Dueling

“ The same precautionary steps are to be adopted as in a sword duel, to ascertain that no defence is worn by either party.
82. The signal of “Allez” (Go) having been given, the combatants advance on each other, and either give point or cut, vaulting, advancing, or retreating at pleasure.
83. To strike an adversary when disarmed, to seize his arm, his body, or his weapon, is a foul proceeding. A combatant is disarmed when his sabre is either wrenched from him or dropped. ”

“ A duel is downright childish, my boy! utter nonsense and folly! When one of two living men must be got out of the way, none but an idiot would leave chance to decide which it is to be; and in a duel it is a toss-up—heads or tails—and there you are! Now I, for instance, can hit the ace in the middle of a card five times running, send one bullet after another through the same hole, and at thirty-five paces, moreover! With that little accomplishment you might think yourself certain of killing your man, mightn’t you. ”

“ Naturally, the moment the men stand up again and commence work, the blood gushes out again, half blinding them, and rendering the ground beneath them slippery. Now and then you see a man’s teeth laid bare almost to the ear, so that for the rest of the duel he appears to be grinning at one half of the spectators, his other side, remaining serious; and sometimes a man’s nose gets slit, which gives to him as he fights a singularly supercilious air. ”

“ An ordinary duel would arouse suspicion and inevitably lead to a discovery of the truth; people would seek for some plausible motive for the encounter, whatever story we might tell our seconds. You know that there is but one motive which will be found acceptable by society for a duel between a young man who had been received as a guest of this house and the husband. In whatever way this duel may terminate, this woman’s honor would remain on the ground with the dead, and that is what I wish to avoid, since she bears my name. ”

“ A DUEL is defined to be a premeditated and prearranged combat between two persons with deadly weapons, and usually in the presence of at least two witnesses, called seconds, for the purpose of deciding a quarrel, avenging an insult, or clearing the honour of one of the combatants or of some third party whose cause he champions.
A duel, then, is a premeditated and prearranged single combat, for if two persons begin to quarrel and then come to blows, it is not a duel even if death be the result. Nor is it a duel if two enemies meet by accident and begin straightway to fight. ”

“ There are duels in Germany; but so there are in France, Italy, Belgium, Spain; indeed, there are duels wherever there are dentists, newspapers, Turkish baths, time tables, and all the curses of civilization—except in England and a corner of America. You may happen to regard the duel as a historic relic of the more barbaric States on which these modern States were built. It might equally well be maintained that the duel is everywhere the sign of high civilization, being the sign of its more delicate sense of honor, its more vulnerable vanity, or its greater dread of social disrepute. ”

“ There was but one exchange of shots. The student was hit. "He put his hand on his breast, his body began to bend slowly forward, then collapsed in death and sank to the ground."
It is pathetic. There are other duels in my list, but I find in each and all of them one and the same ever-recurring defect—the principals are never present, but only their sham representatives. The real principals in any duel are not the duellists themselves, but their families. They do the mourning, the suffering, theirs is the loss and theirs the misery. ”

“ A duel to the death is always brief: the foes close in mortal conflict; the thrusts come fast and sharp; one or other falls. When Franceline lifted her head from her arms, the expression of the tear-stained face showed which way the battle had gone: the victor stood erect with his foot upon the victim’s neck, unscathed, serene, and pitiless. Love lay bleeding and maimed, but Conscience smiled in triumph. ”

“ Nay I hear there be some counsel learned of duels, that tell voting men when they are beforehand, and when they are otherwise and thereby incense and incite them to the duel, and make an art of it. I hope I shall meet with some of them too; and I am sure, my lords, this course of preventing duels, in nipping them in the bud, is fuller of clemency and providence than the suffering them to go on, and hanging men with their wounds bleeding, as they did in France. ”

“ Every duel, gentlemen, must, above all, end in death for at least one of the parties, otherwise it is absurd. Directly coddling or humanity, so-called, comes in, the whole thing is turned into a farce. ‘Fifteen paces distance and only one shot.’ How damnably pitiful! ”

“ Slander stabs more keenly than steel; it crushes with greater certainty than a pistol bullet. I would not wish to live twenty-four hours in society, constituted as it is at present, without the protection of the duel.
“A duel makes of every one of us a strong and an independent power, and constitutes out of each individual life the life of all; it grasps the sword of justice, which the laws have dropped, punishing what no code can chastise,—contempt and insult. Those who have opposed duelling are either fools or cowards ”

“ The honour of a gentleman tells him that he cannot expect from a martial race a patience and endurance under insult which is foreign to its character. The French will ever refer to the sword as to their origin. When the executioner stands behind their adversary, they are excited instead of being restrained, and dare a double death. If we maturely weigh this matter, will it not be found that a duel is the last vestige of that personal magistracy which social magistracy gradually destroyed, but which it is sometimes called upon to acknowledge? ”

“ We are justified, then, in dating the commencement of duelling from the abolition of the wager of battle. The duel of honour.To pursue its history we must return to France, the country where it first arose, and the soil on which it has most flourished. The causes which made it indigenous to France are sufficiently explained by the condition of society and the national character. As Buckle has pointed out, duelling is a special development of chivalry, and chivalry is one of the phases of the protective spirit which was predominant in France up to the time of the Revolution. ”

“ I had not been home a full half-hour, after witnessing those playful sham-duels, when circumstances made it necessary for me to get ready immediately to assist personally at a real one—a duel with no effeminate limitation in the matter of results, but a battle to the death. An account of it, in the next chapter, will show the reader that duels between boys, for fun, and duels between men in earnest, are very different affairs. ”

