De Tilly, surnamed “Le beau De Tilly,” was another celebrated character of that period, and in his Memoirs we find the following observations on the practice of duelling:
“France is the birth-place of duelling. I have roved over a great part of Europe, and travelled in the New World; I have lived with soldiers and courtiers; and nowhere else have I met with this fatal susceptibility, which is incessantly creating affronts, injuries, and provocations. Whence arises this disposition, so peculiar to the French, whose character is too noble to become vindictive, and which induces them to fight a duel in matters that are chiefly frivolous? It is education, and that only.
“You have had a discussion with an intimate friend; although it may not have exceeded the limits of an excusable warmth, women have observed in it injurious shades; and you would rather expose yourself to kill your friend, or be killed by him, than to the mere suspicion, on the part of woman, of being deficient in courage.
“At a gambling-table a misunderstanding arises; a by-stander has smiled ironically; he has whispered to his sister, who has whispered something to her cousin: get yourself killed by all means, for you may have been suspected of cheating at play; and nothing can set such a question in a proper light but the thrust of a sword!
“Your wife is an acknowledged coquette; get yourself run through the body by her lover, and her honour will be restored. You yourself may have seduced the wife of an honest man, who dares to suspect you, and receives you with ill-humour: kill him; for, having deprived him of happiness and peace, you need not be punctilious in ridding him of life!”
This opinion of the character of the French and their notions of honour has been since amply illustrated by Chateaubriand in the following terms: “The first-born of antiquity, the French, Romans in genius, are Greeks in their character. Restless and volatile in prosperity, constant and invincible in adversity. Created for the cultivation of every art; civilised to excess during the calm days of the state, coarse and savage in political troubles. Tossed to and fro by their passions, like a vessel without ballast on the waves, now ascending to the skies, and then sinking in an abyss. Equally enthusiastic in good and in evil; kind without expecting gratitude, cruel without experiencing remorse, and quickly forgetting both their vices and their virtues. Attached to life in days of peace with pusillanimity, they are prodigal of their blood in the hour of battle. Vain, sarcastic, ambitious, they are at the same time mechanical followers of routine and innovators; despising everything but themselves. Individually the most agreeable of men, collectively the most unpleasant. Delightful in their own country, insupportable abroad. At times, more mild and innocent than the lamb they slaughter; at others, more pitiless and ferocious than the devouring tiger. Such were the Athenians of old, and such are now the French.”
Duels now sometimes assumed a humorous character; and men fought for songs, puns, and conundrums. The poet Champeneti got wounded for verses that he had not written; and Cagliostro, being called out by a physician whom he had styled a quack, on the plea that a medical question should be settled medicinally, proposed that the parties should swallow two pills, the one poisonous and the other innocuous.
An anecdote is related of a young man from the country, who was ridiculed for his awkward mode of dancing, and who replied, “If I dance badly, I know how to fight.” To which it was coolly rejoined, “Then, for the future, you had better fight, and never dance!”
Such were the reckless feelings of the time, that a certain Marquis de Tenteniac, from Britanny, actually challenged the pit of a theatre. Being behind the scenes, he had appeared so forward in one of the wings, that the public rebuked him; when he immediately stepped forward to the footlights, and, addressing the audience, said, “Ladies and gentlemen, with your permission a piece will be performed to-morrow, called ‘The Insolence of the Pit chastised,’ in as many acts as may be desired, by the Marquis de Tenteniac!” This impudent address was received with great applause, and no one individual thought proper to resent a general insult.
While duels were thus discountenanced amongst civilians, it was also endeavoured to check them in the army. The ill-fated Marshal Ney, Duke of Elchingen, judicially assassinated in Paris at the period of the Restoration, was an example of the severe measures resorted to, to punish offenders. Ney, who was born at Sarrelouis in 1769, enlisted, in the year 1787, in the regiment “de Colonel Général,” afterwards the Fourth Hussars. He was remarkable for his soldier-like appearance, his dexterity in his exercises, and his skilful horsemanship, in which he frequently broke in horses that the rough-riders could not manage. He was also considered the best swordsman in the corps; and on him frequently devolved the perilous task of fighting the regimental battles. The fencing-master of the Chasseurs de Vintimille, then in the same garrison with his regiment,—a desperate duellist, who had wounded the fencing-master of Ney’s regiment,—having insulted the corps, it was decided that the bravest and the most dexterous dragoon should be selected to chastise him. The choice fell upon Ney. The parties met, sabres were drawn, when Ney felt himself dragged back by the tail: it was his colonel who had thus seized him, and had him immediately thrown into the black-hole.