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The Eyes Have It! Or Do They? Where to Look When Crossing Swords
The scene is a familiar one: a fencing master admonishes a student to keep their eyes on those of the adversary when crossing swords, for “the eyes are the mirror of the soul” or “the eyes never lie” or “the eyes give away the adversary’s intention.”
Or some such superficial scripted pithiness.
But is this really where you should look when crossing swords? Or is this advice just a creation of fiction and film, a common trope that sounds great but would get you hit in a bout or killed with sharps?
After all, anyone who’s ever been deceived in love or even by a common salesperson knows that that the eyes can lie, that the eyes can conceal intent, the eyes can hide the true soul, even if at times they can indeed do the opposite.
To answer the question, we’ll take a look at the advice of some fencing masters and duelists over centuries. The reader may then pick and choose. First, a few notes and comments.
Fencing Masks
Notably, our question is complicated by the fact that fencers for the past century and a half (a small number used them two centuries ago) have trained and competed while wearing fencing masks. The adversary’s eyes could still be easily seen through early masks with their large mesh, but less so when the mesh was made closer and stronger in the late 19th century. Even so, it is possible to see the adversary’s eyes to a limited degree through the mesh of modern masks if, like a soldier in the jungle focusing not on the immediate flora but beyond it, you focus not on the mesh, but just beyond it. Still, masks present a problem in answering the question, even more so in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when duelists trained with masks but fought without them.
Briefly in the very late last century masks with a clear Lexan plastic polycarbonate section in front of the eyes were tried but soon abandoned for reasons of safety — there was no guarantee a blade might not find its way between mesh and polycarbonate or even through the polycarbonate itself. The primary inspiration behind the clear masks was not so that fencers could “sound the depths of an adversary’s soul” or even “evaluate an adversary’s state of mind,” but so that the video audience could see the fencers’ eyes. In the late 90s the International Olympic Committee considered dropping fencing from the Games, and since then the FIE (fencing’s international body) has bent over backward to make fencing audience-friendly at the expense of swordplay’s soul. (Fact: sophisticated fencing will never be audience-friendly.)
Other Martial Arts: Boxing & Escrima
I’ve boxed and practiced escrima and although I’m no expert in either, the experience was instructive. Historically, some boxers have focused on the adversary’s eyes and used peripheral vision to watch the hands, while others, including many today, focus on the neck or collarbone or upper torso (or just “forward”) and use peripheral vision to pick up hand movement. Focus on one hand and you’re likely to get hit with the other. Likewise do eskrimadors tend to focus not on the eyes but on the chest, and use peripheral vision to watch weapons and weapon hands — and they do bear watching, for a mistake can easily result in broken fingers and more.
Weapons in Both Hands
The question is also complicated by whether the adversary is armed with a single sword or has another weapon in the off-hand — watch one hand or weapon too closely and you’re liable to get hit with the other, as in boxing and escrima. However, in the case of early modern and modern Western swordplay and its common stance of lead foot matching lead hand, an off-hand weapon, typically used for defense, is usually held farther back and is shorter than the lead, making the focus on the primary hand less of a liability than it would be in boxing or any of the “hands and feet” martial arts. Peripheral vision picks up the offhand weapon.
Practical Experience
I can attest after a conservative estimate of four hundred hours or more fencing vigorously with my two youngest children — furious fencers both — with foam swords and without masks, that the utility of watching the eyes rather than the weapon is far over-hyped. As Donald McBane noted, an occasional glance may be useful, but watching the eyes takes your focus off the threat and you get hit. Only once with each child did I get away with cheap shots like glancing over the shoulder and hitting when they looked away, or feinting at the face to make them blink, then finishing low. These worked only when they were very young, although admittedly I explained immediately afterward what I’d done so they wouldn’t be surprised again.
I never had the opportunity to take tempo on either child because I saw hesitation in their eyes, and on several occasions I was hit when I found myself caught up in the emotion — elation, fury, joy, focus — in their eyes. The most useful information I gained from looking into their eyes was that they were serious about running me through. Figuratively, of course, or mostly so. We were fencing for fun, which is the only way to fence. (And no, only now are my wife and I slowly introducing them to modern fencing — we don’t want to spoil the joy of swordplay nor burn them out as is all too common these days as children much too young are garbed, armed, and thrust onto the strip with too little preparation. Ours can already handle sword and dagger, all sorts of terrain, and multiple adversaries! In other words, no modern helicopter parent or helicopter parent-pleasing coach has ruined, or will ruin, swordplay for them.)
