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After not a little study I resolved to distribute the ‘Book of the Sword’ into three parts.

Part I. treats of the birth, parentage, and early career of the Sword. It begins with the very beginning, in prehistoric times and amongst proto-historic peoples; and it ends with the full growth of the Sword at the epoch of the early Roman Empire.

Part II. treats of the Sword fully grown. It opens with the rising civilisation of the Northern Barbarians and with the decline of Rome under Constantine (a.d. 313–324), who combined Christianity with Mithraism; when the world-capital was transferred to Byzantium, and when an imitation of Orientalism, specially of ‘Persic apparatus,’ led to the art decay which we denote by the term ‘Lower Empire.’ It proceeds to the rise of El-Islam; the origin of ordered chivalry and knighthood; the succession of the Crusades and the wars of arms and armour before the gunpowder age, when the general use of ballistics by means of explosives became the marking feature of battle. This was the palmy period of the Sword. It became a beautiful work of art; and the highest genius did not disdain to chase and gem the handle and sheath. And its career culminates with the early sixteenth century, when the weapon of offence assumed its defensive phase and rose to a height of splendour that prognosticated downfall, as surely as the bursting of a rocket precedes its extinction.