The history of fencing, weapon by weapon.

This section is a history of the three weapons of fencing, foil, epee and sabre, and of wheelchair fencing. The weapons took their sporting form at different times and for different reasons, so where a fact belongs to one weapon, the page says which, and no page blends one weapon's dates into another's. Older swordsmanship, the guilds, schools and manuals of about the 14th to 17th centuries, appears only as the roots the sources trace the sport back to. It is history only. Nothing here teaches how to fence, and how the sport is run today is in Learn.

How these pages are written

• Disagreements are shown, not settled by us. The research behind these pages recorded 20 points on which sources disagree, from where the sport began to the year each weapon went electric. Each is given both ways, or every way, with who says what.
• The FIE's own record comes first for rule dates. The historical note at the front of the FIE's Rules for Competitions (articles i.1 to i.5, updated 2017) is the main source for when the FIE adopted its rules for each weapon and for electrical judging. Olympedia is the main source for the Olympic record, and the IPC for wheelchair fencing.
• The source is named in the text. Museums, governing bodies, historians and journals are named where their account is used. Facts that rest on Wikipedia alone are attributed to Wikipedia, and facts seen only in a search summary of a page that could not be opened are labelled as unconfirmed.
• Deaths only as the published record gives them. Fencing uses steel weapons and people have died. The safety history gives the deaths in aggregate, as the IOC's injury chapter records them, and names only one of those who died, the 1980 Olympic foil champion whose death Olympedia records. It gives no first aid and no armoury.
• No money, and no recommendations. Clubs and makers appear only where a governing body or historian names them for a historical event, or as one side of a recorded disagreement. Nothing here recommends a club, coach, maker or shop.

The pages in this section

Before the sport

1. Sword schools and origins: the Medinet Habu relief, the competing claims to where the sport began, the German fencing guilds, the London Masters of Defence and the move from rapier to small sword.
2. The first treatises: the Royal Armouries manuscript I.33, Fiore dei Liberi, the lost Spanish books, and the printed Italian and Spanish treatises, each dated as its museum or historian dates it.

The sport takes shape

3. How the three weapons developed: foil from the small sword, epee from the duel, sabre from the cavalry, and the FIE's 1914 rules for each weapon.
4. The FIE, 1913: the founding in Paris, the eight or nine founding nations, the rule books from 1914 to 2017, the first championships and the national bodies.
5. Fencing at the Olympics: every Games since 1896, the masters' events, when each weapon's men's events began, the team rotation and the full 12-event programme.
6. Women in fencing: foil from 1924, the long wait for team foil, epee from 1996 and sabre from 2004, weapon by weapon.

Technology, safety and wheelchair fencing

7. Electric scoring: epee in the 1930s, foil in 1955 to 1957, sabre in 1986 to 1992, and wireless scoring, with every version of each date.
8. Safety history: the wire mask, the plastron after a 1951 death, newton ratings, maraging blades, the 1982 Rome death and what the sources say followed.
9. Wheelchair fencing history: Guttmann and Stoke Mandeville, the disputed start year, Rome 1960, and World Para Fencing from 2025.
10. Timeline: every main date in one table, each row labelled by weapon, with its source.

Related reading

How the FIE and the national bodies work today is in the FIE and national bodies, and each weapon's current rules are in foil, epee and sabre. Today's equipment rules are in Equipment, injury research is in Safety, this season's competitions are in Events, and terms are explained in the glossary.