Duelling Through the Ages

Stephen Wynn

• Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781526738530
• eBook ISBN: 9781526738547
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

Putting aside Roman gladiators and gun-slingers of the American Wild West, by the 19th century duelling had become the sole domain of nobility, military officers and gentleman, with rules added to make sure everything was conducted in a fair and professional manner. The word 'honour' became popular, because it was the reason why most men would challenge another to a duel. This book challenges that notion and asks whether it was really about honour at all, or was it more about arrogance or social standing? Over time kings, leaders and governments passed rules, decrees, edicts and laws banning the practice, but still it continued, even when the duellists knew that the punishment for taking part in such an event could be their own death. The last known duel with swords in France took place at a private residence just outside of Paris in 1967 between two politicians, Gaston Deferre and Rene Ribiere. It was ended after Ribiere, who was due to be married the following day, was twice cut on the arm by Gaston. The book also looks at some of the more humorous, unusual and least expected ways people found to conduct their duels, including throwing billiard balls at each other, duelling whilst sat on the backs of elephants, and two men who decided their differences should be settled half a mile up in the sky in hot air balloons. With more efforts to bring about an end to duelling, the upper classes of British society in particular still held on to the idea of being able to defend their honour, which saw many of them turn to pugilism as a way to sate their disputes, however ridiculous they might appear today.

CHAPTER ONE

General Overview

A duel fought between members of the aristocracy, military personnel and gentlemen during the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries throughout most of western Europe, was a different affair to say that of a fight between gladiators in Roman times, samurai warriors engaging in Ikki-uchi, or gunfights in the American Wild West, where the overall intention was for a man to defeat and/or kill his opponent. But in their own way, each of these different variations was a duel, with one man pitting his wits and fighting skills against an adversary with the aim of beating him.

The European version of duelling was also practised in America throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but only between the very elite of society, where it was viewed more as a matter of honour and respect; important issues for most men of the day.

So as not to cause confusion whilst examining the different versions of duelling, for clarity I will separate the British, Roman and European versions. Many of the earlier versions of the practice were conducted solely with the use of a sword or rapier, but by the end of the late eighteenth and turn of the early nineteenth century, most duels were carried out with pistols, although not exclusively. Duelling (as in the European version), had all but ceased throughout America by the end of the American Civil War in 1865.

In medieval times, judicial duels, i.e. those that were officially acknowledged and approved by a king or his parliament, were commonplace in society throughout Britain, Ireland and most of Europe. Such duels were nearly always to do with a personal slight to somebody’s honour, which hadn’t been resolved through that country’s court system.

Although the word honour was used hand in hand with the word duel, there was very little honour in the way a man dealt with his defeated enemy. The weapons used, such as longswords, axes, polearms – which would more readily be recognised as a pike or lance – and the misericordia, a long, narrow knife that was specifically used to deliver the death stroke to a knight in battle, had no other purpose other than to kill.

There was no time limit for these duels, it was simply a case of fighting until one party could continue no longer. If the vanquished man wasn’t killed, he could be executed, no matter how gallantly he had fought. More often than not, judicial duels included the caveat of having to be fought to the death.

In the late fourteenth and throughout the fifteenth century, and originating out of events such as judicial duels, things got slightly out of hand when knights who wanted to prove themselves became involved in what was known as the ‘passage of arms’. This involved being aware of routes commonly used by travellers that came to a pinch point – such as a bridge or a city gate – specific locations that people had to pass to be able to continue their journey. Such knights would make it known that if any other knights wished to pass, they would first have to fight, knowing that if the challenge was turned down, then the passing knight would be shamed and forced to leave his spurs behind to confirm his humiliation.

Religion and God played a large part in medieval times, and the Catholic Church was vehemently against any kind of duelling, where killing one’s opponent was the main purpose of the contest, but the practice of judicial duelling persisted as late as the time of the Holy Roman Empire; well into the fifteenth century.

It didn’t really matter what word one chose to use to describe two men fighting each other, it amounted to the same thing. This becomes even clearer when looking at the word ‘duel’, which was used almost to sanitise the brutal and barbaric act of two men fighting each other with either swords or pistols, to make it sound more gentlemanly and about honour. The origins of the word ‘duel’ are born out of the Latin word duellum which was cognate with the word bellum, meaning war.

The Renaissance period of European history, which covered the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, saw an acceptability and respectability of duelling, despite earlier attempts by the Church, kings and parliaments to bring an end to its practice throughout the Middle Ages. Duelling became the sole domain of the aristocracy, officers in the military, and gentlemen in civilian life, who saw it as a way to resolve disputes between themselves, especially if it was to do with a personal slight or a matter of honour, perceived or otherwise. There were those who even saw it as a badge of honour, believing that to have been involved in, and survived, a duel gave them some kind of manly kudos over their contemporaries.

