the fighters strove in pairs on the shooting-ground; the royal ladies also drove out to see this combat; the first victor received a beautiful waistcoat of taffety; every other prize consisted of two thalers. At a cross-bow meeting at Zwickau, 1573, the Margrave of Anspach introduced a fighting band of forty men, against whom the Elector August of Saxony arranged his _Federfechters_. They contended for two days, in pairs, with the long sword, the wooden sword, the long spear, and the short lance, bareheaded, according to old custom, and some made many passes without conquering the other. There was much bravado in these combats, but they gave rise to great jealousy, violent blows, and bad wounds. The society of fencers outlived the prize-shootings and the great war. They lost the old expressions for their art, but substituted French words, and maintained their position in the larger cities in spite of the foreign fencing-masters. In Nueremberg their public combats were forbidden shortly before 1700; but parties long ran high among the people for the two factions: there was no boy in the city who did not contend for the Marxbrueder or Federfechter, who frequently gave their performances in private houses. The last great fencing match took place, in 1741, at Breslau, in the churchyard of Magdalena. On the day when the young King of Prussia, with careless mien and dishevelled hair, and his small parade sword, came to receive the homage of the conquered Silesia on the throne of the Emperor Matthias, when the dawn of a new time broke over Germany, the old fencers, like shadowy figures of a distant time, performed once more their antics over the graves of a past generation, and then passed away.