Likewise fencing with my wife with padded sabers by Go-Now of Poland, without masks (which requires a bit of care because the swords are not soft “bonkers” sometimes used in therapy or just for a bit of safe violent fun), I was unable to use what I saw in her eyes to much effect, and too much time spent on her intense eyes meant I got hit because I wasn’t watching her sword.
A Caveat
Remember, the advice below is general advice. Your eyes will shift when fencing, in particularly onto targets as you attempt that final thrust.
A Brief Selection of Fencing Masters on the Subject
Note: the great majority of fencing masters don’t even bother to discuss the subject! And most of those who do were teaching fencers how to fight with real swords. The loss of a single touch in a sport fencing bout because the eyes stray might not matter much — but in a fight with sharps it could be fatal.
With all this in mind, here we go:
Ridolfo Capo Ferro, 1610: in rapier play, watch the adversary’s hand.
Francesco Antonio Marcelli, 1686: in single rapier play, watch the eyes or watch for movement.
Sir Wm. Hope, 1694: with the smallsword and backsword, keep your eyes on the adversary’s or sword hand, not on the point or middle of the blade. Do not look at the eyes for they are deceptive.
Donald McBane, 1728: with the smallsword, shearing sword, broadsword, and backsword, watch the wrist and point. Occasionally check the eyes to check the adversary’s temper, but only seldom lest you be deceived.
John Godfrey, 1747: with the smallsword and backsword, watch the weapon hand or point.
Joseph Roland, 1809: with the smallsword, focus on the adversary’s sword, not on the eyes as is “generally supposed.”
Clovis Deladrier, 1948: in epee fencing, watch the guard.
My own masters, Dr. Francis Zold and Dr. Eugene Hamori (1977 onward): in foil, saber, and epee, focus on the guard and point (doubly so in epee, for the combination of guard and point positions are vital). Use your peripheral vision to track distance from the adversary’s lead shoulder, and to note the adversary’s footwork.
The best advice to my mind is the combined advice of Donald McBane and of my own fencing masters.
As a side note, remember that not only can the eyes be deceptive, but so can many other things, including footwork, blade-work, tempo, distance, body language, and more. The hand, in a very simple example, when subtly drawn back can entice the opponent, who confuses watching the hand or guard with judging distance by it, into range.
Remember, fencing, whether as sport or duel, is a finished skill of violent or pretend-violent competition that permits honorable deception, that is, within the accepted customs and rules.*
Everything in swordplay can be used to deceive.
Copyright Benerson Little 2026. First published 24 September 2026.
* Gamesmanship is nothing more than cheating within the rules, to quote former US world championship epee fencer and Olympic Games alternate fencer and FIE rules committee member Roger Jones, and its practitioners should be shunned. Cheating is entirely dishonorable and its practitioners should be banned from the sport.
Sport Epee Humor–in 1914! And a Bit on Tactics as Well…
As can be seen from the illustration, not much has changed!
But a little history first before I translate the captions. Modern sport epee is the direct descendant of a form of dueling swordplay created largely by Jules Jacob in the 1870s. Jacob, recognizing that foil as it was practiced at the time had become largely useless for actual combat, took what was essentially smallsword technique, along with what useful dueling practice that could be derived from classical foil fencing, itself descended from smallsword practice in both of its forms (for the duel and for “school play”), and created a dueling technique focused on longer distance and attacks and counter-attacks to the arm. Thus the epee de combat or dueling sword, as it was usually termed, was born. Or, as some described it, there were now both the modern school (epee) and the classical (foil).
By focusing on longer distance and attacks to the arm, this new technique had the quite useful advantage of minimizing the likelihood of killing one’s adversary. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in which law and society might look the other way if someone were killed in a duel, were long past. By the mid- to late nineteenth century, dueling was not only unlawful but a duelist who killed his adversary (duelists were nearly always male, thus the masculine pronoun) was almost certain to be prosecuted for murder or manslaughter, military officers sometimes excepted thanks to the rather insular world of military law and command. In fact, one early epee master noted that no sword was better designed to avoid killing one’s adversary!
Within a decade or two, though, a sport version of dueling swordplay was introduced and soon rivalled the foil, at least in France and Great Britain. This new fencing weapon, based as it was on the duel as devised for gentlemen, was paradoxically democratic. Only pools in which all fencers fenced each other to determine the winner–the potentially best duelist–would suffice! We can thank early epeeists for the pool system that was, sadly, largely done away with a couple decades ago except for early seeding rounds, replaced by our direct elimination system that in the early twentieth century was denounced as anathema. “A lottery!” detractors cried.