In 1626, King Louis XIII of France went as far as making the practice of duelling an offence. After his death, his successor Louis XIV continued with the same approach and even intensified the efforts of finally bringing duelling to an end, once and for all. Between 1685 and 1716, some ninety years after it had been outlawed, an estimated 400 French officers had been killed as a result of having taken part in a duel.

Between 1798 and the beginning of the American Civil War in 1861, the United States navy lost two-thirds as many officers to duelling as they did in combat at sea.

The first code of duelling was published in Italy in 1409, by Fiore dei Liberi, who was a knight, a diplomat and a fencing master. A copy of his illustrated manuscript entitled Fior di Battaglia, or The Flower of Battle, still exists and is held at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York.

The purpose of this code was to regulate duelling and in doing so, help prevent matters escalating out of control in the aftermath of a duel, where families of the losers might consider seeking revenge for their loss. The code also covered issues such as medical care, seconds and witnesses, and even the prevention of the duel from actually taking place. The seconds of participants would try and reconcile the differences between the two men involved by attempting to settle the dispute with an apology or some kind of acceptable restitution. If these attempts were successful, everybody was happy, the participants’ honour was still intact, and both men returned to their home and families without a shot being fired.

By as early as 1770 in England, the weapon of choice to be used in a duel changed from being a sword to a pistol. It was a change that was greeted reasonably enthusiastically by those who were inclined to engage in the practice. The use of a sword up until that point in history was in keeping with the dress code of the day, where it was common practice for the wearing of a sword as a part of a man’s everyday attire. But as fashions changed over the years and the wearing of swords became less fashionable after the turn of the nineteenth century, pistols not only replaced swords in society but in duels as well, although duelling with swords did continue until duelling was no more.

Duelling with swords was usually conducted in a marked-out square, with the corners identified with handkerchiefs. To begin with, the participants would stand some twenty paces apart, and if either man left the confines of the marked-out square, he was considered a coward. Having a reputation as a coward not only affected a man’s reputation and social standing in society, but that of his immediate family also. It wasn’t a word that anybody wanted to be called.

The most common way for a duel to come to a conclusion was when one party was physically unable to continue, or the doctor who was in attendance called a halt to the proceedings. What were known as ‘first blood’ duels weren’t encouraged as they were seen as being unmanly and dishonourable, as all one party had to do was to draw blood, which could be achieved by a slight scratch on a man’s arm or face. The system was open to abuse; participants could pre-plan a duel, where one of the pair would draw blood, thereby ending the duel. Honour was sated and both men returned home.

By the late eighteenth century, the world had changed greatly. It was now what history has recorded as the ‘Enlightenment Era’, where politeness and civility became the driving forces throughout British and European society. Power-crazed kings and armour-wearing knights had been replaced by intellectuals and philosophers and the thirst for violence had at long last been quenched. In the brave new world of the Enlightenment, there was no room for or acceptance of the violent behaviour that had become a byword and relic of England’s and Europe’s medieval past.

For me, there were really interesting aspects of this new era. One was what today would be known as policing. From the Middle Ages there had been village and town constables, whose job it was to keep the peace. It was an unpaid position which was held for a year at a time. The constable, on being informed that a crime had been committed, raised the alarm, which galvanised the local men to catch the man responsible. This was known as raising the ‘hue and cry’. It was obviously a successful system as it stayed in place until 1827.

Paid night watchmen appeared from 1663 and were employed to guard and protect mainly industrial premises from the clutches of wanton burglars. It was a dangerous job as the watchmen tended to be old and the burglars could be extremely violent if the need arose. Over 100 years later, many local town authorities began paying night watchmen to patrol the streets during the hours of darkness to help keep their communities safe from unwanted interlopers.

The biggest breakthrough without a doubt took place in 1749 with the formation of the Bow Street Runners by a London Magistrate named Henry Fielding. They weren’t a police service as such, instead they went looking for criminals, with warrants issued for their arrest by the magistrates’ courts.

In 1798, with London’s shipping making the capital the nation’s busiest port, the River Police was formed to help protect the ships’ cargoes from the clutches of the city’s evil and violent gangs.

All of the above interventions finally came to a head in 1829 with the creation of the Metropolitan Police by Sir Robert Peel, with the new constables being affectionately referred to as ‘Bobbies’ or ‘Peelers’.

The other aspect I want to take a brief look at, which remains an extremely important one, was the move away from the gun or sword for recompense by men who felt they had been slighted, disrespected or that they had their honour called into question. No longer were they so quick to challenge another to a duel. One of the reasons behind this was the emergence of newspapers. The burgeoning number of the middle classes of society instead sought to bring charges of libel against their accuser before the courts, or by way of correspondence in one of the ever-increasing volume of daily and weekly newspapers that had begun to appear throughout the eighteenth century. It was in keeping with the more civilised approach and attitudes to the civility and politeness of everyday life.

