One of the liveliest little duels we have lately heard of is that which
took place in October between the journalist M. Rochefort and Captain
Fournier. It appears that the gallant captain felt himself aggrieved by
some free expressions in the “Intransigeant,” challenged the editor,
and both belligerents went out with swords, whereupon Rochefort pinked
Fournier, Fournier slashed Rochefort, both lost a teaspoonful or so of
blood, and honor appears to have been satisfied.
In the eyes of the average Briton there is always something absurd
about a duel. He either thinks of the duel in “The Rivals,” as it
is occasionally witnessed at Toole’s theatre, or of Mark Twain’s
incomparable “affair” with M. Gambetta; but it seldom occurs to any one
in this country to think of a duel as being honorable to either party,
or capable of really meeting the requirements of two gentlemen who may
happen to have a difference of opinion.
The Englishman kicks his rival in Pall Mall, canes him in Piccadilly,
or pulls his nose and calls him a liar at his club. He is then had up
for assault and battery, his grievance is well aired in public, he is
consoled by the sympathy of an enlarged circle of friends, pays a small
fine, and leaves the court “without a stain upon his character.” If, on
the other hand, his rival is in the right, the damages are heavy, and
his friends say, “Pity he lost his temper and made a fool of himself,”
and there the matter ends. In either case outraged justice or wounded
honor is attended to at the moderate cost of a few sovereigns, a bloody
nose, or a smashed hat.
We think on the whole it is highly creditable to England that this
should be so. The abolition of duelling by public opinion is a distinct
move up in the scale of civilisation.
Perhaps we forget how very recent that “move up” is.
When it ceased to be the fashion to wear swords in the last century,
pistols were substituted for these personal encounters. This made
duelling far less amusing, more dangerous, and proportionally less
popular. The duel in England received practically its _coup de grâce_
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 lots for pistols and to
fight, the one with a loaded, the other with an unloaded weapon.
This affair of honor (?) was always at short distances and
“point-blank,” 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 fight;
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.
But in mediæval 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. In 1599 the parliament of Paris went so far as to declare
every duellist a rebel to his majesty; nevertheless, in the first
eighteen years of Henri Quatre’s reign no fewer than 4,000 gentlemen
are said to have perished in duels, and Henri himself remarked, when
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
gentleman 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, were
both beheaded, being taken _in flagrante delicto_.
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 dulness of
Louis Philippe’s reign and the dissoluteness of Louis Napoleon’s both
fostered duelling. The present “opportunist” 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
railway assaults in England, duels form a regular and much appreciated
item of French daily news.
It is difficult to think of M. de Girardin’s shooting dead poor
Armand Carell—the most brilliant young journalist in France—without
impatience and disgust, or to read of M. Rochefort’s exploit the other
day without a smile.
The shaking hands in the most cordial way with M. Rochefort, 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 French points (of honor?) which we are sure his challenger,
Captain Fournier, was delighted to see noticed in the papers. No doubt
every billiard-room and café in Paris gloated over the details, and the
heroes, Rochefort and Fournier, were duly fêted 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.”
Now, admitting that there are some affronts which the law cannot and
does not take cognisance of, in these days such affronts are very few.
That terrible avenger, public opinion, is in this nineteenth century a
hundred-handed and a hundredfold more free, powerful, and active than
it used to be, before the printing-press, and, I may add, railways,
telegraphs, and daily newspapers. But of all cases to which duelling,
by the utmost stretch of honorable license, could be applied—a mere
press attack is perhaps the least excusable.
Here are the French extolling the freedom of the English press by
imitating—or trying to imitate—English independence and the right
to speak and act and scribble _sans gêne_—and it turns out that an
honorable member in the Senate cannot lose his temper, or a journalist
write a smart article, without being immediately requested to fight.
“Risum teneatis, amici!” and this is the people who think themselves
fit for liberty, let alone equality and fraternity! (save the mark!)
The old town clerk at Ephesus in attempting to compose a dispute of a
rather more serious character some eighteen hundred years ago, between
a certain Jew and a Greek tradesman, spoke some very good sense when he
appealed to both disputants thus: “If Demetrius have a matter against
any man the law is open, and there are deputies: let them implead one
another.”
Next time M. Rochefort pokes fun at Captain Fournier in the
“Intransigeant,” we advise the captain, instead of pinking that witty
but scurrilous person, to try the law of libel. If he wins he will
get money in his purse, which is better than an ugly gash in his
side; if he loses he will go home to consider his ways and perchance
amend them, under the stimulus of a just public rebuke—a sadder and
perhaps a _wiser_ man: that, indeed, both he and Rochefort might easily
be.—_Belgravia._