Part 7

See E. Dummler, "Zur Kritik Dudos von St Quentin" in the _Forschungen zur deutschen Geschichte_, Bande vi. and ix. (Gottingen, 1866); G. Waitz, "Uber die Quellen zur Geschichte der Begrundung der normannischen Herrschaft in Frankreich," in the _Gottinger gel. Anzeigen_ (Gottingen, 1866); J.C.H.R. Steenstrup, _Normannerne_, Band i. (Copenhagen, 1876); J. Lair, _Etude critique et historique sur Dudon_ (Caen, 1865); G. Kortung, _Uber die Quellen des Roman de Rou_ (Leipzig, 1867); W. Wattenbach, _Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen_, Band i. (Berlin, 1904); and A. Molinier, _Les Sources de l'histoire de France_, tome ii. (Paris, 1902).

DUDWEILER, a town of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine province, on the Sulzbach, 4 m. by rail N.E. from Saarbrucken. It has extensive coal mines and ironworks and produces fire-proof bricks. Pop. (1905) 16,320.

DUEL (Ital. _duello_, Lat. _duellum_--old form of _bellum_--from _duo_, two), a prearranged encounter between two persons, with deadly weapons, in accordance with conventional rules, with the object of voiding a personal quarrel or of deciding a point of honour. The first recorded instance of the word occurs in Coryate's _Crudities_ (1611), but Shakespeare has _duello_ in this sense, and uses "duellist" of Tybalt in _Romeo and Juliet_. In its earlier meaning of a judicial combat we find the word latinized in the Statute of Wales (Edw. I., Act 12), "_Placita de terris in partibus istis non habent terminari per duellum_."

Duels in the modern sense were unknown to the ancient world, and their origin must be sought in the feudal age of Europe. The single combats recorded in Greek and Roman history and legend, of Hector and Achilles, Aeneas and Turnus, the Horatii and Curiatii, were incidents in national wars and have nothing in common with the modern duel. It is, however, noteworthy that in Tacitus (_Germania_, cap. x.) we find the rudiments of the judicial duel (see WAGER, for the wager of battle). Domestic differences, he tells us, were settled by a legalized form of combat between the disputants, and when a war was impending a captive from the hostile tribe was armed and pitted against a national champion, and the issue of the duel was accepted as an omen. The judicial combat was a Teutonic institution, and it was in fact an appeal from human justice to the God of battles, partly a sanction of the current creed that might is right, that the brave not only will win but deserve to win. It was on these grounds that Gundobald justified, against the complaints of a bishop, the famous edict passed at Lyons (A.D. 501) which established the wager of battle as a recognized form of trial. It is God, he argued, who directs the issue of national wars, and in private quarrels we may trust His providence to favour the juster cause. Thus, as Gibbon comments, the absurd and cruel practice of judicial duels, which had been peculiar to some tribes of Germany, was propagated and established in all the monarchies of Europe from Sicily to the Baltic. Yet in its defence it may be urged that it abolished a worse evil, the compurgation by oath which put a premium on perjury, and the ordeal, or judgment of God, when the cause was decided by blind chance, or more often by priestcraft.

The judicial combat.

Those who are curious to observe the formalities and legal rules of a judicial combat will find them described at length in the 28th book of Montesquieu's _Esprit des lois_. On these regulations he well remarks that, as there are an infinity of wise things conducted in a very foolish manner, so there are some foolish things conducted in a very wise manner. For our present purpose it is sufficient to observe the development of the idea of personal honour from which the modern duel directly sprang. In the ancient laws of the Swedes we find that if any man shall say to another, "You are not a man equal to other men," or "You have not the heart of a man," and the other shall reply, "I am a man as good as you," they shall meet on the highway, and then follow the regulations for the combat. What is this but the modern challenge? By the law of the Lombards if one man call another arga, the insulted party might defy the other to mortal combat. What is _arga_ but the _dummer Junger_ of the German student? Beaumanoir thus describes a legal process under Louis le Debonnaire:--The appellant begins by a declaration before the judge that the appellee is guilty of a certain crime; if the appellee answers that his accuser lies, the judge then ordains the duel. Is not this the modern point of honour, by which to be given the lie is an insult which can only be wiped out by blood?

