cavalry fencing side by side on horseback; his inspirations included the
Continental equestrian techniques performed at Philip Astley’s London cir-
cus. Real cavalrymen were of course dismayed. “I, myself, as an ex-caval-
ryman 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 be-
ing 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 mili-
tary 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 espe-
cially important. If the opponent also has no bullets and the fighting is one-
on-one, then his reasoning is sound, as thrusting provides the soldier with
a better defensive posture and also protects the firearm’s mechanism. How-
ever, 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 impor-
tantly, 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 calisthen-
ics, 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 suit84 Combatives: Military and Police Martial Art Training