A duel

"SWORD DUELS"

- an article first published in the Illustrated London News in July 28th 1888

Illustrated London News - based on a sketch drawn by an eye-witnesses in 1888

The duel between M. Floquet, Prime Minister of the French Republic, and General Boulanger, on Friday, July 13, has not been mortal to either RAPIER COMBATant; the General's wound in the throat is healed. They fought in the exercise-ground of the private garden attached to the house of Count Dillon, at Neuilly. The seconds of M. Floquet were M. Clémenceau and M. Georges Perrin; those of General Boulanger were M. Laisant and M. Le Hérissé. An eminent surgeon, Dr. Léon Labbé, was present. M. Floquet had sent the challenge, in consequence of General Boulanger having insulted him by twice saying in the Chamber of Deputies, 'You lie impudently in the debate of the day before, when M. Floquet, as a Republican, had taunted the General with being formerly a suitor or visitor of "ante-chambers and sacristies." It is not doubted that the General intended to provoke the duel; but, having received the formal challenge, he was entitled to the choice of weapons.

He chose swords and being, a soldier, ten years younger than M. Floquet, who is a lawyer, and about sixty years of age, the chances might have seemed greatly in favour of Boulanger. The two men stripped to their shirts, taking. off their cravats and collars, and went at it with rapiers. At the first pass M. Floquet was slightly cut below the left calf, and General Boulanger got a puncture of the right forefinger. At the second pass M. Floquet was cut in the left hand, and his body was grazed on the right side. General Boulanger. who had rushed wildly at his opponent, received a serious wound; M. Floquet had quietly raised his sword, and Boulanger. stumbling forward, got, it in his throat. The seconds, by common consent, stated that General Boulanger's wound made it impossible for him to continue to fight.

The bleeding, was stopped by the surgeon, and the General was able to walk to Count Dillon's house. The sword had pierced the right side of his neck to a depth exceeding two inches, passing between the jugular vein and the carotid artery. and nearly severing the phrenic nerve.. There was danger of tetanus, and some fear lest the damage to the nerve should interfere with the respiratory movement of the diaphragm; but. after two days, all anxieties concerning the General's life were relieved, and he has sustained no permanent injury.

The foolish and wicked practice of duelling has been extinct in England for half a century past. Neither public opinion, nor the administration of the criminal law, would spare to punish any malefactor, however aristocratic or fashionable, who should resort to this method of avenging a personal quarrel. It is now generally agreed in this country, which is so far civilised, that ,,. man has no right to take the life of another except by warrant of military service at the bidding of his Sovereign ; and further, that a man has no right to expose his own life to be taken by another, except in defence of his country or of his neighbour, and in preventing or repelling some violent outrage The former action, without such is regarded as murder ; the latter involves the justification of moral guilt of suicide. But in looking back at the history of duelling in past pages, and within the recollection of man., persons now living, there appear some mitigating considerations. In various instances, where one of the duellists was actually killed, there is ample reason to believe that the man who killed him was not animated by any malignant spirit, and did not intend or desire to kill or even to wound him. Both were not uncommonly the mere slaves of a silly custom, and of a preposterous "rule of lion our," which they obeyed under fear of being reputed cowards. This natural sentiment, and the willingness of each to attest the truth of some assertion, or his own innocence of some imputed misbehaviour, by pledging the risk of his life, could perhaps have been satisfied by some other process than a hostile encounter. They might have undertaken. in company, to brave some common danger, as in the ancient ordeal of passing through fire, or in twenty different ways.

That two men who did not hate each other, in such a degree as to be capable of wilfully murdering, or even wilfully doing bodily harm to each other which negative temper was often their case-should deliberately attempt to shoot or stab one another, because each pretended to be in the. right, and because they wanted to be thought brave, was the most irrational and unpractical of actions. It would have been less inconsistent, though it would have been grossly absurd and still more dreadful, to have stood on opposite sides of an open barrel of gunpowder, and simultaneously cast lighted matches into it, in proof and wager of their equal courage.

