Jamson and Crawley have teamed up to transcribe and digitally present a legible edition to McArthur’s 1780 smallsword manual. Crawley states, “McArthur is the most accessible smallsword treatise for starting out yet the least available” so he and Jamson have made it available via the Smallsword Symposium. The SmallswordProject.com mirrors it here with permission to help disseminate McArthur’s work.

McArthur, J. (1780). The Army and Navy Gentleman’s Companion or A New and Complete Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Fencing. Displaying the Intricacies of Small-sword Play and Illustrated by Mathematical Figures and Adorned with Elegant Engravings after Paintings from Life, Executed In the Most Masterly Manner Representing Every Material Attitude of the Art A New Addition Revised with a Glossary and Improvements.

Download and study McArthur’s text and dozens others published from 1580 to 1880 from our study page. View the antecedents and major developments of smallsword evolution on the timeline.