DUELS AND DUELLING.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VIII, Issue 46, 14 November 1891, Page 585

DUELS AND DUELLING.

duel wan originally a trial of might like 1^ the prize fight. It was so used by armies and nations as in the case of David and r Goliath, or as when Charles V. challenged ||K WgSNAw b Charlemagne to single combat. But in j|( mediaeval times it got to be also used as a test of right, the feeling of a judicial trial by ordeal entering into the struggle between two persons, each claming rii'ht on his side. It was then the custom not only for the Sovereign to smile upon the duel but to sanction it by his presence. For instance, Charles V. was present and witnessed a singular combat which was fought in 1385 between Jaques Legris and Jean Carronye—the second of whom accused the first of having taken a base advantage of his wife by means of a sneaking and cruel fraud. The result was unfortunate, for the accused Legris was defeated, and straightway hanged. Some time afterwards a third person under sentence of a different crime confessed that be himself had been guilty of the outrage for which Legris innocently suffered. In the reign of Henry IV. no fewer than 4,000 gentlemen are said to have perished in duels and 14,000 pardons were granted for breaking the edicts against single combat, while Bon Henri himself remarked to Creyin, who had challenged Don Philip, of Savoy : —• If I had not been the king, I would have been your second.’ In the seventeenth century -duelling seems to have been the fashion. It was almost epidemic. Men met and fought, not to defend their honour, but absolutely for the fun of the thing, and Louis XIH. signed no less than 8,000 letters of pardon in twenty years. The English Ambassador at the Court of Louis XII., Lord Herbert, wrote home that he hardly ever met a French gentleman of repute who had not either killed his man or meant to do, and this in spite of laws so severe that the two greatest duellists of the age, the Count de Boutteville and the Marquis de Beuron, were both beheaded. It was the twenty-second affair of honour in which the former had been en-

gaged, and for which he was thus punished. In the long reign of Louis XIV. many duels were

fought. Louis XIV. adopted decided measures, mak-

ing duelling a capital crime, and punishing offenders with instant death. The practice was checked for a time, but

it received a new inpnlse after the Napoleonic wars. The first Napoleon, likeour Cromwell, had no liking for the

insane and barbarous custom, and when no less a person than the King of Sweden challenged him to personal combat, his satirical answer was , ‘ He would send his fencing master as plenipotentiary to his Majesty if that would do.’ The dulness of

Louis Philippe’s reign and the dissoluteness of Louis Napoleon’s both fostered duelling, and

the present Republic bids fair to outbid both.

You can hardly take up

a French newspaper without reading an account of various duels. Like the suicides in Paris

and the railwaya ssaults in England, duels form a regular and much appreciated item of French daily news. Volumes might be written upon French duelling for most men of note in France have at one time or another been parties in duels. That was a famous duel which began in 1794 and only finished in 1813. A captain of Hussars named Fournier had killed in a duel a young man called Blume, and on the day of the latter’s funeral Fournier appeared at a ball given by General Moreau. Captain Dupart, the general’s aide-de-camp, refused to let him enter the ballroom, whereupon Fournier challenged him. In the encounter next day Fournier was badly wounded, but -insisted on another meeting a few weeks later. This took place, and Dupart was wounded. After that a treaty was drawn up agreeing to resume the contest on a certain date, and continue until one of the two should renounce all further resistance. On the strength of this, several encounters were brought about at intervals with varying results, and at the end of many years Dupart proposed that they should fight with pistols. ‘ A friend of mine at Neuilly has an enclosure planted with trees,’ he said, ‘ and on aday to be agreed upon we will go to the enclosure separately, armed with our two holster pistols ready loaded, to take a single shot with each. We will try which can find the other, and whoever catches sight of the other shall fire. ’ This droll idea was acted upon, and on the day fixed the two antagonists entered the enclosure, and each planted himself behind a tree. Dupart presently waved his coat-tail outside the tree that protected him, and Fournier fired, losing a shot. A few minutes afterwards Dupart displayed his hat at the end of iiis pistol, and Fournier, thinking the head of his opponent was inside the hat, fired again, and lost his final bullet. Then Dupart came forward, saying, ‘ I can now kill you if I like, but I cannot fire at a human creature in cold blood, so I spare your life ; but I do so on this condition, that I remain the owner of a couple of bullets specially destined for your skull, and if ever you give me any more trouble I shall use them.’ So ended this long duel. A very novel duel took place in the year 1808. A quarrel arose between M. de Grandpre and M. Le Pique, each of whom was in love with a lady of the Imperial Opera, Mademoiselle Tirevik. They proposed a duel, which was to be

fought in the air :so two balloons were made alike. On the day fixed for the duel de Grandpre and his second got into the car of one balloon and Le Pique and his second into the car of the other. The ascent was made in the gardens of the Tuileries in which was a great gathering of spectators. They were to fire not at each other, but at each other’s balloon, so that it would collapse by the escape of gas. As pistols would not do for that purpose, each took a blunderbus with him. At a signal the ropes were cut and the balloons ascended. They kept about their original distance, 80 yards apart, and the wind was moderate. When about half a mile up the signal for firing was given. M. Le Pique fired, but missed. M. De Grandpre fired, and sent a ball through M. Le Pique’s balloon. The balloon collapsed with frightful rapidity, and Le Pique and his second were dashed to pieces. M. De Grandpre continued his ascent and finished his a-rial voyage at a distance of about seven leagues from Paris.

Fortunately a duel between two women is almost unheard of in these days, although occasionally the excitable blood of France impels fair fencers to match their courage and skill in serious combat. But in olden times the art of duelling was far from being unknown to the fair sex. Hundreds of years ago women not only fought each other, but also the sterner sex, and in the Middle Ages several cases of a wife calling out her own husband are on record. If the lady killed her opponent she was regarded as an honourable widow and free to marry again. The husband was also at liberty to kill his wife, but if she begged for her life and he still killed her, he was forced to live in retirement, and was looked upon as disgraced. Still later on, German ladies held regular tournaments, and at the same date the ladies of Bologna fought merrily with each other. Fiance has always, however, been the home of the duel, and lady duellists survived in that country long after they died out in other parts of Europe. In 1828 a duel was fought near Strasburg between a Frenchwoman and a German woman, both of whom were in love with a painter. The parties met on the ground armed with pistols, with seconds of their own sex. The

German damsel wanted to fire across a pocket-handkerchief but the French lady and her seconds insisted upon a distance of twenty-five paces. They both fired without effect, when tho exasperated German insisted that they should carry on the contest until one of the parties fell. This determination was controlled by the seconds, who put a stop to further f roceedings, but were unable to bring about a reconciliation. n Louis XlV.’s time the actress Maupin insulted a lady at a ball, and was ordered out of the room. She would not go until the gentleman who had espoused the lady’s cause would consent to meet her outside. • After a hard combat,’ so the account runs, ‘she killed him, and quietly returned to the ballroom.’