DUELS DURING THE REIGN OF LOUIS XIII.
During the reign of this monarch, or rather the sovereignty of his
minister, private rencontres were carried on with as much ferocity
as ever, and some of these meetings were attended with circumstances
which rendered them as absurd as they were atrocious. In one instance
we see two champions getting into a puncheon and fighting with knives;
and in another two noblemen fought with daggers, holding each other by
the left hand; while the 16th of January 1613 was rendered remarkable
by the tragic end of Baron de Luz and his son, who were killed by the
Chevalier de Guise.
The baron had met De Guise in the Rue St. Honoré, and some words arose
between them relative to the death of the late De Guise, who had been
assassinated at Blois by order of Henry III. The baron was on foot, De
Guise on horseback; he immediately alighted, and requested the baron
to draw: the old man could scarcely believe that the chevalier was in
earnest, yet drew his sword in self-defence. He was aged, and for
years had been out of practice; whereas his antagonist was a young man,
in the prime of life, and famed for his swordsmanship. His first thrust
proved fatal, his sword passing through the body of his adversary,
who staggered to a shoemaker’s shop hard by, and fell down dead. His
antagonist quietly remounted his horse, and rode off in the most
unconcerned manner.
The deceased had a son about the same age as the chevalier, who upon
hearing of his father’s death, was determined to avenge him. From the
high rank and station of De Guise, he well knew that, if he fell, no
part of Europe could afford him an asylum from prosecution; yet was he
determined in so just a cause to run every risk, and, as he did not
dare approach the hotel of the proud nobleman, he sent him a challenge
by his squire, couched in the following respectful language.
“No one, my lord, can bear witness to the just reason of my sorrow
more forcibly than your lordship; I therefore entreat your lordship to
forgive my resentment when expressing my desire that you will do me
the honour of meeting me sword in hand, to give me satisfaction for
my father’s death. The esteem which I entertain for your well-known
courage induces me to hope that your lordship will not plead your high
rank to avoid a meeting in which your honour is so deeply compromised,
The gentleman who bears this, will conduct you to the place where I am
waiting for your lordship with a good horse and two swords, of which
you will have the choice; or, should your lordship prefer it, I shall
attend you at any place you may command.”
The meeting took place on horseback; and, after a desperate conflict,
the murderer of the father gave the son the satisfaction of taking his
life also: while they were fighting, their seconds wounded each other.
D’Audiguier, who gives the particulars of this duel, adds, that “this
victory would have been more gratifying to God if he had fought for the
same cause that led his ancestors into Palestine!”
This De Guise was grandson of Henri de Lorraine, Duc de Guise, surnamed
_the Great_, and who was killed at the siege of Orleans; his father,
surnamed the _Balafré_, from a deep scar on the face, was assassinated
at Blois: they were both looked upon as _Doctors_ in the science of
duelling, and their opinion and decision considered law.
This De Guise was banished to Italy by Richelieu, where he died in
1640. His son, Henri de Lorraine, was equally celebrated for his
amorous adventures and chivalric achievements, and was brought to
trial by Richelieu as an accomplice in the conspiracy of the Count de
Soissons, and sentenced to death, _par contumace_, as he had fled to
Italy; but he returned afterwards to France, and we find him one of
the champions in the celebrated _carousel_ of 1662, having previously
killed in a duel the Count de Coligny, grandson of the admiral, who
was assassinated in the massacre of St. Barthelemi: with him ended the
turbulent and bloodthirsty family of De Guise, as society was rid of
him in 1664.
The _Balafré_ had a third son, Louis, who was a cardinal, and
archbishop of Rheims. This prelate was a worthy scion of the desperate
stock. He was often seen doffing his canonical vestments to don the
cuirass and helm; he fought in the ranks of his sovereign during his
expedition in Poitou, and died after the attack on Saint Jean d’Angely.
This worthy member of the church militant, having a lawsuit with the
Duke de Nevers, wanted to decide the cause at the point of the sword.
D’Audiguier, who has related many of the duels of his time, was a
gentleman belonging to the court of Louis XIII, and made a supplication
to that monarch not only to cancel all edicts against duelling, but
to allow the practice, in the following terms: “A great trial, Sire,
is carried on between the nobility and the law in your Majesty’s
dominions, in which you alone can decide: your nobility maintain that
a gentleman whose honour is impeached should either vindicate it with
his sword, or forfeit his life; whereas law asserts that a gentleman
who draws his sword shall lose his life: and surely your Majesty, who
is the chief of the most generous nobility in existence, cannot feel it
your interest thus to blunt their valour; or, under the vain pretence
of preserving their honour, behold them reduced to the necessity of
losing sight of its dictates, or seek to maintain it with their pen,
like the low-bred, disputing the right of arms before menial clerks.”