From Germany the judicial combat rapidly spread to France, where it flourished greatly from the 10th to the 12th century, the period of customary law. By French kings it was welcomed as a limitation of the judicial powers of their half independent vassals. It was a form of trial open to all freemen and in certain cases, as under Louis VI., the privilege was extended to serfs. Even the church resorted to it not unfrequently to settle disputes concerning church property. Abbots and priors as territorial lords and high justiciaries had their share in the confiscated goods of the defeated combatant, and Pope Nicholas when applied to in 858 pronounced it "a just and legitimate combat." Yet only three years before the council of Valence had condemned the practice, imposing the severest penance on the victor and refusing the last rites of the church to the vanquished as to a suicide. In 1385 a duel was fought, the result of which was so preposterous that even the most superstitious began to lose faith in the efficacy of such a judgment of God. A certain Jacques Legris was accused by the wife of Jean Carrouge of having introduced himself by night in the guise of her husband whom she was expecting on his return from the Crusades. A duel was ordained by the parlement of Paris, which was fought in the presence of Charles VI. Legris was defeated and hanged on the spot. Not long after, a criminal arrested for some other offence confessed himself to be the author of the outrage. No institution could long survive so open a confutation, and it was annulled by the parlement. Henceforward the duel in France ceases to be an appeal to Heaven, and becomes merely a satisfaction of wounded honour. Under Louis XII. and Francis I. we find the first vestiges of tribunals of honour. The last instance of a duel authorized by the magistrates, and conducted according to the forms of law, was the famous one between Francois de Vivonne de la Chataignerie and Guy Chabot de Jarnac. The duel was fought on the 10th of July 1547 in the courtyard of the chateau of St Germain-en-Laye, in the presence of the king and a large assembly of courtiers. It was memorable in two ways. It enriched the French language with a new phrase; a sly and unforeseen blow, such as that by which de Jarnac worsted La Chataignerie, has since been called a _coup de Jarnac_. And Henry, grieved at the death of his favourite, swore a solemn oath that he would never again permit a duel to be fought. This led to the first of the many royal edicts against duelling. By a decree of the council of Trent (cap. xix.) a ban was laid on "the detestable use of duels, an invention of the devil to compass the destruction of souls together with a bloody death of the body."

In England, it is now generally agreed, the wager of battle did not exist before the time of the Norman Conquest. Some previous examples have been adduced, but on examination they will be seen to belong rather to the class of single combats between the champions of two opposing armies. One such instance is worth quoting as a curious illustration of the superstition of the time. It occurs in a rare tract printed in London, 1610, _The Duello_, or _Single Combat_. "Danish irruptions and the bad aspects of Mars having drencht the common mother earth with her sonnes' blood streames, under the reigne of Edmund, a Saxon monarch, _misso in compendium_ (so worthy Camden expresseth it) _bello utriusque gentis fata Edmundo Anglorum et Canuto Danorum regibus commissa fuerunt, qui singulari certamine de summa imperij in hac insula_ (that is, the Eight in Glostershire) _depugnarunt."_ By the laws of William the Conqueror the trial by battle was only compulsory when the opposite

## parties were both Normans, in other cases it was optional. As the two

nations were gradually merged into one, this form of trial spread, and until the reign of Henry II. it was the only mode for determining a suit for the recovery of land. The method of procedure is admirably described by Shakespeare in the opening scene in _Richard II._, where Henry of Bolingbroke, duke of Hereford, challenges Thomas, duke of Norfolk; in the mock-heroic battle between Horner the Armourer and his man Peter in _Henry VI._; and by Sir W. Scott in the _Fair Maid of Perth_, where Henry Gow appears before the king as the champion of Magdalen Proudfute. The judicial duel never took root in England as it did in France. In civil suits it was superseded by the grand assize of Henry II., and in cases of felony by indictment at the prosecution of the crown. One of the latest instances occurred in the reign of Elizabeth, 1571, when the lists were actually prepared and the justices of the common pleas appeared at Tothill Fields as umpires of the combat. Fortunately the petitioner failed to put in an appearance, and was consequently nonsuited (see Spelman, _Glossary_, s.v. "Campus"). As late as 1817 Lord Ellenborough, in the case of _Thornton_ v. _Ashford_, pronounced that "the general law of the land is that there shall be a trial by battle in cases of appeal unless the party brings himself within some of the exceptions." Thornton was accused of murdering Mary Ashford, and claimed his right to challenge the appellant, the brother of the murdered girl, to wager of battle. His suit was allowed, and, the challenge being refused, the accused escaped. Next year the law was abolished (59 Geo. III., c. 46).

The duel of honour.

In France.

