The Duel (32 page)

While calmly perusing the annals of duelling, we cannot but be amazed when we behold, in the present day of pretended intellectual perfection, this practice adopted in a society which prides itself upon its boasted high state of civilization.

The details of ancient duels and single combats, which in fact were little better than qualified murders, may be revolting from their barbarous excesses; yet no study will tend more effectually to rub off from the pictorial romance of history its deceptive varnish, than that of duelling, its progress and its occasional comparative disappearance when it ceased to be fashionable, or resorted to by the upper classes of society.

The very origin of duelling should make us blush at its permanency,—springing from the darkest eras of barbarism, when scarcely a vestige was left, in the wreck of empires, of ancient glory, and of those arts, sciences, and polite accomplishments that had distinguished preceding ages, and of which the scattered ruins and tradition alone remained, fearful records of the vanity of earthly grandeur and mortal fame.

The martial and independent spirit of Rome was extinct. Sybarite luxury had succeeded its days of iron; and civilization, degraded by over refinement into effeminacy, had built palaces, but overthrown the barriers against invasion. This weakness was felt, tried, and overwhelmed. Swarms of barbarians overran that once great dominion,—the torrent swept all before it, and famine and pestilence marched in the train of the savage invaders; every institution that policy had laboured to establish was overthrown; and, for centuries, scarcely a vestige was to be traced of law, justice, or reason. The right of the sword was the only authority recognized; and a feudal system divided mankind into lords and slaves. Turbulence, oppression, and rapine were called government. The Deity was supposed to be propitiated by deeds of blood; while religion became a useful mask for the hypocrite, and was confined to the observance of external ceremonies.

It was during this dark period that the practice of trials by ordeal,
¹⁰
duelling, and single combat reigned paramount; and, when we consider the state of society into which mankind were brutalized, we cannot wonder at this mode of deciding differences being considered the wisest and most just. This epoch cannot be better described than in the fitting passage of Robertson:

“To repel injuries and to revenge wrongs, is no less natural to man, than to cultivate friendships; and, while society remains in its most simple state, the former is considered as a personal right no less inalienable than the latter. Nor do men in this situation deem that they have a title to redress their own wrongs alone; they are touched with the injuries done to those with whom they are connected, or in whose honour they are interested, and are no less prompt to avenge them. The savage, how imperfectly soever he may comprehend the principle of political union, feels warmly the sentiments arising from the ties of blood. On the appearance of an injury or an affront offered to his family or tribe, he kindles into rage, and pursues the author of it with the keenest resentment. He considers it with the keenest resentment. He considers it as cowardly to expect redress from any arm but his own, and as infamous to give up to another the right of determining what reparation he should accept, or with what vengeance he should be satisfied.”

Here we find the groundwork of duelling,—and it is to be lamented, that man, even in a progressive state of civilization, differs little from the savage in his thirst for gratifying the degrading indulgence of revenge.

Let us strip the romantic days of chivalry of their fantastic and glittering panoply,—the hall of wassail of its pomp and beauty,—the troubadour’s fond theme of its florid attractions,—and the feats of knighthood in the cause of the ladies loved
par amours
of their Quixotic devotion,—and what shall we behold? Treachery and ferocity of the blackest dye,—profligacy and debauchery of the most revolting nature,—vice clad by morbid imagination in the most fascinating garb of virtue,—and a murderer’s brow laurelled by beauty’s hand, instead of falling under the headsman’s axe!

—from
The History of Duelling
by
J.G. Millingen
.
John Gideon Millingen (1782
–
1862) was a Paris educated surgeon in the British army, as well as a prolific writer. His two-volume history of dueling is one of the most comprehensive works on the subject
.

Reflections On The Eve Of A Duel

I have somewhere read that Moreau made, and Wellington assented to, the remark, that commanders of large armies, however brave, weighed down by moral anxiety and reasonings upon the uncertainties of the result, hesitate, after all their combinations and arrangements have been completed, to make the final movement to bring on a battle. How similar the condition of statesman and military men of distinction, when on the eve of private battle,—the parting line to the unconscious wife scaled; the will executed and concealed from curious eyes; the thought of the dread event of the morrow and its issues; the resolution taken to reserve fire, or not to wound in a mortal part; and the last conversation for the night with the only friends entrusted with the momentous secret! What were the emotions of Thurlow, rapidly advancing the bar, and with the vision of the Great Seal and the Wool-sack before him! Of Canning, struggling for the premiership, but scorned by the aristocracy for the lowly position in life of his true-hearted and exemplary mother! Of Pitt, whose ambitious policy grasped at bounding and balancing the kingdoms of all Europe! Of Hamilton, the pride and hope of a hemisphere, and the “disciple on whose bosom” Washington had “leaned!” of Clay, as chivalrous as the ancient Bayard himself, and taunted to madness by the ferocity and malignity of party calumny! Of Decatur, gallant and generous to knight-errantry, yet pushed by malign influences to wrong a professional brother already crushed by an administration to conceal its own indolence and remissness!

