February is Black History Month and to honor the occasion, we’re going to do a quick look at some some fascinating historical figures who picked up the sword with a little Black History of HEMA.
Jean-Louis Michel
He was a French fencing master from Haiti during the Napoleonic era. His life is the stuff of legends. His adventures and escapades read like they came off the pages of a Dumas novel.
He escaped Hispaniola during the Haitian Revolution for France where he joined Napoleon’s army as a scrawny lad. He was put under the tutelage of Maître d’Erape where he became one of the “most able swordsmen in France.”
He fought his first duel against a fellow who said that Jean-Louis would be “far less brilliant were they to substitute edged weapons for foils.” His opponent used a sharp sword, Jean-Louis used just a foil.
Jean-Louis also took part in the infamous Battle of the Thirty (not the medieval one). In 1814, while in Spain, a few French and Italian regiments got into several quarrels. To restore discipline, a council of senior officers suggested that 30 fencers from each regiment (15 masters & assistants) would fight a series of duels.
Jean-Louis was the first to go for the French. Within 40 minutes and with just 27 sword thrusts from his sword, he had felled three swordsmen and wounded another 10. The council then called off the remaining fights.
I go into a little more detail in this mini documentary of his life below.
Thomas-Alexandre Dumas
Thomas-Alexandre Dumas was a French general for Napoleon and father of the famous Alexandre Dumas, who gave us the brilliant The Three Musketeers and Count of Monte Cristo. Thomas-Alexandre was born as a slave in Saint-Domingue (his father was a French noble but mother was a slave).
His father brought him to France to be educated and eventually he entered the military; however his father forced his son to take a nom de guerre as to not soil the family’s noble name and reputation. In the early 1790s, he led the Black Legion, a French army unit composed of “free men of color.”
By 31, Dumas commanded 53,000 troops and was General-in-Chief of the French Army of the Alps. One of his escapades includes taking his army to scale icey cliffs along a mountain and capturing upwards of a 1,000 prisoners. During the battles in Italy, Austrian troops nicknamed him the Schwarzer Teufel (“Black Devil”, Diable Noir in French). Napoleon nicknamed him “the Horatius Cocles of the Tyrol.”
He led the cavalry forces in the Egyptian Expedition where he got into an argument with Napoleon. On the way home from Egypt, his ship ran aground, and he was taken prisoner by the Kingdom of Naples. He was eventually released but died a few years later to stomach cancer.
Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-George(s)
Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-George(s) was a renowned musician, composer, and fencer. He was born in the French colony of Guadeloupe to a rich white plantation owner; his mother was a slave from Senegal. He was brought to the age of 7 where he was given a formal education.
According to the son of the French fencing master La Boëssière, “At 15 [Saint-Georges’] progress was so rapid, that he was already beating the best swordsmen, and at 17 he developed the greatest speed imaginable.”
He was still a student when he publicly defeated Alexandre Picard, a renowned fencing-master in Rouen, who had foolishly referred to Saint-George as “Boëssière’s mulatto.”
Also at a young age, he won a fencing competition leading to his appointment as a “gendarme de la garde du roi” by king Louis XVI.
Heny Angelo, son of the famous Domenico Angelo remarked:
“No man ever united so much suppleness with so much strength. He excelled in all the bodily exercises in which he engaged…but the art in which he surpassed all his contemporaries and predecessors was fencing. No professor or amateur ever showed so much accuracy and quickness. His attacks were a perpetual series of hits; his [parry] was so close that it was in vain to attempt to touch him; in short, he was all nerve.”
After the French Revolution, he led Légion St.-Georges, which comprised “citizens of colour” which was eventually taken over by Thomas-Alexandre Dumas.
Saint-Georges was also an amazing musician, writing 12 violin concertos, two symphonies, and eight symphony-concertantes, “a new, intrinsically Parisian genre of which he was one of the chief exponents.” This video demonstrates one of his works.
He is sometimes referred to as the “Black Mozart” but as violinist Randall Goosby said, “I prefer to think of Mozart as the white Chevalier.”
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That’s just a quick glance at a few figures who led incredible lives and made impacts in the world of fencing and European swordsmanship. This blog post covers even more — from ancient times through the 19th century.
Happy Swording!
—Justin
Head Coach | Instructor at Arms
Boston Academie d’Armes
(he/him)