In sketching the history of the judicial combat we have traced the parentage of the modern duel. Strip the former of its legality, and divest it of its religious sanction, and the latter remains. We are justified, then, in dating the commencement of duelling from the abolition of the wager of battle. 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. Add to this the keen sense of personal honour, the susceptibility and the pugnacity which distinguish the French race. Montaigne, when touching on this subject in his essays, says, "Put three Frenchmen together on the plains of Libya, and they will not be a month in company without scratching one another's eyes out." The third chapter of d'Audiguier's _Ancien usage des duels_ is headed, "Pourquoi les seuls Francais se battent en duel." English literature abounds with allusions to this characteristic of the French nation. Lord Herbert of Cherbury, who was ambassador at the court of Louis XIII., says, "There is scarce a Frenchman worth looking on who has not killed his man in a duel." Ben Jonson, in his _Magnetic Lady_, makes Compass, the scholar and soldier, thus describe France, "that garden of humanity":--

"There every gentleman professing arms Thinks he is bound in honour to embrace The bearing of a challenge for another, Without or questioning the cause or asking Least colour of a reason."

Duels were not common before the 16th century. Hallam attributes their prevalence to the barbarous custom of wearing swords as a part of domestic dress, a fashion which was not introduced till the later part of the 15th century. In 1560 the states-general at Orleans supplicated Charles IX. to put a stop to duelling. Hence the famous ordinance of 1566, drawn up by the chancellor de l'Hopital, which served as the basis of the successive ordinances of the following kings. Under the frivolous and sanguinary reign of Henry III., "who was as eager for excitement as a woman," the rage for duels spread till it became almost an epidemic. In 1602 the combined remonstrances of the church and the magistrates extorted from the king an edict condemning to death whoever should give or accept a challenge or act as second. But public opinion was revolted by such rigour, and the statue remained a dead letter. A duel forms a fit conclusion to the reign. A hair-brained youth named L'Isle Marivaux swore that he would not survive his beloved king, and threw his cartel into the air. It was at once picked up, and Marivaux soon obtained the death he had courted. Henry IV. began his reign by an edict against duels, but he was known in private to favour them; and, when de Crequi asked leave to fight Don Philip of Savoy, he is reported to have said, "Go, and if I were not a king I would be your second." Fontenay-Mareuil says, in his _Memoires_, that in the eight years between 1601 and 1609, 2000 men of noble birth fell in duels. In 1609 a more effective measure was taken at the instance of Sully by the establishment of a court of honour. The edict decrees that all aggrieved persons shall address themselves to the king, either directly or through the medium of the constables, marshals, &c.; that the king shall decide, whether, if an accommodation could not be effected, permission to fight should be given; that the aggressor, if pronounced in the wrong, shall in any case be suspended from any public office or employment, and be mulcted of one-third of his revenue till he has satisfied the aggrieved party; that any one giving or receiving a challenge shall forfeit all right of reparation and all his offices; that any one who kills his adversary in an unauthorized duel shall suffer death without burial, and his children shall be reduced to villanage; that seconds, if they take part in a duel, shall suffer death, if not, shall be degraded from the profession of arms. This edict has been pronounced by Henri Martin "the wisest decree of the ancient monarchy on a matter which involves so many delicate and profound questions of morals, politics, and religion touching civil rights" (_Histoire de France_, x. 466).

In the succeeding reign the mania for duels revived. Rostand's _Cyrano_ is a life-like modern portraiture of French bloods in the first half of the 17th century. De Houssaye tells us that in Paris when friends met the first question was, "Who fought yesterday? who is to fight to-day?" They fought by night and day, by moonlight and by torch-light, in the public streets and squares. A hasty word, a misconceived gesture, a question about the colour of a riband or an embroidered letter, such were the commonest pretexts for a duel. The slighter and more frivolous the dispute, the less were they inclined to submit them to the king for adjudication. Often, like gladiators or prize-fighters, they fought for the pure love of fighting. A misunderstanding is cleared up on the ground. "N'importe," cry the principals, "puisque nous sommes ici, battons-nous." Seconds, as Montaigne tells us, are no longer witnesses, but must take part themselves unless they would be thought wanting in affection or courage; and he goes on to complain that men are no longer contented with a single second, "c'etait anciennement des duels, ce sont a cette heure rencontres et batailles." There is no more striking instance of Richelieu's firmness and power as a statesman than his conduct in the matter of duelling. In his _Testament politique_ he has assigned his reasons for disapproving it as a statesman and ecclesiastic. But this disapproval was turned to active detestation by a private cause. His elder brother, the head of the house, had fallen in a duel stabbed to the heart by an enemy of the cardinal. Already four edicts had been published under Louis XIII. with little or no effect, when in 1626 there was published a new edict condemning to death any one who had killed his adversary in a duel, or had been found guilty of sending a challenge a second time. Banishment and partial confiscation of goods were awarded for lesser offences. But this edict differed from preceding ones not so much in its severity as in the fact that it was the first which was actually enforced. The cardinal began by imposing the penalties of banishment and fines, but, these proving ineffectual to stay the evil, he determined to make a terrible example. To quote his own words to the king, "Il s'agit de couper la gorge aux duels ou aux edits de votre Majeste." The count de Boutteville, a renommist who had already been engaged in twenty-one affairs of honour, determined out of pure bravado to fight a twenty-second time. The duel took place at midday on the Place Royale. Boutteville was arrested with his second, the count de Chapelles; they were tried by the parlement of Paris, condemned and, in spite of all the influence of the powerful house of Montmorenci, of which de Boutteville was a branch, they were both beheaded on the 21st of June 1627. For a short time the ardour of duellists was cooled. But the lesson soon lost its effect. Only five years later we read in the _Mercure de France_ that two gentlemen who had killed one another in a duel were, by the cardinal's orders, hanged on a gallows, stripped and with their heads downwards, in the sight of all the people. This was a move in the right direction, since, for fashionable vices, ridicule and ignominy is a more drastic remedy than death. It was on this principle that Caraccioli, prince of Melfi, when viceroy of Piedmont, finding that his officers were being decimated by duelling, proclaimed that all duels should be fought on the parapet of the Ponte Vecchio, and if one of the combatants chanced to fall into the river he should on no account be pulled out.

