FRENCH DUELLING.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 43, 13 February 1885, Page 7

FRENCH DUELLING.

When it ceased to be the fashion to wear swords in the last century* pistols were soon substituted for personal encounters. This made duelling far less amusing, more dangerous, and proportionately less popular. The duel in England received practically its coup de grace with the new Articles of War of 1844, which discredited the practice in the army by offering gentlemen facilities for public explanation, apology, or arbitration in the presence of their commanding officer But previous to this "the duel of satisfaction" had' assumed the most preposterous forms. Parties agreed to draw lota for pistols and to fight, the one with a loaded the other with an unloaded weapon This affair of honour was always at short distances and " pointblank, and the loser was usually killed. Another plan was to go into a dark room together and commence firing. There is a beautiful and pathetic story told of two men, the one a « kind " man and the other a ' timid ' man, who found themselves unhappily bound to fight, and chose the dark-room duel. The kind man had to fire first, and, not wishing to hurt his adversary, groped his way to the chimney-piece, and placing the muzzle of his pistol straight up the chimney, pulled the trigger, when to his consternation, with a frightful yell down came his adversary the •• timid " man, who had selected that fatal hiding-place. Another grotesque form was the " medical duel, one swallowing a pill made of bread, the other swallowing one made of poison. When matters had reached this point, public opinion not unnaturally took a turn for the better, and resolved to stand by the old obsolete law against duelling, whilst enacting new bye-laws for the army, which, of course, reacted powerfully, with a sort of professional authority, upon the practice of bellicose civilians. The duel was originally a mere trial of might, like our prize fbot : it was so used by armies and nations as in the case of David and Goliath, or as when Charles V. challenged Charlemagne to single combat. Bat in 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 claiming right on his side. The judicial trial by ordeal was abandoned in the reign of Elizabeth, but the practice of private duelling has survived in spite of adverse legislation, and is exceedingly popular in France down to the present day. The law of civilised nations has, however, always been dead against it. la 1699 the Parliament of Paris went bo far as to declare every duellist a Tebel to his Majesty ; nevertheless, in the first eighteen years of Henri Quatre's reign no fewer than four thousand gentlemen are said to have perished in duels, and Henri himself remarked, wben Creyin challenged Don Philip of Savoy, "If I had not been the king I would have been your second." Our ambassador, Lord Herbert, at the Court of Louis XIII., wrote home that he hardly ever met a French geutleman of repute who had not either killed his man or meant to do so ! 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, weie both beheaded, being taken in fiagrante delioto. Louis XIV. published another severe edict in 1679, and had the courage to-enforce it. The practice was checked for a time, but it received a new impulse after the close of the Napoleonic wars. The dullness of Louis Philippe's reign and the dissoluteness of Louis Napoleon's both fostered duelling. The present " opportunist " Republic bids fair to out- bid both. You can hardly take up a French newspaper without reading an account of various duels. Like the suicides in Paris, and the railway assaults in England, duels form a regular and much-appreciated item of French daliy news. It is difficult to think of M. de Girardih's shooting dead poor Armald Carell— the most brilliant young journalist in France— without impatience and disgust, or to read Ti. Rochefort's exploit the other day without a smile. The shaking hands in the most cordial way with M. d RocbeEort, the compliments on his swordsmanship, what time the blood flowed from an ugly wound, inflicted by him as he was mopping his own neck, are all so many little points (of honour) which we are sure his challenger, Captain Fournier, was delighted to se6 noticed in the papers. No doubt every billiard-room and cafe in Paris gloated over the details, and the heroes. Eochefort and Fournier, were duly feted and dined together as soon as their respective wounds were sufficiently healed. Meanwhile John Bull reads the tale and grunts out loud, " The whole thing is a brutal farce, and the ' principals ' are no better than a couple of asses."— Selgravia.