Plague of Strength

“The man was Thomas Hoyer Monstery. He was a fencing master, boxer, marksman, sailor, adventurer, street fighter, soldier of fortune, animal tamer, and world traveler. He was a veteran of numerous wars, and an expert duelist, having participated in, by varying accounts, somewhere between fifty-two and sixty-one personal combats, and had twenty-two scars on his body to prove it” (Ben Miller in Self-Defense for Gentleman and Ladies).

If the above were to be carved into any person’s tombstone, that person would likely be considered a fucking demigod the likes of which populated Homeric epics and Dos Equis commercials. As it stands, however, that epitaph isn’t even all-encompassing and generally unctuous enough to be considered an adequate summary of the man, as he wasn’t simply a fucking badass- he was a wild-eyed and violent but progressive who did what he thought was right and generally went on to stab a few people to make his point (pun very much intended). Either from his worldy upbringing and education or just due to his unimpeachable character, Monstery was one of the first men to train female fighters and women who wanted to learn to defend themselves, when he could take time out of fighting in random wars and stabbing people for upsetting him as he ate his evening meal.

Perhaps that is the coolest thing about the man- he was not just an outrageously ferocious fighter, but he was such an exemplary judge of character and teacher that he created in his star pupil, Ella Hattan (whose radder-than-the-movie-Rad nickname was “La Jaguarina”), would go on to become regarded by swordplay masters to be one of the greatest female fighters of all time. In that, Monstery has to have been as unique as a hot 30-year old virgin in Las Vegas, because he was not simply a badass- he was a craftsman of badasses as well., and in realms few dudes at the time tread for fear of seeming “weak.”

Thomas Hoyer Monstery

• Born: Copenhagen, Denmark on April 21, 1824
• Died: Chicago, IL USA on December 31, 1901 (age 77)
• Height: 5’10” (estimated- he was described in one paper as “a hair under 6 foot,” but his bearing caused people to overestimate his height)
• Weight: 134 pounds (in his fifties, but likely somewhat heavier in his prime)
• Martial Arts Styles: Rough n’ Tumble, boxing, savate, wrestling, swordfighting, stickfighting
  • Proficient Weapons: rapier, dagger, broadsword, Bowie knife, lance, bayonet, and quarterstaff, various rifles and pistols, the cudgel, and a number of others.
• Age of First Offensive Stabbing: 12 years old
• Conflicts Fought: Under twelve flags (Denmark, Russia, US, Nicaragua, Cuba, Colombia, Spain, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Mexico) and on three continents, including Nicaraguan Civil War (1850s); Siege of Veracruz (Mexican-American War); one of the El Salvadorian revolutions in the 1850s, a Swedish conflict almost certainly in St. Barts (the Swedes didn’t fight much in the 19th century and Monstery grew up in the Caribbean), either the January Uprising or the Siberian Uprising on the behalf of Poland; the Mexican Civil was of the 1860s; possibly the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 (according to one anecdotal account about him fighting for liberty in Hungary); some or all of the Mexican conflicts of the time beyond Vera Cruz- Mexico was invaded by the US in 1846-48, Spain, England, and France in 1862, it was occupied by France from 1862-1868, and they fought a religious civil war called the War of the Reform from 1858-61; and the Cuban insurrection under General Lopez, among others.
• Ranks and Titles: achieved the rank of Colonel in the Russian Army as the head of Duke Constantine’s bodyguard; Professor of Arms in Sweden, Denmark, Russia, Germany; in the service of Spain, Central and South America, and the Cuban and Mexican Armies; Instructor-at-Arms to the army, with the rank of Colonel; and Instructor at the San Francisco Olympic Club.
• Duels Fought: depending on the account, he fought in between 52 and 61 duels, including about 19 “regular” duels with the small sword and the remainder with saber, knife, and pistol. He only killed two of his opponents in those duels (his first, at age 21, and another in Mexico in 1868), as they were almost always to satisfy a matter of honor and disagreement rather than to end a life.

“He who lives by the sword, lives long.”

The almost inconceivably cool Colonel Thomas Hoyer Monstery was such a compellingly bad motherfucker that he makes the Dos Equis guy seem like some dipshit sat in a baby blue minivan wearing pleated and pressed khakis. Vanilla Ice’s insane life story seems like a commercial for mediocrity by comparison, and anyone you’ve ever met would be embarrassed to discuss any tales of badassery around this man- his resume reads like the bucket list for a polymath sociopath with a taste for a bit of the old ultra-violence. And were it not enough that the man would fight anyone, anywhere, with any weapon, and almost invariably win, or that he would champion a gender struggling to breathe under the mounds of shit heaped upon them by a bunch of fearful and weak men, but he would even take up such causes as teaching people swimming (which was one of his passions) in a time in a time when very few people could swim or even see the utility in learning the skill. Hell- even in fighting the man chose the oddest and most uneven methods to use to demonstrate his style, as he and his students all excelled in uneven weapons combat, most notably in using a dagger to trash opponents armed with a broadsword.