“ That the duel shall only be permitted when there is presumptive evidence against the accused, but without clear proof.
“That on the day appointed the two combatants shall leave their houses on horseback, with visor raised; their sabre, sword, axe, and other reasonable arms for attack and defence being carried before them; when they shall advance slowly, making from step to step the sign of the cross, or bearing an image of the saint to whom they are chiefly devoted and in whom they have most confidence. ”

“ It is a pretty game, this first preliminary of love—like the graceful sword-play and salute of two swordsmen before a duel. There was no one to cry "Garde à vous!" no one to strike up the weapons that were thrust at two unarmoured hearts, for the weapons were words and glances, and Love, the umpire, alas! ”

“ We had a pleasant supper and talked cheerfully together without a word being said about the duel, with the exception that an English lady said, I forget in what connection, that a man of honour should never risk sitting down to dinner at an hotel unless he felt inclined, if necessary, to fight. The remark was very true at that time, when one had to draw the sword for an idle word, and to expose one’s self to the consequences of a duel, or else be pointed at, even by the ladies, with the finger of scorn. ”

“ That strong sympathy, exhibited for Henry Phillips, by whose sword a fellow creature had so recently fallen, in a duel, must have sprung, if I am not greatly mistaken, from a knowledge of facts, connected with the origin of that duel, and of which the present generation is entirely ignorant.
Truth lies not, more proverbially, at the bottom of a well, than, in a great majority of instances, a woman lurks at the bottom of a duel. ”

“ In these very rare cases a duel, but a duel without mercy, may become useful, indispensable. As for ourselves, I do not think that we are reduced to this experiment. A single combat would be madness. If I killed you, I should put an end perhaps to days, rich in hope and expectation; if I should fall, you would have put an end to a deplorable existence. You therefore see that the chances would never be equal. ”

“ An ordinary duel might be ranked among idle pastimes when compared with the stress and strain and pain of their encounters in the duel of debate. A sword-cut or pistol-bullet, maiming the body, was as nothing in comparison with the wounds they mutually inflicted on that substance which was immortal in both. ”

“ ALL. Big bombs, small bombs, etc.
LUD. and RUD. (recit.) .
He has insulted me, and, in a breath,
This day we fight a duel to the death!
NOT. (checking them) .
You mean, of course, by duel (verbum sat.) ,
A Statutory Duel.
ALL. Why, what's that?
NOT. According to established legal uses,
A card apiece each bold disputant chooses—
Dead as a doornail is the dog who loses—
The winner steps into the dead man's shoeses! ”

“ In questions which appertain to our habits and customs, more wisdom will be found in the drawing-room than in schools. The hand that can best hold a sword will often be found to handle the pen with equal ability when the terrible question of the point 301 of honour and the duel is discussed, a question which has cost France as much ink as blood. ”

“ A few minutes before we sat down to dinner he said that neither of us would profit by the adventure, as he meant the duel to be to the death.
“I don’t agree with you as far as I am concerned,” I replied; “and as to the duel, you can fight or not fight, as you please; for my part I have had satisfaction. If we come to a duel I hope to leave you in the land of the living, though I shall do my best to lay you up for a considerable time, so that you may have leisure to reflect on your folly. On the other hand, if fortune favours you, you may act as you please.” ”

“ We have now reached a point from which we may survey the thrilling spectacle of the assault, as fencers call the mimic combat, in which desperate and brutal fighting is controlled by skill, the hazardous duel, full of fire and fury, between two combatants, who summon to their aid all that they know or all that they think they know. ”

“ Duelling was so general a method of determining differences among the nobles, that even ecclesiastics were not excused; only, to prevent their being stained with blood, they procured champions to fight for them. None were excepted from combat, but sick people, cripples, and such as were under 21 years of age, or above 60. Justs and tournaments, doubtless, rendered duels more frequent.
No officer or soldier shall pretend to send a challenge to any other officer or soldier, to fight a duel; if a commissioned officer, on pain of being cashiered ”

“ They were brave and that was all. "And after all in what way were they brave?" she said to herself. "In duels, but the duel is nothing more than a formality. The whole thing is mapped out beforehand, even the correct thing to say when you fall. ”

“ On the subject of Duel combat mentioned above I would add a few words, partly of general application, to the sentiments of so many already delivered. Though the angry passions of some, and the foolish conduct of others will perhaps continue to give cause for and never entirely banish the necessity of appeal to arms; yet will all sensible men concur in the opinion that it ought to be the last resort of injured honour, the ultimate remedy to repel insult. ”

“ I come to you in plain clothes and ask you to be my second in a duel. You consent; we go on the ground and meet another man, apparently a civilian, of whose military quality or grade you are in no way supposed cognisant. Duels occur daily in France, as you know, and no notice is taken of them, even when fatal. ”

“ On each fresh occasion of combat, when the enemy desires to challenge me, I conduct myself valiantly: knowing that to fight a duel is an unworthy act, I turn my back upon the adversary without ever looking him in the face ”

“ In a case like that the duel, which is to decide the question which of those two is to make way on this earth for the other, is a positive necessity. But between us a duel, as I said, would be one-sided, since my life is nothing like as valuable as yours. If I killed you I should destroy a whole world of the fairest hopes. ”

“ No challenge can be sent by collective parties. If any body or society of men have received an insult, they can only send an individual belonging to it to demand satisfaction. A message collectively sent, may be refused; but the challenged party may select an antagonist, or leave the nomination to chance.
16. All duels should take place during the forty-eight hours that have succeeded the offence, unless it is otherwise stipulated by the seconds.25
17. In a duel with pistol or sabre, two seconds to each combatant are indispensable: one will suffice when the sword is used. ”