And indeed [digression warning!] the direct elimination system is a lottery, or at least a half-lottery in which the two best fencers in a tournament often meet before the final, leaving the gold medal bout often rather dull. The excuse for the elimination of the pool system was cheating, and in fact there often were fencers who threw bouts for countrymen or even for money once they had won enough bouts to ascend to the next round. The real reason, though, was the IOC’s desire to have a competition that would lead to a final of two rather than six or eight. This is more dramatic, or so goes the reasoning. But, as I warned, I digress!
Early sport epeeists attempted to emulate the duel as much as possible. Unfortunately, with sport epee came the advent of the “poolist”–the fencer for whom technique unsuitable to the duel, gamesmanship in other words, was all that mattered. With stiff blades that would stop an adversary’s advancing arm, coupled with an emphasis on counter-attacks, angular ones in particular, the poolist used technique that in a duel would be suicidal. The French governing body, composed largely of foilists with a disdain for practitioners of the dueling sword, quickly sided with the sport fencers against epeeists promoting a purely dueling form of swordplay.
The reality is that counter-attacks to the body are unlikely to stop a fully developed attack: the blade will usually pass into and even through the body rather than arrest it, making a double touch, possibly fatal, likely, unless the counter-attack has been coupled with stout opposition or a displacement. Worse, angular counter-attacks to the arm will almost never stop a fully developed attack with a real sword: here again there is the near certainty of a double touch, except in this case the attacker receives a wound to the arm while the counter-attacker receives a possibly mortal thrust to the body.
Notably, most of the best duelists with the epee were not the best sport fencers. Dueling required a sang-froid which sport fencing did not and does not.
So, on to the translations! Reading left to right from the top:
The power and the grace. These are typical forms seen even today. Grace on the left was a common style based on counter-attacking with a straight arm. Seldom seen anymore, its finest practitioners were always very difficult to deal with. My old friend Elias Katsaros, who’s also an artist and recently retired Greek iconographer who took 2nd at the Greek nationals in the early 1960s, is easily the best I’ve ever seen in this style. He used to give nationally-ranked epeeists fits long after he had abandoned serious competition. We still fence occasionally, French grips only (with fine Prieur leather-palmed and -fingered gloves), and he’s as difficult a swordsman to defeat today as he was when I first fenced him in 1979.
The [punny] parry of “cocsyxte.” “Pouce!” here means “Truce!”
The flèche. Yes, the flying or “Polish” flèche has been around for a long time, probably centuries. I have references to two forms of flèche from the late 17th to early 18th century, in fact.
M. Brandanloeil, Judge: “If you’ve passed your opponent, Monsieur, don’t fart!”
The offensive and the defensive. Again, two types still seen today.
The offensive caricature is of the “croucher” who primarily uses angular attacks and counter-attacks to the arm, usually as the opponent attacks or upon the opponent’s preparation. The technique would be foolish with real swords for it would not typically halt the attack. The croucher is still around, although he (I’ve rarely, perhaps never, seen women using the technique, although I’ve seen some use low angular attacks as part of a broader technical range) is less common than when I first learned to fence forty-three years ago. It is most often a style of epeeists without much formal training or those who lack the focus to be taught formally. Second intention via a false attack to draw the angular attack or counter-attack, followed by a parry-riposte or bind thrust in octave, or a powerful beat in seconde followed by a high thrust with fleche, have usually worked well for me against crouchers, as has a fleche in tempo, often made as a second intention action, to the body as the croucher withdraws his arm after a failed attack or counter-attack. I’ve had less success with counter-time (a counter-attack against a counter-attack) due to the severe angulation crouchers use, and their extensive experience against counter-time.
Fencers tend to forget that the common counters to a technique often don’t work against fencers who are expert in the technique. Many times, for example, I’ve heard fencers claim that so and so has a strong quarte, therefore a feint to quarte and disengage to sixte is the solution, only to find themselves hit anyway–because the adversary is quite familiar from experience with this solution. Similarly, attempts in epee to use compound binds made in opposite directions against an expert straight-arm counter-attacker often don’t work because, again, the adversary is quite familiar with these obvious tactics from experience. In many cases, it’s what they want you to do!
The defensive form depicted is commonly adopted by very tall fencers who generally counter-attack with body displacements and long retreats. This technique is a bit more suitable to dueling as well, provided the fencer immediately follows his or her counter-attack with a quick retreat and a parry. Unfortunately, many practitioners of this style simply remise rather than parry, which would, again, often lead to a double-touch in the case of real swords.
More fencing history and technique posts to follow… 🙂
Copyright Benerson Little 2020. First posted December 21, 2020. Last updated December 30, 2020.
