History's Baddest

Several years ago The Front gave me a copy of By the Sword: A History Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers, and Olympic Champions by Richard Cohen. To me, the most memorable passage in the book was this footnote regarding the fencing master Donald McBane:

McBane penned a remarkable book of memoirs, The Expert Sword-man's Companion, or the True Art of Self-Defence. Published in 1728, it remains the only fencing book written by a master who had also been a serving soldier; in all, he took part in sixteen battles and fifty-two sieges. Toward the end of his career he kept an alehouse and fencing school in London and fought thirty-seven prized in the Bear Garden; but it is extraordinary that he survived that long.

Son of a Scottish farmer and publican, McBane enlisted in the Scots army in 1687. Five years later he won his first duel, against an army paymaster who had swindled him. Three years after that, he took part in the siege of Namur, where he was shot three times and bayonetted six. In 1697 he went home to Inverness but soon reenlisted, fought a further duel in Perth, leaving his opponent for dead, and fled to Ireland, where he set up a fencing school. Still a common soldier, he found himself consigned to Holland, where he met the man whom he thought he had killed in Perth. They became friends and set up a new academy together. On learning that four fellow practitioners ran a brothel and gaming house, he decided to take a share and fought all four until the last suddenly produced a pistol from his cocked hat and fired. The ball missed, and McBane ran him through the buttocks. The masters then agreed to cut their conqueror in, and from 1700 to 1702 he lived comfortably off the earnings.

At the battle of "Nemegen" (Nijmegen) McBane's regiment lost all its baggage, leaving him penniless. He borrowed money but lost it all in a card game, robbed the winner, was set upon by seven men, wounded five, and escaped. After sundry other vicissitudes, including being blown up by a grenade, he set up as a master a third time, simultaneously keeping a brothel with sixteen girls who doubled as his concubines. One day, exhausted after preparations for a forced march, he fell asleep and was left behind by his regiment. "Up comes a French dragoon seeking plunder and took me prisoner, [and] drove me before him until he came to a wood where he wanted to ease nature. When his breeches were down, I mounted his horse and rode for it."

A year later he was marching with the Duke of Marlborough and in one engagement took three bayonet thrusts as well as receiving "a brace of balls that lies in my thigh to this day." None of this seemed to quench his spirit, and he was soon setting up tents for sixty "campaign ladies" as well as sixteen "professors of the sword." This was evidently insufficient, for he led a raiding party on his Dutch allies and carried off fourteen of their women. The next day to dozen Dutch swordsmen came to retrieve them. The two sides drank together, then fought until eleven Dutch and seven of McBane's band lay dead.

In 1706 he took part in a campaign that swept the French out of Flanders, in one siege hurling grenades for eight hours while receiving a ball in the head "which will mind me of it while I live." The following year he fought with a Gascon mercenary who had already killed five men. "I bound his sword and made a half thrust at his breast, he timed me and wounded me in the mouth; we took another turn, I took a little better care and gave him a thrust in the body, which made him very angry; some of the spectators cryed stand your ground, I wished them in my place, then I gave him a thrust in the belly, he then darted his sword at me, I parried it, he went and lay down on his coat and spoke none."

His next misadventure followed yet another dispute over money: he was severely beaten, thrown into a well, and left for dead, fortunately in less than a foot of water. In 1708, during one more siege of yet another town, he was knocked to the ground by the head of a comrade torn off by a cannon blast. "All his brains came round my head. I being half senseless put up my hand to my head and finding the brains cryed to my neighbour that all my brains had been knocked out; he said were they your brains out you could not speak."

In 1711, now forty-seven, McBane quarreled with two Dutch soldiers; the ensuing brawl left both men dying. Once again he was compelled to flee, only this time he was captured by the French and drafted into their ranks. It didn't take him long to kill two of his new comrades -- another argument over pay -- and he was arrested. The following day a drum major from Marlborough's army arrived to exchange prisoners. "Take him," the French general pleaded, "for if he stays he will kill all my men."

By 1712 the Flanders wars -- in which both Cyrano de Bergerac and Guy Fawkes had fought in their day -- were drifting to an end, and McBane returned to Britain, to a new marriage and a career with James Figg and his companions. He reenlisted once more, in 1715 against the Jacobite rebellion, and served until discharged because his many old wounds were troubling him. In 1726 "I fought a clean young man at Edinburgh. I gave him seven wounds and broke his arm with the fauchion. This I did at the request of several noblemen and gentlemen. But now being sixty-three years of age, resolve never to fight any more, but repent of my former wickedness."