Alongside these three weapons, though, legacies from the past remained. Sword and dagger was still commonly taught in places such as Naples and Sicily, and, in 1888, a team of women fencers from Vienna put on a demonstration of "Neopolitan" in New York City. Likewise, two-handed sword fighting survived in the French and Italian forms of grand canne, and even as late as the 1930s, an attempt was made to revive the old school of German longsword as part of Adolph Hitler's volkskultur movement. These martial artifacts are still alive today. Not unlike the koryu bujitsu, or feudal warrior arts of Japan, they are handed down from master to student, and remain a vital, though increasingly rare, part of Western martial culture.

Fencing Today

Today, on the cusp of the twenty-first century, the vast majority of fencers participate in the sport of fencing, also variously called Olympic fencing, competitive fencing, or electric fencing. As much as the teaching of kendo and judo in Japan is standardized under the Japanese Ministry of Education, so, too, is the FIE the central organizing body for competitive fencing. The governing bodies in other countries, such as the United States Fencing Association, which oversees such aspects of competitive fencing in the U.S. as insurance, rankings, and the selection of the Olympic team, all comply with the standards and rulings of the FIE.

As in any sport, the objective is to win, which is accomplished by scoring hits, or touches, as they are termed in fencing. All competition fencing weapons make use of an electrical scoring apparatus. When a hit is scored, an electrical circuit is completed, setting off a scoring light. Exactly what constitutes a valid hit is determined by the rules established by the FIE, and may be rather abstract, bearing little resemblance to what a fencer would do if his life were actually on the line. In épée fencing, for instance, a touch to the foot sufficient to set off the electric scoring machine is a valid hit, whereas the counter-thrust to the attacker's throat that arrives an instant after is not counted as valid. The relatively safe nature of the sporting weapons makes actions that would be unthinkably risky with sharps quite effective in competition. Likewise, though martial arts such as kendo and judo maintain rituals and etiquette descended from their feudal forbears, the rituals in competitive fencing, such as the salute and the handshake after the bout, are often almost perfunctory.

However, there is also a growing minority of classical fencers who seek to preserve fencing as it was practiced in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in all its sophistication, but also in a manner consistent with the realities of dueling with sharp weapons. Part of this is an attempt to preserve the rituals, etiquette, and mindset that have come down to us from the past. Classical fencers see fencing as a martial art, and argue that, without a connection to the age when dueling was a reality, and constant reference to the realities of using sharp weapons, fencing loses its meaning and becomes merely a sporting event played with expensive equipment under rules incomprehensible to a non-initiate.