In 1834, when Brussels was in a state of great anarchy and confusion, duels were not unfrequent; a man was assassinated in coming out of the playhouse for having declined a challenge; and the minister assured the chamber, that he would adopt the most energetic means to repress these excesses. Notwithstanding the prohibitory laws, several fatal meetings took place without any judicial punishment. A captain of artillery, named Pariset, had reprimanded a M. Vanderstraeten, one of his lieutenants, for not having saluted him, observing, that “he was but a boy.” The lieutenant called out his captain, who declined the meeting; when another captain, of the name of Eenens, took up the quarrel, and obliged Pariset to give him satisfaction, by calling him a coward. The meeting took place in a pine-wood near Waterloo, when Pariset was killed at the first fire. The survivor was tried by a court-martial, but acquitted on the plea that there did not exist any law to punish duelling. More recently, at Luxemburg, a duel was fought between a Baron de Tornaco and a Dutch captain, when the latter was shot dead; but no judicial inquiry followed.
The government of Belgium are at this moment preparing a law for the utter prohibition of this practice, which hitherto has been rarely visited with severity. In the Belgian army, as well as in that of France, duelling, even between officers of great disparity of rank, is only punished by cashiering the offender, as appears in the following order of the day of the minister of war, Count Maison, in 1835:—
“In breach of all subordination, a lieutenant-colonel has presumed to challenge his superior officer. Such a serious transgression, which might prove most injurious to the discipline of the corps, demands a prompt and severe punishment. The minister, therefore, orders, that the lieutenant-colonel shall be forthwith brought before a court-martial. In regard to the superior officer, who might and ought to have exercised the authority which his rank conferred on him, but who condescended to accept the challenge, he is cashiered. The seconds and the other officers who were present at, or who did not prevent the meeting, shall be placed under close arrest for a fortnight.”
CHAPTER XXI.
DUELS IN THE UNITED STATES.
To record the duels that have taken place in the United States of America would require a ponderous work. They not only have been very frequent, but in general marked with a character of reckless ferocity, that clearly shows the very slow progress of civilization in that rising country, where we have every reason to expect and to hope that at some future period the practice of duelling will fall into as much disrepute as in more polished regions.
This young country, notwithstanding its constant commercial and political relations with the European powers and the mother-land, is but little known; indeed, a knowledge of the customs, habits, and ideas of its inhabitants, must be difficult to obtain, from their territorial divisions, the great extent of their provinces, and the difference of the institutions that rule their several states: in the one, an offence is considered a heinous crime, which in another is deemed a mere misdemeanor, an anomaly in legislation which must arise from the variety of their commercial and agricultural interests. It is, moreover, to be deeply lamented that most travellers who have described their manners, after a mere hasty glance at the state of their society, started on the tour of inquiry fully determined to find fault, and possibly to speculate ultimately on national prejudices, as their works have become more or less popular according to the ridicule they have attached to American society, or the denunciation of its hostility towards England. On the other hand, other travellers have launched forth into lavish and enthusiastic praise, even of their vices and errors; and France has not been backward in sending to the States demagogues and visionaries, who consider them the seat of liberty and independence.
That duels should be frequent in a new settlement is naturally to be expected, more especially when the settlers are rude and uneducated; the distance between their dwellings, the wildness of the forest, and the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of having recourse to legal and competent judicial authorities to settle their endless differences, must induce them to take the law into their own hands, and arrange matters with sword, pistol, rifle, or bowie-knife; or, if weapons were not at hand, by the most ferocious pugilistic contests, partaking of the savage yet honourable boxing of their fathers, and the ferocious refinement of their Indian neighbours. Thus, wherever a colonist squatted, he became the sole guardian and protector of his log-house and property.
The influence of example, which the conduct of the upper classes exercises on the lower orders, is sometimes reversed, and the false notions of right and honour, entertained by the vulgar, are too frequently adopted by their superiors, who from political purposes are anxious to court that popularity which a display of what is misnamed courage is sure to obtain among a rude people, who are unwilling, from false notions of pride, to raise themselves to the level of the civilization of their mother country. Fortunately, this absurd prejudice is gradually losing ground, although, if we may form an opinion by the public press, the bombastic style and the silly bragging of their writers will tend to retard most materially this desirable progress. The absurd fancy of seeking to alter the language of their ancestors, is a convincing proof of the folly of such pretensions to superiority, which a few accidental successes in war have carried to a pitch absolutely ridiculous. It is not easy for their legislators and their temporary rulers to oppose this bubbling and frothy torrent of popular vanity; nor indeed dare they stem its dangerous tide, which wafts them to power: and thus are they often under the painful necessity of appearing to sanction excesses which they sincerely condemn, and to use a style of exaggeration suited to the morbid temperament of their constituents. With us the degradation of the hustings is an occasional occurrence; in America every public man is hourly polling. There is a state of feverish anxiety perpetually raging, and duelling must be the inevitable result of such a fermentation, and will continue to prevail so long as brute force is considered a qualification.