In the succeeding reign the mania for duels revived. Rostand’s Cyrano is a life-like modern portraiture of French bloods in the first half of the 17th century. De Houssaye tells us that in Paris when friends met the first question was, “Who fought yesterday? who is to fight to-day?” They fought by night and day, by moonlight and by torch-light, in the public streets and squares. A hasty word, a misconceived gesture, a question about the colour of a riband or an embroidered letter, such were the commonest pretexts for a duel. The slighter and more frivolous the dispute, the less were they inclined to submit them to the king for adjudication. Often, like gladiators or prize-fighters, they fought for the pure love of fighting. A misunderstanding is cleared up on the ground. “N’importe,” cry the principals, “puisque nous sommes ici, battons-nous.” Seconds, as Montaigne tells us, are no longer witnesses, but must take part themselves unless they would be thought wanting in affection or courage; and he goes on to complain that men are no longer contented with a single second, “c’était anciennement des duels, ce sont à cette heure rencontres et batailles.” There is no more striking instance of Richelieu’s firmness and power as a statesman than his conduct in the matter of duelling. In his Testament politique he has assigned his reasons for disapproving it as a statesman and ecclesiastic. But this disapproval was turned to active detestation by a private cause. His elder brother, the head of the house, had fallen in a duel stabbed to the heart by an enemy of the cardinal. Already four edicts had been published under Louis XIII. with little or no effect, when in 1626 there was published a new edict condemning to death any one who had killed his adversary in a duel, or had been found guilty of sending a challenge a second time. Banishment and partial confiscation of goods were awarded for lesser offences. But this edict differed from preceding ones not so much in its severity as in the fact that it was the first which was actually enforced. The cardinal began by imposing the penalties of banishment and fines, but, these proving ineffectual to stay the evil, he determined to make a terrible example. To quote his own words to the king, “Il s’agit de couper la gorge aux duels ou aux édits de votre Majesté.” The count de Boutteville, a renommist who had already been engaged in twenty-one affairs of honour, determined out of pure bravado to fight a twenty-second time. The duel took place at midday on the Place Royale. Boutteville was arrested with his second, the count de Chapelles; they were tried by the parlement of Paris, condemned and, in spite of all the influence of the powerful house of Montmorenci, of which de Boutteville was a branch, they were both beheaded on the 21st of June 1627. For a short time the ardour of duellists was cooled. But the lesson soon lost its effect. Only five years later we read in the Mercure de France that two gentlemen who had killed one another in a duel were, by the cardinal’s orders, hanged on a gallows, stripped and with their heads downwards, in the sight of all the people. This was a move in the right direction, since, for fashionable vices, ridicule and ignominy is a more drastic remedy than death. It was on this principle that Caraccioli, prince of Melfi, when viceroy of Piedmont, finding that his officers were being decimated by duelling, proclaimed that all duels should be fought on the parapet of the Ponte Vecchio, and if one of the combatants chanced to fall into the river he should on no account be pulled out.
Under the long reign of Louis XIV. many celebrated duels took place, of which the most remarkable were that between the duke of Guise and Count Coligny, the last fought on the Place Royale, and that between the dukes of Beaufort and Nemours, each attended by four friends. Of the ten combatants, Nemours and two others were killed on the spot, and none escaped without some wound. No less than eleven edicts against duelling were issued under le Grand Monarque. That of 1643 established a supreme court of honour composed of the marshals of France; but the most famous was that of 1679, which confirmed the enactments of his predecessors, Henry IV. and Louis XII. At the same time a solemn agreement was entered into by the principal nobility that they would never engage in a duel on any pretence whatever. A medal was struck to commemorate the occasion, and the firmness of the king, in refusing pardon to all offenders, contributed more to restrain this scourge of society than all the efforts of his predecessors.
