Another deputation solicited a decree which would render duelling a crime of lèse-nationality, and supplicated the assembly to wield the sword of justice in punishing the perverse individual who had shed the blood of one of the representatives of the people, and whose crime the capital had justly avenged. This address was received with tumultuous applause, both by the audience and the members of the assembly, when the member for Angoulême, a M. Roy, exclaimed, “That none but ruffians could applaud such a proposal;” for which imprudence he was sentenced to three days’ imprisonment. On this occasion Barnave made a most eloquent speech against duelling, although three months after, he fought and wounded Cazalés, another deputy.
Not only were duels avoided in these fearful times, but any person who insulted one of the representatives of the people, or who acted with violence towards him, was denounced as a conspirator and an assassin. This was instanced in the case of Grangeneuve, who had quarrelled with Jonneau, whom he called a F—— Viédasse,[18] to which the other replied, “You have insulted me! are you a man of honour?” “I am,” replied Grangeneuve. “Then meet me to-morrow at the Bois de Boulogne, with pistols.” “I will meet you to-morrow in the National Assembly,” replied his antagonist. “The world, then, will pronounce you a coward.”—“And you a Jean F——;” on which Jonneau slapped his face; Grangeneuve retorted with a stone, which he picked up, and a caning, with kicks and cuffs, ensued.
Notwithstanding the unwarrantable conduct of Grangeneuve, Guadet, a deputy from the Gironde, insisted upon an impeachment against Jonneau as an assassin; and another orator, Larivière, who seconded the motion, expressed himself in a bombastic style, illustrating the dementation of the epoch: “Jonneau,” he said, “had been guilty of a cowardly action, by provoking a man physically weak for a trifling insult, and was still more cowardly in striking him: he ought to have imitated Turenne, who being provoked to fight a duel, replied, “To-morrow there will be a battle, all our blood belongs to our country, and we shall see which of us shall the best defend her.” He therefore moved that Jonneau should be committed, although, after he had been separated from his antagonist, he had been unmercifully beaten by a ruffian of the name of Saint Huruge, and Barbaroux, another deputy from the Gironde.
All the eloquence of these desperate madmen, however, could not prevent occasional meetings, and the National Assembly at last abrogated all former laws prohibiting single combat, and passed an amnesty in favour of those transgressors who had been prosecuted agreeably to their enactments.
Camille Desmoulins was another orator of this fearful epoch, who launched forth against duelling in the following memorable language:
“One may brave death in the cause of liberty for one’s country, and I feel that I could stretch my neck out of my litter, and hold forth my throat to the sword of Antony; I feel that I could possess sufficient fortitude to ascend the scaffold with a mingled sentiment of pleasure. Such is the courage which I have received, not from nature, which shudders at the aspect of death, but from philosophy; to be assassinated by the bravo who provokes me, is to be stung by a tarantula, and I should have to spend my days in the Bois de Boulogne, were I to give satisfaction to all those whom my frankness offends. I may be accused of cowardice, but I apprehend that the times are not far distant when we shall have ample opportunities of dying in a more glorious and useful manner.”
The occasion of this speech was a dispute which he had with Haudet and Désessarts of the French theatre, and the miserable man had only anticipated his impending fate, doomed soon after to fall under the rival power of Robespierre.
Such were the morbid views of honour entertained during the atrocious phases of the French Revolution: the most noble and generous sentiments were professed by the most implacable monsters of the epoch; and while the murder of innocent men on the scaffold was called by Danton the justice of the people, a duel was denominated “the argument of an assassin,”—when Marat was called the Divine, and Robespierre the Incorruptible!—The Revolution might fairly be denominated a moral pestilence caused by former corruption; the national atmosphere had been tainted by the putrescency of the Court, and the fever that it produced was marked by a homicidic delirium which from its diffusion in every class of society might have been considered contagious.
The history of those momentous times presents us a series of causes and effects so closely linked in their fatal catenation, that the bloody annals of that era should constitute the chief study of every diplomatist. It is to be deeply lamented that these records do not become the text-book of diplomatic tuition. When the nobility dropped their swords and the people picked them up, the meanest comprehension could have foreseen the sanguinary results. The apathy in which the possessors of power and wealth slumbered could only be compared to the perfidious calm of gangrene that precedes dissolution. A blind confidence in the prestige of authority hurled the nobility into a vortex which swept them down the torrent of popular reaction. The hatred in which duels were held, simply arose from their not being the practice of fashionable men, and was a strong illustration of the morbid temper of the nation, and the successful efforts of the philosophic school. The history of the progress of liberal ideas gradually casting off the restraints of rank and fortune might be studied in the dedication of writers. Where could we find an author in the present day, who, like Dryden, would compare the pustules of small-pox on the corpse of a deceased young nobleman, the son of his protector, to bright constellations in the firmament? As men grow wise, the prejudices of barbarism will gradually disappear; and certainly, with very few exceptions, we cannot trace much sapience in those persons who have been engaged in personal conflicts of late years.