The duel, however , was an institution that, involving a trial of skill as well as of chance, besides the trial of courage, lent itself to atrocious abuses, being habitually employed by scoundrels who had become accomplished in wielding deadly weapons to terrorise all men less perfect in the art, by which they maintained a social ascendancy, in spite of all true laws of honour. of decency, and good manners. The most notorious liar, swindler, and traitor, the most dishonest and mischievous profligate, could defy the censure of public opinion, and could insult gentlemen of high character, if he were reputed to handle the sword or pistol more expertly than other men.

The sword, especially, was the favourite instrument of the bully duellist, who knew how to use it so as to be tolerably sure of escaping all danger from his adversary’s sword; whereas nobody can be sure of not being hit and killed by a pistol-bullet, even from the hand of an inferior marksman. There was, however, this only to be said in favour of the sword when all gentlemen learned somewhat Of fencing-that a superior swordsman, who did not mean to kill, might easily contrive to inflict a wound disabling, but not dangerous to life. Indeed, the fine-bladed rapier, used from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, or the sharp-pointed fencing-foil, might be run through the body without killing., if it did not touch the heart or some other vital organ ; while a thrust through the flesh of the arm, which was called "winging" or "pinking" gained the victory by slight infliction of personal suffering, and would be felt as a polite rebuke or lesson to avoid impertinence in future.

Of a very different complexion were the professional bully duellists, who abounded in France and Italy, more than anywhere, from the beginning of the sixteenth century, but whose school of homicide and lawless insolence found pupils all over Europe. It was a regular art in the Italy of the Renaissance, which invented what one of Shakspeare’s gentlemen speaks of as " that poking, fight of rapier and dagger," the dagger being, held in the left’ hand, ready either to turn aside the opponent’s sword or to inflict a mortal stab. This frightful combination of weapons caused the death of both RAPIER COMBATants in an English duel in the reign of James I. Two of his courtiers, Sir George Wharton and Sir James Stuart, in November, 1609, fought at Canonbury, Islington, and killed each other. In the same year, two officers, of the English army, Sir Hatton Cheek and Sir Thomas Dutton, fought with rapier and dagger at Calais, where both were slain. In 1613,

Lord Bruce was killed in a duel at Bergen-op- Zoom by Edward Sackville, Earl of Dorset. But it was in France, under King Henry IV. as well as the preceding Kings of the House of Valois, that duelling raged with the utmost ferocity. More than six thousand French gentlemen fell victims to this baneful, custom within a period of about one hundred years. A man disabled, or disarmed, or fallen prostrate, was to be killed at once, if he would not beg mercy of the victor. Among the most noted instances are the killing of Lachesnaye, an old man of eighty, with sword and dagger, by young Châteauneuf, to whom he was guardian; the hamstringing cut of Jarnac, who thus overthrew his adversary and then put him to death; the triple RAPIER COMBAT between D’Entragues and Quélus, with two friends on each side, when three of the six were killed; and the duel, in 1613, between the grandson of the great Coligny and the grandson of the famous Duke of Guise, former leaders, respectively, of the Huguenots and of the Catholic League.

One ruffian, the Chevalier d’Andrieux, at the age of thirty, boasted that he had killed seventy-two men in duels. Another, the Comte de Bouteville, who was a Montmorency, seeking reputation with " the small sword and the poignard," went about challenging every man who was said to be skilful, and killed them so frequently, having not the slightest cause of quarrel, that the Parlement issued several edicts to forbid him. These he openly disobeyed, and was therefore condemned and beheaded in Richelieu’s time. Laws were passed then, and farther in the reign of Louis XIV, to punish duellists with loss of rank, office, and estate, or with banishment; but pardons were constantly granted.