“The broadsword exercises by Col. Monstery and his pupils were among the most interesting features of the entertainment, and the dagger fencing, and dagger against broadsword were savagely delightful… The rapier fencing between Col. Monstery and a pupil, was exquisitely graceful and beautiful.”

– Mark Motherfucking Twain in 1864

Thomas Hoyer Monstery was born on April 24, 1824 to an Irish aristocratic expat and a Swedish beauty queen. Monstery’s father, whose last name was actually Munster, was barred from the Danish court for killing a man in a duel and died after being stabbed in the lung and choking to death on his own blood, which was Monstery’s sole recollection of the man. They’d lived in both Denmark and St. Croix (after Munster’s) banishment, and when Monstery turned twelve he was sent to join the Danish Navy, which would make him more well travelled by the age of twenty than most people are at the time of their death from old age. Like his British contemporary the bodybuilding horror novelist William Hope Hodgson, Monstery learned to brawl in an effort to forestall the nightly rounds of drunken rape and beatings, and he stabbed his first man in a fight on shore leave in Brazil shortly after joining.

By the time he was 17, this strapping young badass had traveled the world (in three years he visited Brazil, Russia, England, and Portugal, among other stops), fought half of the people on it, and ended up mostly blind for his troubles after an explosion in the ship’s magazine. Though he eventually regained basic eyesight, Monstery lacked the keen eye of the scurvy seaman and was discharged from service. Once healthy, Monstery joined the Royal Military Institute of Gymnastics and Arms in Copenhagen, where he learned to fight with “sword, musket, bayonet, rapier, cudgel, and quarterstaff” in spite of the fact that his glasses were so thick he looked like that chubby halfwit from the Trailer Park Boys. He graduated at the top of his class after being named the best athlete in the institution, whereupon he became an instructor at the military academy.

From there, Monstery began travelling Europe, fighting anyone who would stand in front of him with something sharp and pointy, in an effort to become the greatest swordsman in the world. He soon found himself in Stockholm, Sweden where he enrolled in the Central Institute of Physical Culture, which was then the premier physical culture institute on planet Earth. While there, Monstery studied under the founder of Swedish massage and inventor/rediscoverer of calisthenics, Pehr Henrik Ling, a Swedish gymnastics teacher who was famous for combining Chinese gymnastics training with calisthenics and the surprisingly ambidextrous French style of fencing. Pehr had trained under and used the system designed by Franz Nachtegall, who founded the first school for gymnastics teachers in Europe. Nachtegall taught strength training utilizing rope ladders, ropes, climbing and balancing, tug of war, and jumps using wooden horses to build strength. Ling combined Nachtegall’s system with fencing and a serious love of libertine philosophy, which he then passed to the burgeoning more-progressive-than-your-local-socialist-coffeehouse-owner Thomas Monstery, who then used it to literally carve decency into his fellow man.

Monstery’s instructor died of tuberculosis in 1839, leaving the instruction to two of his sons and two other prize pupils, all of who began focusing heavily on the creation of medical gymnastics as they developed a system specifically to strengthen women alongside their military-and-medically-focused training. By the time Monstery departed the school he was a fucking legend, and the Germans told tales of a boy “who could go out in a heavy rain storm and swing his sword so deftly that he was as dry beneath it as though he were under an umbrella” (NIU Library).

Though he was hardly an untested empty handed combatant, Monstery was unsatisfied with his skills in that regard and traveled to England to train under legendary-hardly-describes-his-trash-talking-skills William Thompson, who was at the time known by his fight name, Bendigo. Bendigo had become the English heavyweight boxing champion the same year Monstery began training with him, though Monstery felt that the brawny brawler’s victories were the result of the strength he’d built as an iron turner. Instead of learning anything, Monstery simply found himself lumped up day after day, so he moved to Germany to study under a boxing master named Liedersdoff. Finding he was too skilled to learn anything from the German, Monstery then traveled to Spain, Italy, Paris, Vienna, and Berlin for more instruction, but each time found he was far more skilled than the teachers under whom he studied. After getting exiled from Russia for fucking a married lady of the Russian court, Monstery moved to Copenhagen to live with his mother, though he soon fled to the US after killing a Dane in a duel over another woman.

