Michel Casseux
French founder of savate, who around 1820 began to combine street kicking techniques into a system and opened the first teaching hall for them.
Quick Facts
FranceBiography
Michel Casseux, nicknamed "Pisseux", was born in 1794, according to French sources probably in the Parisian district of La Courtille, and died in 1869. He is known as the first person to try to make savate, French kick fighting, into a comprehensive system, and as the first to teach it systematically.
Around 1820 he began to systematise street kicking techniques. Other sources place the beginning of his teaching of "l'art de la savate" and the first official salle de savate in La Courtille in 1825, so the accounts differ. We have not been able to verify who his own teachers were.
His teaching hall (salle) attracted members of the French upper class. He banned some street practices and created a regulated system for both self-defence and competition. In 1839–1841 he taught in rue des Martyrs and rue Coquenard, and in 1848–1861 in rue Buffault. His students included the draughtsman Paul Gavarni, Ferdinand-Philippe, Duke of Orléans, the writer Théophile Gautier and Lord Henry Seymour, the founder of the Jockey Club. With Gautier he collaborated on the text Le Maître de chausson (1842) and inspired the brochure Théorie pratique sur l'art de la savate (1843).
His student and successor was Charles Lecour, who opened his own hall in 1832, later added English boxing and created French boxing.