Sin and Absurdity Of Duelling

An elaborate argument to prove the Wickedness of the custom is unnecessary, for that is admitted everywhere, and quite as often and as frankly among its unfortunate victims as among others. Nor, in omitting a discussion on the point thus generally conceded, shall I so far yield to the popular voice in some sections of the country, as to say that, as a class, “duellists are murderers”; since it were as just, in my judgment, to pronounce the sentence of self-murder against those of the other sex who, by
their
course of live, produce consumtion and premature desease. Both are the victims of FASHION. Society in the former case loads, presents, and fires pistols, to shoot husbands and fathers and brothers; and in the latter, by its imperative laws to regulate the form and materials of dress, the hours of visiting, the articles of food or entertainment, and the manner of employing time, commits wives and daughters and sisters to untimely graves. Is it not so?

The unconditional ABSURDITY of duelling, as a means of redress, may be shown in a passing word. If, under
the commercial code, a rich but unprincipled merchant owes me a debt which he refuses to pay, and I propose to give him an acquittance on his consenting that, attended by our clerks, we meet and shoot at one another, or if, under the criminal code, I should agree not to arrest the man who had entered my dwelling, and robbed me of my family plate and pictures, on condition that he would fight me, everybody would see and exclaim against the foolishness of my conduct. Yet I should act on the precise rule of the code of honor.

Without dwelling on the minor offences, we will take for an illustration the crime of female seduction, which wounds the frinds of the victim to madness, and which is sometimes comitted under circumstances that almost justify the most summary punishment. But how is it possible to efface the family stigma, in a
combat
with the seducer? Could the fallen daughter or sister be
resorted
, or were it certain that the
aggressor
would be shot,
then
something might be gained; but as it is, and in the nature of things ever must be, a male protector, if he send a challenge which is accepted, not only places himself on an
equality
with a scoundrel, but may
himself
be slain, and thus cause fresh anguish at the fireside already polluted by lust.

Again, if the father or chief protector of a single family is bound to “demand satisfaction” of the betrayer of his hearthstone, why may not the father or chief protector of all the families of a nation be held to challenge the betrayer of his country? And why, hence, ought not Washington to have risked the most valuable life of the last century against Benedict Arnold, one of the most worthless lives of all centuries? The principle in the two cases is the same, beyond all denial; for the question is not whether the infamous betrayer of confiding woman or the infamous political traitor shall escape from the “deep damnation” of mankind, but whether, after the wrong be perpetrated, a mode of punishment shall be selected which gives no redress to the sufferers, and which puts the innocent and the guilty on an equal footing.

—from
Notes On Duels and Duelling
by
Lorenzo Sabine
(1803
–
1877)
.

It might be imagined that enactments so severe all over the civilised world would finally eradicate a custom, the prevalence of which every wise and good man must deplore. But the frowns of the law never yet have taught, and never will teach, men to desist from this practice, as long as it is felt that the lawgiver sympathises with it in his heart. The stern judge upon the bench may say to the unfortunate wight who has been called a liar by some unmannerly opponent, “If you challenge him, you meditate murder, and are guilty of murder!” but the same judge, divested of his robes of state, and mixing in the world with other men, would say, “If you do not challenge him, if you do not run the risk of making yourself a murderer, you will be looked upon as a mean-spirited wretch, unfit to associate with your fellows, and deserving nothing but their scorn and their contempt!” It is society, and not the duellist, who is to blame. Female influence too, which is so powerful in leading men either to good or to evil, takes in this case the evil part. Mere animal bravery has, unfortunately, such charms in the female eye, that a successful duellist is but too often regarded as a sort of hero; and the man who refuses to fight, though of truer courage, is thought a poltroon, who may be trampled on. Mr. Graves, a member of the American legislature, who, early in 1838, killed a Mr. Cilley in a duel, truly and eloquently said, on the floor of the House of Representatives, when lamenting the unfortunate issue of that encounter, that society was more to blame than he was. “Public opinion,” said the repentant orator, “is practically the paramount law of the land. Every other law, both human and divine, ceases to be observed; yea, withers and perishes in contact with it. It was this paramount law of this nation and of this House that forced me, under the penalty of dishonour, to subject myself to the code, which impelled me unwillingly into this tragical affair. Upon the heads of this nation, and at the doors of this House, rests the blood
with which my unfortunate hands have been stained!”

As long as society is in this mood; as long as it thinks that the man who refuses to resent an insult, deserved that insult, and should be scouted accordingly; so long, it is to be feared, will duelling exist, however severe the laws may be. Men must have redress for injuries inflicted; and when those injuries are of such a nature that no tribunal will take cognisance of them, the injured will take the law into their own hands, and right themselves in the opinion of their fellows, at the hazard of their lives. Much as the sage may affect to despise the opinion of the world, there are few who would not rather expose their lives a hundred times than be condemned to live on, in society, but not of it—a by-word of reproach to all who know their history, and a mark for scorn to point his finger at.