Word: swordsmanship
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...always flailed away with weapons that looked and hefted more like crowbars than épées. By the 16th century, Italian gallants had developed a light, delicately balanced rapier with the sharp point that enabled them to thrust instead of slice with the blade. Thus was born true swordsmanship. It was a century later, at the court of France's Sun King, that the long, trailing rapier yielded to the short-sword, and harmless foils were first used to master the new weapon's swift and deadly skills...
Underlying Life. Even more surprising as a whole are Wyeth's new watercolors, pictures done swiftly in passion. His instinct for the medium has grown out of discipline, and his command of it is athletic-brushmanship like swordsmanship. Wyeth's Cormorants inhabit a small island off the Maine coast, near his summer home. "I rowed over," Wyeth says in his high, dry voice. "There was a terrific shrieking and neck-turning. The picture took only half an hour, but the birds kept dropping on me all the time. There was a strange feeling of aloneness -of the cormorants...
...Saud, the Old Lion, reared his son in the stern tradition of the desert. Saud's formal schooling consisted of the Koran, and ended at 13. But he learned the slashing swordsmanship of the Arab horseman; and as late as 1929, young Prince Saud was dealing with a domestic crisis by the simpler method of chopping off the heads of captured tribesmen. Once he saved his father's life by leaping between him and an assassin, taking the descending knife in his shoulder. Saud's concepts of government were formed in a land where there...
Author Kendall tries to fill in the vacuum by suggesting that puny Richard practiced swordsmanship so vigorously that his right arm and shoulder developed at the expense of his left, making him seem "crookback'd." What is certain is that at the age of 18 he was a trusted general and led a flank of his brother's army against the Earl of Warwick at the Battle of Barnet. (Author Kendall's maps show modern landmarks so the reader can picture Warwick driving south across the "Golf Links.") But only with the sudden death of Edward...
...anything, from a political treaty to a royal date: it was he, for example, who introduced King Charles to Nell Gwynn and arranged for the King to discover the Duchess of Cleveland in bed with Jack Churchill. He dabbled in chemistry, playwriting, poetry and music, and' his swordsmanship was such that peaceful men turned pale and ladies swooned when he strode into their presence. Along with his fellow rakes, Buckingham was in and out of the royal favor like a gaudy shuttle -though Charles was too indulgent to fuss when Buckingham ran his sword through the Earl of Shrewsbury...