On the contrary, Italy staying neutral means Austria doesn’t transfer most of its best troops from the east to invade Italy. Thus either the Brusilov offensive doesn’t happen or is blunted. Without Brusilov, Austria isn’t effectively destroyed as a military power, Germany isn’t forced to cancel Verdun to bail them out and Romania doesn’t join the Entente.

Yeah by roughly a half thousand yards I reckon

Right, but him being described as a master swordsman assumes that he is primarily armed with a sword and a pistol.

Marines still teach Bayonet fighting as well as melee fighting with your rifle in general.

There isn't much to it honestly and it's not a large focus when doing martial arts.

The most useful thing that is taught is how to counter someone grabbing your weapon.

They weren’t obsolete, they had a role as a cavalry weapon in circumstances where respective military traditions, demographics and geography permitted the effective use of cavalry at scale.

Hence why cavalry armed with swords were often decisive in Europe well into the 19th century.

I mean it isn’t as tho these Japanese soldiers didn’t also have guns to use outside hand to hand range…

I read about it seems that officers were the only with and training or fencing that of calvary regiments

Well in that case did the officers ever train the infantry in swordplay

It boils down pretty simply: you have to undergo a lot of intensive training (years IIRC) with the sword to be able to kill effectively. A gun requires zero training to use, and relatively little to become passable with. Plus you can kill way more people in less time.

Swords are still way cooler.

>But the truth is, by the time America gained its independence in 1776, swords were already obsolete. Maybe there are swordsmen at the time but they are never "notable" because their weapons are not useful anymore on the battlefield.

The participants in the napoleonic wars would not agree

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Bosnia_and_Herzegovina

I'm not from that area, so I got my numbers from the "1895 census" section, which mentions:

"The Catholic Encyclopedia treated the majority Slavic population (98%) as Serbs".

The census is also listing the numbers by religion, with around 43% Christian Orthodox, 37% Muslim and 20% Catholics ...

Even if Europeans were completely mixed together it still doesn’t exclude them from being indigenous. We wouldn’t say Native Americans are no longer indigenous because they roamed around all of North America and South America mixing genetically. Just because one group originated from a different area in Europe and mixed with another doesn’t mean they are now not indigenous to Europe. I find it odd that this is even disputed.

Thank you for sources!

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I think they made a strategic mistake.

The Treaty of London was secret (and possibly illegal). Italy could have negotiated an equivalent secret treaty with Austria, where Friuli would be exchanged for neutrality, and wait to the last moment to enter the war.

Italy got Friuli and Süd Tirol, but I think the human cost was too high to get two territories that were not Italian for centuries. Also, what would be Italian even mean? And, consider that ww1 was not a moral war, in the sense ww2 is, i.e. you are fighting countries that are almost democratic if not fully so (except Russia surely).

Wouldn’t an M1 Garand with a bayonet have much longer reach?

John Brown was also felled by a sword at Harpers Ferry. Except it was a ceremonial sword so he was just bludgeoned into surrendering.

Not a problem if you shoot him first.

Bayonet fencing would peak in complexity by WWI, but codified systems were being taught a bit before then.

The bayonet fencing systems of the mid 19th century weren't terribly complicated. Top brass just wanted something to teach the infantry since the cavalry and navy had been taught codified systems for martial arts for at least decades beforehand. Henry Angelo Jr, Richard Burton, and McClellan are some officers who wrote bayonet curriculums.

Before that, aside from a few isolated texts, if there was any training beyond fixing/unfixing and just pointing it at the enemy, it was just tips and tricks the drill sergeants would tell their men. Nothing official.

Part of the reason for this was because bayonet charges rarely resulted in contact with the enemy. They usually broke and hauled ass before that happened. If they didn't it would usually result in a massive bloodbath nobody wants. Because of this, standing and fighting man-to-man with bayonet on bayonet was typically a losing prospect, so teaching infantry how to do it would be a waste of everyone's time.

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Italy should have pulled a Spain and stayed neutral.

Arguably the only true winners of WWI were Japan, which easily took a bunch of German Pacific colonies and concessions in China, and the US, which supplanted the UK (one of the titular winners of WWI) as the world’s dominant economic power.

I would recommend them to play battlefield 1, it is a first person shooter set in World War 1, it has a campaign where you can play some of the most beautiful and heart breaking real stories from the Great War, and an online version where you can play even on the fronts that aren't portrayed more often by the media (like the Italian, Ottoman, and Russian front both against the germans and during the civil war).

It does a beautiful job because it teaches how war is at the same time an horrible thing and an intricate part of humanity, its actually really poetic from time to time, but of course, there is a big use of violence so I recommend it only if your kids are old enough.

Obviously in no way “notable” as you say. But this comment does just make me think what an absolute bummer it would have been to be the poor soldier that ends up stumbling into one of these “masters” in the jungle and having to fight hand-to-hand.

During the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783), fencing was a popular pastime among the wealthy and elite in colonial America. Many fencing masters, both American and European, taught the art of sword fighting in the colonies. Some notable examples include:

Jacob F. Rath: Rath was a German fencing master who immigrated to Philadelphia in the late 1700s. He taught fencing to members of the Continental Army and was known for his expertise in the use of the rapier.

William Woodman: Woodman was an English fencing master who taught in Boston and New York City during the Revolutionary War. He was a member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, a militia organization in Boston, and is known for writing a fencing manual that was widely used in the colonies.

George Washington: While not a fencing master himself, Washington was an avid swordsman and owned a collection of fencing manuals. He recognized the importance of fencing in training soldiers and provided funding for fencing masters to teach his troops.

Benjamin Franklin: Franklin was a polymath who had an interest in fencing and even wrote an article on the subject for The Pennsylvania Gazette in 1730. He was known for his skills with the rapier and often engaged in fencing matches with friends and associates.

It is worth noting that while fencing was a popular pastime in colonial America, it was not necessarily the primary means of military training or combat. The use of firearms, particularly muskets, was more prevalent in warfare during this time period. However, swords were still used in some military units, particularly cavalry units, and fencing was considered an important means of training soldiers in hand-to-hand combat and coordination.

To give you an idea of the state of the Regia Marina, a number of times the combined Anglo-French forces pushed Italy to mount a joint attack on the Austro-Hungarian Navy but each time Italy refused to do so.

If Italy refused to engaged into open combat against the Austro-Hungarian Navy, there was no chance they would attempt anything against the combined Anglo-French force in the Mediterranean.

Bayonet fencing sounds pretty intense. I always think of the bayonet as a simple thrusting weapon - or a cooking implement... up till WWI. Very interesting!