In 1838, American John Lyde Wilson (1784–1849) published what he entitled ‘The Code of Honor’, a set of rules for the government, principals and seconds in duelling. It began with an address to the public followed by eight chapters. It is too long and detailed a document to include within the pages of this book, but can be summarised briefly as follows:

Chapter 1. The Person insulted, before the challenge sent (7 separate points).

Chapter 2. Second’s duty before challenge sent (10 separate points).

Chapter 3. The Party receiving a note before Challenge (6 separate points).

Chapter 4. Duty of challenge and second after challenge sent (2 separate points).

Chapter 5. Duty of principals and seconds on the ground (10 separate points).

Chapter 6. Who should be on the ground (3 separate points).

Chapter 7. Arms and manner of presenting them (4 separate points).

Chapter 8. The degrees of insult and how comprised (7 separate points).

A second edition, published in 1858, included an appendix which somewhat strangely began with the following.

‘Since the above code was in press, a friend has favoured me with the IRISH CODE OF HONOR, which I had never seen, and it is published as an appendix to it.’

It then listed the twenty-five rules of the Irish duelling code of 1777.

An interesting intervention came into being in 1867, when John Graham Chambers wrote what he entitled the ‘Marquess of Queensberry Rules’, for the ever popular practice of pugilism: fisticuffs undertaken by gentlemen. This really was a classic case of ‘necessity being the mother of all invention’. The Irish Code issued in relation to duelling had been seen by many people as far too dangerous, without that being an odd thing to say. For many, duelling was simply a means to end, with most people having no intention or desire to kill the person they were fighting, all they wanted was the ability to either save or redeem their honour.

The decline in duelling hastened after the 1840 case of the 7th Earl of Cardigan, who killed one of his former officers after fighting with him in a duel. The earl was tried for manslaughter and acquitted on a legal technicality. The decision caused public outrage, which was fuelled by elements of the press. This included The Times, which alleged that there was complicity at the highest level to ensure the earl wasn’t found guilty and that ‘in England there is one law for the rich and another for the poor’, whilst The Examiner led with the title, ‘A defeat of justice’.

Cardigan was tried in 1841, not before a criminal court, but before the House of Lords, which as a nobleman was his right in law at the time. This meant that those listening to the evidence of the case were the other 120 members of the House of Lords. The charge against him was that he had fired upon Captain Harvey Tuckett, but as it was proved that the man’s name was actually Harvey Garnet Phipps Tuckett, this was deemed to have been of sufficient discrepancy to allow his 120 peers to acquit him of the charge.

By 1841, even though the practice of duelling had declined massively, it was still going on, possibly because there was a two-handed approach to the problem. This had come about because duelling was the sole domain of the aristocracy and gentlemen. A good example of this was the United Kingdom, where to kill someone in a duel was formally deemed to be a case of murder, but rarely did the courts prosecute such affairs – mainly because they were sympathetic towards a man fighting another man over the issue of honour. In the case of the 7th Earl of Cardigan, even Queen Victoria was said to have expressed the opinion that she hoped that he ‘would get off easily’. Would she have made the same comment if the person in question had been of a lesser standing in society or somebody who was unknown to her? We can never know.

The other aspect of this duel was more to do with the manner in which Cardigan conducted himself. He had used what was described as a ‘sophisticated’ duelling pistol, which had concealed rifling and a hair trigger – thought to be somewhat unsportsmanlike according to the ‘rules’ of duelling. Maybe it was his notoriety as the man who led the charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War. Of the 674 men who took part in the famous charge, 107 were killed, with an additional unknown number of those who died of their wounds. Cardigan had expressed his doubts about the attack, but went ahead with it only after he was given a direct order to do so by his superior officer, Lord Lucan, who had conveyed his message via Captain Louis Nolan, who was one of those killed in the attack. With Nolan dead, both men chose to blame him by having incorrectly relayed the message, not because they knew that to be a fact, but possibly in an effort to save their own reputations.

By the 1850s, duelling with either pistol or sword was all but a thing of the past. Although it still went on, it no longer had the same appeal that it once had and many countries had made the practice illegal, with the consequences for being engaged in a duel extremely severe and many exponents of the practice being tried for manslaughter and murder.

In America it appears to have taken the bloodshed and sla...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter One General Overview
• Chapter Two Roman Gladiators
• Chapter Three Scandinavian Holmgang
• Chapter Four America Before the Wild West
• Chapter Five Gunfights of the Wild West
• Chapter Six Newspaper Articles of Duelling
• Chapter Seven The French Influence in Duelling
• Chapter Eight Duelling Anecdotes
• Chapter Nine Miyamoto Musashi – Japanese Samurai Warrior
• Chapter Ten Duels Across Time
• In Conclusion
• About the Author
• Plates