The subsequent history of duelling in France may be more shortly treated. In the preamble to the edict of 1704 Louis XIV. records his satisfaction at seeing under his reign an almost entire cessation of those fatal combats which by the inveterate force of custom had so long prevailed. Addison (Spectator, 99) notes it as one of the most glorious exploits of his reign to have banished the false point of honour. Under the regency of Louis XV. there was a brief revival. The last legislative act for the suppression of duels was passed on the 12th of April 1723. Then came the Revolution, which in abolishing the ancien régime fondly trusted that with it would go the duel, one of the privileges and abuses of an aristocratic society. Dupleix, in his Military Law concerning the Duel (1611), premises that these have no application to lawyers, merchants, financiers or justices. This explains why in the legislation of the National Assembly there is no mention of duels. Camille Desmoulins when challenged shrugged his shoulders and replied to the charge of cowardice that he would prove his courage on other fields than the Bois de Boulogne. The two great Frenchmen whose writings preluded the French Revolution both set their faces against it. Voltaire had indeed, as a young man, in obedience to the dictates of society, once sought satisfaction from a nobleman for a brutal insult, and had reflected on his temerity in the solitude of the Bastille.[1] Henceforward he inveighed against the practice, not only for its absurdity, but also for its aristocratic exclusiveness. Rousseau had said of duelling, “It is not an institution of honour, but a horrible and barbarous custom, which a courageous man despises and a good man abhors.” Napoleon was a sworn foe to it. “Bon duelliste mauvais soldat” is one of his best known sayings; and, when the king of Sweden sent him a challenge, he replied that he would order a fencing-master to attend him as plenipotentiary. After the battle of Waterloo duels such as Lever loves to depict were frequent between disbanded French officers and those of the allies in occupation. The restoration of the Bourbons brought with it a fresh crop of duels. Since then duels have been frequent in France—more frequent, however, in novels than in real life—fought mainly between politicians and journalists, and with rare exceptions bloodless affairs. If fought with pistols, the distance and the weapons chosen render a hit improbable; and, if fought with rapiers, honour is generally satisfied with the first blood drawn. Among Frenchmen famous in politics or letters who have “gone out” may be mentioned Armand Carrel, who fell in an encounter with Émile Girardin; Thiers, who thus atoned for a youthful indiscretion; the elder Dumas; Lamartine; Ste Beuve, who to show at once his sangfroid and his sense of humour, fought under an umbrella; Ledru Rollin; Edmond About; Clément Thomas; Veuillot, the representative of the church militant; Rochefort; and Boulanger, the Bonapartist fanfaron, whose discomfiture in a duel with Floquet resulted in a notable loss of popular respect.
Duelling did not begin in England till some hundred years after it had arisen in France. There is no instance of a private duel fought in England before the 16th century, and they are rare before the reign of James I. A very In England. fair notion of the comparative popularity of duelling, and of the feeling with which it was regarded at various periods, might be gathered by examining the part it plays in the novels and lighter literature of the times. The earliest duels we remember in fiction are that in the Monastery between Sir Piercie Shafton and Halbert Glendinning, and that in Kenilworth between Tressilian and Varney. (That in Anne of Geierstein either is an anachronism or must reckon as a wager by battle.) Under James I. we have the encounter between Nigel and Lord Dalgarno. The greater evil of war, as we observed in French history, expels the lesser, and the literature of the Commonwealth is in this respect a blank. With the Restoration there came a reaction against Puritan morality, and a return to the gallantry and loose manners of French society, which is best represented by the theatre of the day. The drama of the Restoration abounds in duels. Passing on to the reign of Queen Anne, we find the subject frequently discussed in the Tatler and the Spectator, and Addison points in his happiest way the moral to a contemporary duel between Mr Thornhill and Sir Cholmeley Dering. “I come not,” says Spinomont to King Pharamond, “I come not to implore your pardon, I come to relate my sorrow, a sorrow too great for human life to support. Know that this morning I have killed in a duel the man whom of all men living I love best.” No reader of Esmond can forget Thackeray’s description of the doubly fatal duel between the duke of Hamilton and Lord Mohun, which is historical, or the no less life-like though fictitious duel between Lord Mohun and Lord Castlewood. The duel between the two brothers in Stevenson’s Master of Ballantrae is one of the best conceived in fiction. Throughout the reigns of the Georges they are frequent. Richardson expresses his opinion on the subject in six voluminous letters to the Literary Repositor. Sheridan, like Farquhar in a previous generation, not only dramatized a duel, but fought two himself. Byron thus commemorates the bloodless duel between Tom Moore and Lord Jeffrey:—
| “Can none remember that eventful day, That ever glorious almost fatal fray, When Little’s leadless pistols met the eye, And Bow Street myrmidons stood laughing by?” |
There are no duels in Miss Austen’s novels, but in those of Miss Edgeworth, her contemporary, there are three or four. As we approach the 19th century they become rarer in fiction. Thackeray’s novels, indeed, abound in duels. “His royal highness the late lamented commander-in-chief” had the greatest respect for Major Macmurdo, as a man who had conducted scores of affairs for his acquaintance with the greatest prudence and skill; and Rawdon Crawley’s duelling pistols, “the same which I shot Captain Marker,” have become a household word. Dickens, on the other hand, who depicts contemporary English life, and mostly in the middle classes, in all his numerous works has only three; and George Eliot never once refers to a duel. Tennyson, using a poet’s privilege, laid the scene of a duel in the year of the Crimean War, but he echoes the spirit of the times when he stigmatizes “the Christless code that must have life for a blow.” Browning, who delights in cases of conscience, has given admirably the double moral aspect of the duel in his two lyrics entitled “Before” and “After.”
