A Treatise upon the Useful Science of Defense

In 1747 a British soldier called John Godfrey sat down to write a book on self-defence. With sometimes brutal clarity, he codified the basic principles of armed and unarmed combat and told how the champions of his day fought with swords, sticks and fists. Accepted by experts as the first-ever book on boxing and a primary text on fencing, Captain Godfrey's Treatise is now republished for the first time in two-and-a-half centuries.