It being 1846, Monstery saw the opportunity to find work with either side fighting in the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), and after finding himself unable to secure a commission to teach bayonet fighting and fencing, Monstery enlisted and served on the gunboat Vixen in its assault on Vera Cruz. As was his apparent habit, Monstery was again horrifically injured on a boat and was transferred to the Naval Hospital at Portsmouth, New Hampshire to convalesce. Once he’d recovered, Monstery moved to Baltimore, where he worked for a cigar manufacturer before going into business for himself in the same trade. Finding himself more than modestly successful, he moved to Philly and then back to Baltimore, where he rolled cigars in his downtime from teaching fencing and boxing at his academy in the Baltimore Patriot building. It was at this point that Monstery ran afoul of the notorious New York-based street gang the Plug Uglies, who you might remember from the film Gangs of New York. Monstery hated those thieving little fucks, so he taught the citizenry how to fuck up the gang members free of charge, focusing on the use of everyday items to end the lives of top hat-wearing dickheads on the street.

By 1855, Monstery was sick of Baltimore, so he sold his business and went back to being a world traveler. In a whrilwind tour of global conflicts he taught bayonet fencing in Cuba, but lost his job after catching yellow fever. Afterward he was wounded fighting in Nicaragua, then worked in various places in Central America before returning to Chiapas, Mexico, whereupon he was robbed of about $50k (which is about $1.4M in 2019 dollars), an insane amount to be carrying while travelling in war-torn countries… unless you’re one of the most dangerous human weapons to ever walk the Earth.

Undeterred, Monstery opened his school of combative arts in Mexico a year after the Frenchman Nicholas Poupard opened the first ever in the country, and challenged Poupard to an assault-at-arms and boxing demonstration to confirm Monstery’s self-proclaimed title of “Mexico City’s Master-at-Arms.” Monstery so thoroughly dominated Poupard at the foil that Poupard conceded the remaining rounds to Monstery, who then asked for challengers from the crowd to exhibit the other weapons and ended the affair with a boxing exhibition against one of his Mexican pupils, who awed the crowd with his tenacity and fortitude in what was for Mexicans a totally unknown fighting art. I personally found that to be somewhat strange, as I assumed that outside of feudal Japan, everyone on the planet fought with their fists and feet at some point. Apparently, much to Monstery’s benefit and the benefit of his wallet, that was not the case.

“Boxing has no pre-Columbian or Hispanic precedants; it represents clearly the impulse of mimicry by Mexican gentlemen of the 1890s. Indigenous cultures had a variety of ritual sporting contests, which included a form of wrestling and mock combat with various weapons, but not fisticuffs. The medieval Spanish tradition included tournaments matching individuals or an individual against a bull, but pugilism was never an event. Impromptu fights to settle differences in New Spain and nineteenth century Mexico led to the use of weapons, either knives or guns, not fists. In fact, when Governor Rafael Cravioto agreed to allow a prize fight in Pachuca, Hidalgo, in 1895, he did so with the comment that he hoped Mexicans would take a lesson from the exhibition and learn to settle differences ‘without guns’” (Beezley 31-32).

After a brief stop in the Caribbean he headed back to the states with the seven grand ($201k in 2019 dollars) he set up shop in San Francisco, where he founded Pioneer Gymnasium, and a second location in Oakland. He managed to remain in one spot for all of four years, then succumbed to his innate nomadism and bounced between Mexico, Cuba, South America, and California until settling in New York in 1870, which is a seriously bonkers tour considering how slow travel was at the time. The reason behind Monstery’s definitive move back to the US could be the source of much speculation, but I think it’s fairly likely that after killing a man in a duel in Mexico, Monstery realized he had a pretty big target on his back.

Jump to Part 2

Sources:

Beezley, William H. Judas at the Jockey Club and Other Episodes of Porfirian Mexico (3rd Ed.). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004.

Pehr Henrik Ling.  Wikia.  Web.  26 May 2020.  https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Pehr_Henrik_Ling

Miller, Ben.  Colonel Thomas Monstery, and the Training of Jaguarina, America’s Champion Swordswoman.  Martial Arts New York.  31 Mar 2015.  Web.  20 May 2020.
https://martialartsnewyork.org/2015/03/31/colonel-thomas-monstery-and-the-training-of-jaguarina-americas-champion-swordswoman/

Miller, Ben.  A grand assault-of-arms in old New York, directed by Col. Thomas Monstery.  Out of This Century.  9 Apr 2015.  Web. 26 May 2020.  https://outofthiscentury.wordpress.com/2015/04/09/a-grand-assault-of-arms-in-old-new-york-directed-by-col-thomas-monstery/

Monstery, Colonel Thomas Hoyer Monstery and Ben Miller (ed.). Self Defense for Gentlemen and Ladies: A Nineteenth-Century Treatise on Boxing, Kicking, Grappling, and Fencing with the Cane and Quarterstaff. Berkeley: Blue Snake Books, 2015.

Whittaker, Frederick. The Sword Prince. The Romantic Life of Colonel Monstery. Reprinted from Boy’s Library, octavo edition No. 28, 1884. Northern Illinois University. Web. 26 Mar 2020. https://www.ulib.niu.edu/badndp/monstery_thomas.html

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