In England, on the Restoration of Charles I, sword-duelling became more fashionable than ever; and every reader is acquainted with the killing of the Earl of Shrewsbury by the Duke of Buckingham, at Barn Elms, the Duke's second, Sir J. Jenkins, being at the same time killed by the Earl's second, while Lady Shrewsbury, the adulteress, held Buckingham's horse standing by. "O tempora! O mores!" The sanguinary blackguard Lord Mohun also is likely to be remembered; he, who shared in the murder of Montford the actor, and who afterwards, in 1712, fought a savage duel with the Duke of Hamilton in Hyde Park, where both were killed, each receiving three or four horrible wounds.

Swords were still preferred to pistols in England, being usually worn by gentlemen, until after the middle of the last century ; but the dagger had been rejected since the time of Charles I. Duellists sometimes came with swords and pistols; after exchanging shots they would use cold steel. It was not unfrequent, however, that two gentlemen who had got angry with each other at a tavern or in a private house, would at once draw their swords and fight, without any seconds or witnesses or formal arrangements. Lord Byron, great-uncle of the poet, in 1765 killed Mr. Chaworth, at a house in London in an impromptu sword-fight. Examples of this kind, in the memoirs and anecdotes, or in the comedies and old novelists' works of the eighteenth century, prove that "The world went very well then," as Mr. Walter Besant ironically says. Comparing the England of George II with the England of Charles L, it looks rather like a relapse into barbarism, owing to the decay of religion and morality and domestic life.

In the method of duelling, we observe that pistolling found favour in Ireland as a gentlemanly pastime; indeed, it seems to have been the main pursuit of reckless men in the upper classes of society until. after the Union.The pistol-duels in England, during the reigns of the last two Georges, of William IV., and at the beginning of Victoria's reign were often very serious; and some persons of considerable eminence, noblemen, statesmen, and distinguished military officers, 'were engaged in them. The present writer, among the personal recollections of his boyhood in a provincial town, has that of the lamented death of a benevolent medical man, the Mayor of the city, who was shot by a certain Baronet in a silly quarrel about dancing with a young lady at a ball the night before.

The sword-duel has been maintained, in France especially, since 1830, as an accessary to political Ambition. part of the stock-in-trade of adventurers in Journalism, professional orators, and Parliamentary debaters. It is, at the same time, almost a compulsory obligation, in certain cases, among military men in France, in Austria, and in Germany. French public men too commonly think it a needful accessary to their pretensions; it has cost several valuable lives, and has degraded the tone of political contention. 'The Bonapartist faction has been supported by this species of bullying for many years past, and the Royalist' faction has sometimes resorted to it ; but Republicans ought to be wiser, for their cue is to uphold the civil authority in redressing all private wrongs. Among the notable sword-duels in France were that in which Armand Carrel, editor of the National in 1830, was badly wounded by a hostile journalist- Armand Carrel was afterwards killed by the pistol of Emile De Girardin; the attack on Henri De Pène, of the who had to fight successive sub-lieutenants till one of them could run him through the liver; the two duels between the Marquis de Gallifet and Comte Lauriston, in 1858, when both were wounded; that in which Edmond About, in 1861, paid for a severe criticism of music with a wound in the shoulder; and one in 1867, between Prince Achille Murat and the Marquis de Rougé, who did slight harm -to each other. Lamartine, in his youth, when secretary of the French Legation at Florence, got a sword-thrust in the arm from Colonel Gabriel Pepe for some verses reflecting on the degeneracy of Italians. M. Beaupoil de St. Aulaire, who had written a political pamphlet, was killed by a cousin of the Duc de Feltre, as it had censured his conduct. General Foy, Beijjamin Constant. and other leading politicians under the Restoration, had to fight duels with political' opponents. The last duel fought in England was between two refugee Leicester-square Frenchmen, soon after the Exhibition of 1851 ; one was killed, while the other, named Barthélémy, got off, and was afterwards hanged for a different murder. In 1862, Mr. Dillon, a British subject residing in Paris, editor of Le Sport, was killed in a sword-duel with the Due de Gramont-Caderousse. Fencing is constantly practised as an exercise, and studied as an art, by a large number of Frenchmen and is not neglected in Germany, Italy, Spain, and Belgium.

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