Under the long reign of Louis XIV. many celebrated duels took place, of which the most remarkable were that between the duke of Guise and Count Coligny, the last fought on the Place Royale, and that between the dukes of Beaufort and Nemours, each attended by four friends. Of the ten combatants, Nemours and two others were killed on the spot, and none escaped without some wound. No less than eleven edicts against duelling were issued under le Grand Monarque. That of 1643 established a supreme court of honour composed of the marshals of France; but the most famous was that of 1679, which confirmed the enactments of his predecessors, Henry IV. and Louis XII. At the same time a solemn agreement was entered into by the principal nobility that they would never engage in a duel on any pretence whatever. A medal was struck to commemorate the occasion, and the firmness of the king, in refusing pardon to all offenders, contributed more to restrain this scourge of society than all the efforts of his predecessors.

The subsequent history of duelling in France may be more shortly treated. In the preamble to the edict of 1704 Louis XIV. records his satisfaction at seeing under his reign an almost entire cessation of those fatal combats which by the inveterate force of custom had so long prevailed. Addison (_Spectator_, 99) notes it as one of the most glorious exploits of his reign to have banished the false point of honour. Under the regency of Louis XV. there was a brief revival. The last legislative act for the suppression of duels was passed on the 12th of April 1723. Then came the Revolution, which in abolishing the _ancien regime_ fondly trusted that with it would go the duel, one of the privileges and abuses of an aristocratic society. Dupleix, in his _Military Law concerning the Duel_ (1611), premises that these have no application to lawyers, merchants, financiers or justices. This explains why in the legislation of the National Assembly there is no mention of duels. Camille Desmoulins when challenged shrugged his shoulders and replied to the charge of cowardice that he would prove his courage on other fields than the Bois de Boulogne. The two great Frenchmen whose writings preluded the French Revolution both set their faces against it. Voltaire had indeed, as a young man, in obedience to the dictates of society, once sought satisfaction from a nobleman for a brutal insult, and had reflected on his temerity in the solitude of the Bastille.[1] Henceforward he inveighed against the practice, not only for its absurdity, but also for its aristocratic exclusiveness. Rousseau had said of duelling, "It is not an institution of honour, but a horrible and barbarous custom, which a courageous man despises and a good man abhors." Napoleon was a sworn foe to it. "Bon duelliste mauvais soldat" is one of his best known sayings; and, when the king of Sweden sent him a challenge, he replied that he would order a fencing-master to attend him as plenipotentiary. After the battle of Waterloo duels such as Lever loves to depict were frequent between disbanded French officers and those of the allies in occupation. The restoration of the Bourbons brought with it a fresh crop of duels. Since then duels have been frequent in France--more frequent, however, in novels than in real life--fought mainly between politicians and journalists, and with rare exceptions bloodless affairs. If fought with pistols, the distance and the weapons chosen render a hit improbable; and, if fought with rapiers, honour is generally satisfied with the first blood drawn. Among Frenchmen famous in politics or letters who have "gone out" may be mentioned Armand Carrel, who fell in an encounter with Emile Girardin; Thiers, who thus atoned for a youthful indiscretion; the elder Dumas; Lamartine; Ste Beuve, who to show at once his sangfroid and his sense of humour, fought under an umbrella; Ledru Rollin; Edmond About; Clement Thomas; Veuillot, the representative of the church militant; Rochefort; and Boulanger, the Bonapartist _fanfaron_, whose discomfiture in a duel with Floquet resulted in a notable loss of popular respect.

In England.