the bayonet was not rammed deep, but instead used to slash.<br />
First, the victim was inconvenienced similarly either way, and more importantly,<br />
the slashing motion did not cause the bayonet to become stuck in<br />
the target. But this approach assumed that the bayonet was being used for<br />
combat rather than to teach aggressiveness, which was not always the case.<br />
<strong>Of</strong> equal (and more enduring) interest to nineteenth-century military<br />
reformers were Ling’s “Swedish gymnastics.” Essentially modern calisthenics,<br />
Swedish gymnastics differed from German gymnastics mainly because<br />
they did not require bars, rings, and other equipment. Thus they were<br />
cheaper and easier to organize. Plus they had the advantage, at least to the<br />
Lutheran mind, that they were not much fun to do. Fun, after all, was the<br />
work of the devil. Hardship, on the other hand, built character.<br />
Similar exercises became part of Swiss military training during the<br />
1840s (a Swiss physical culturalist coined the word calisthenics) and British<br />
and German military training during the 1850s. <strong>The</strong> French followed suit<br />
84 Combatives: Military and Police <strong>Martial</strong> Art Training