To pass from fiction to fact we will select the most memorable English duels of the last century and a half. Lord Byron killed Mr Chaworth in 1765; Charles James Fox and Mr Adams fought in 1779; duke of York and Colonel Lennox, 1789; William Pitt and George Tierney, 1796; George Canning and Lord Castlereagh, 1809; Mr Christie killed John Scott, editor of the London Magazine, 1821; duke of Wellington and earl of Winchelsea, 1829; Mr Roebuck and Mr Black, editor of Morning Chronicle, 1835; Lord Alvanley and a son of Daniel O’Connell in the same year; Earl Cardigan wounded Captain Tuckett, was tried by his peers, and acquitted on a legal quibble, 1840.
The year 1808 is memorable in the annals of duelling in England. Major Campbell was sentenced to death and executed for killing Captain Boyd in a duel. In this case it is true that there was a suspicion of foul play; but in the case of Lieutenant Blundell, who was killed in a duel in 1813, though all had been conducted with perfect fairness, the surviving principal and the seconds were all convicted of murder and sentenced to death, and, although the royal pardon was obtained, they were all cashiered. The next important date is the year 1843, when public attention was painfully called to the subject by a duel in which Colonel Fawcett was shot by his brother-in-law, Lieutenant Monro. The survivor, whose career was thereby blasted, had, it was well known, gone out most reluctantly, in obedience to the then prevailing military code. A full account of the steps taken by the prince consort, and of the correspondence which passed between him and the duke of Wellington, will be found in the Life of the Prince by Sir Theodore Martin. The duke, unfortunately, was not an unprejudiced counsellor. Not only had he been out himself, but, in writing to Lord Londonderry on the occasion of the duel between the marquess and Ensign Battier in 1824, he had gone so far as to state that he considered the probability of the Hussars having to fight a duel or two a matter of no consequence. In the previous year there had been formed in London the association for the suppression of duelling. It included leading members of both houses of parliament and distinguished officers of both services. The first report, issued in 1844, gives a memorial of the association presented to Queen Victoria through Sir James Graham, and in a debate in the House of Commons (15th of March 1844) Sir H. Hardinge, the secretary of war, announced to the House that Her Majesty had expressed herself desirous of devising some expedient by which the barbarous practice of duelling should be as much as possible discouraged. In the same debate Mr Turner reckoned the number of duels fought during the reign of George III. at 172, of which 91 had been attended with fatal results; yet in only two of these cases had the punishment of death been inflicted. But though the proposal of the prince consort to establish courts of honour met with no favour, yet it led to an important amendment of the articles of war (April 1844). The 98th article ordains that “every person who shall fight or promote a duel, or take any steps thereto, or who shall not do his best to prevent duel, shall, if an officer, be cashiered, or suffer such other penalty as a general court-martial may award.” These articles, with a few verbal changes, were incorporated in the consolidated Army Act of 1879 (section 38), which is still in force.
In the German army duels are still authorized by the military code as a last resort in grave cases. A German officer who is involved in a difficulty with another is bound to notify the circumstance to a council of honour at the In Germany. latest as soon as he has either given or received a challenge. A council of honour consists of three officers of different ranks and is instructed, if possible, to bring about a reconciliation. If unsuccessful it must see that the conditions of the duel are not out of proportion to the gravity of the quarrel. Public opinion was greatly roused by a tragic duel fought by two officers of the reserve in 1896; and the German emperor in a cabinet order of 1897, confirmed in 1901, enforced the regulation of the military court of honour, and gave warning that any infringement would be visited with the full penalties of the law. It is, notwithstanding, still the fact that a German officer who is not prepared to accept a challenge and fight, if the opinion of his regiment demands it, must leave the service. The German penal code (Reichsstrafgesetzbuch, pars. 101-110) only punishes a duel when it is fought with lethal weapons; and much controversy has raged round the question of the Mensuren or students’ duels, which, as being conducted with sharpened rapiers, have, despite the precautions taken, in the way of bandaging the vital parts of the body which a cut would reach, to reduce the risk of a fatal issue to a minimum, been declared by the Supreme Court of the Empire to fall under the head of duels, and as such to be punishable.
The Mensuren (German students’ duels) above referred to are frequently misunderstood. They bear little resemblance, save in form, to the duel à outrance, and should rather be considered in the light of athletic games, in which the overflow of high animal spirits in young Germany finds its outlet. These combats are indulged in principally by picked representatives of the “corps” (recognized clubs), and according to the position and value of the Schmisse (cuts which have landed) points are awarded to either side. Formerly these so-called duels could be openly indulged in at most universities without let or hindrance. Gradually, however, the academic authorities took cognizance of the illegality of the practice, and in many cases inflicted punishment for the offence. Nowadays, owing to the decision of the supreme court reserving to the common law tribunals the power to deal with such cases, the governing bodies at the universities have only a disciplinary control, which is exercised at the various seats of learning in various degrees: in some the practice is silently tolerated, or at most visited by reprimand; in others, again, by relegation or carcer—with the result that the students of one university frequently visit another, in order to be able to fight out their battles under less rigorous surveillance.