Our advocate of the rights of _honour_ concludes by imploring the King
to render duels less frequent by permitting them to take place on
certain occasions when the King himself should be present; and when
the public, he adds, “instead of being involved in differences and
lawsuits, which consume both blood and fortune, would be delivered of
the two monsters, and would feel proud of displaying their courage in
your service, and their valour in your royal presence.”
Despite these arguments, various prohibitory edicts were issued during
this reign: one in particular, dated 1626, forbade all applications
for pardon or solicitation in favour of the criminals; and, like
his predecessor Henri IV, Louis even denounced as criminal all such
applications from the Queen, whom he called his _très chère et aymée
compagne_; he further protested and declared before Heaven, that he
would never grant any exemption from this ordonnance. Notwithstanding
the sanctity of these protestations, we find Louis XIII. granting a
free pardon to duellists, “on account of the earnest entreaties made by
his much-loved and dear sister, the Queen of Great Britain, upon the
occasion of her marriage.”
Duels must have been of frequent occurrence during this reign, since
Lord Herbert of Cherbury, then our ambassador at the French court,
asserts that there was scarcely a Frenchman deemed worth looking on who
had not killed his man in a duel.
This chivalric nobleman, to show the prevalence of duelling in France,
and the respect in which duellists were held, relates the case of a M.
Mennon, who being desirous to marry a niece of M. Disancour, who it
was thought would be his heiress, was thus answered by him; “Friend,
it is not time yet to marry: I will tell you what you must do if you
will be a brave man. You must first kill in single combat two or three
men; then marry, and engender two or three children; and the world
will neither have gained nor lost by you.” Of which strange counsel,
Disancour was no otherwise the author than inasmuch as he had been an
example, at least of the former part, it being his fortune to have
fought three or four gallant duels in his time.
Another anecdote of Lord Herbert shows in what consideration duellists
were held by the fair sex. “All things being ready for the ball,
and every one being in their place, and I myself next to the Queen,
expecting when the dancers would come in, one knocked at the door
somewhat louder than became, I thought, a very civil person; when he
came in, I remember there was a sudden whisper amongst the ladies,
saying, ‘_C’est Monsieur Balaguy!_’ Whereupon I also saw the ladies and
gentlemen, one after another, invite him to sit near them; and, what is
more, when one lady had his company a while, another would say, ‘You
have enjoyed him long enough, _I_ must have him now.’ At which bold
civility of them, though I was astonished, yet it added to my wonder
that his person could not be thought at most but ordinary handsome;
his hair, which was cut very short, half grey; his doublet, but of
sackcloth, cut to his skin; and his breeches only of plain grey cloth.
Informing myself by some standers-by who he was, I was told that he was
one of the gallantest men in the world, as having killed eight or nine
men in single fight, and that for this reason the ladies made so much
of him; it being the manner of all French women to cherish gallant
men, as thinking they could not make so much of any else with the
safety of their honour.”
It appears, however, that, notwithstanding this reckless spirit
of duelling that prevailed in France, Lord Herbert had found some
difficulty in bringing various noblemen to the field; and the following
account gives a fair picture of the times.
“It happened one day that a daughter of the Duchess de Ventadour, of
about ten or eleven years of age, going one evening from the castle to
walk in the meadows, myself, with divers French gentlemen, attended
her and some gentlewomen that were with her. This young lady wearing
a knot of riband on her head, a French cavalier took it suddenly and
fastened it to his hatband: the young lady, offended, herewith demands
her riband; but he refusing to restore it, the young lady, addressing
herself to me, said, ‘Monsieur, I pray, get my riband from that
gentleman.’ Hereupon, going towards him, I courteously, with my hat
in my hand, desired him to do me the honour that I might deliver the
lady her riband or bouquet again; but he roughly answering me, ‘Do you
think I will give it to you, when I have refused it to her?’ I replied,
‘Nay, then, sir, I will make you restore it by force!’ Whereupon, also,
putting on my hat, and reaching at his, he to save himself ran away;
and after a long course in the meadow, finding that I had almost
overtook him, he turned short, and, running to the young lady, was
about to put the riband in her hand, when I, seizing upon his arm, said
to the young lady, ‘It was I that gave it.’ ‘Pardon me,’ quoth she, ‘it
is he that gives it me.’ I said then, ‘Madam, I will not contradict
you; but, if he dare say that I did not constrain him to give it, I
will fight with him.’ The French gentleman answered nothing thereunto
for the present, and we conducted the lady again to the castle. The
next day I desired Mr. Aurelian Townshend to tell the French cavalier
that he must confess that I constrained him to restore the riband, or
fight with me. But the gentleman, seeing him unwilling to accept of
this challenge, went out from the place; whereupon, I following him,
some of the gentlemen that belonged to the Constable, taking notice
hereof, acquainted him therewith, who, sending for the French cavalier,
checked him well for his sauciness in taking the riband away from his
grandchild, and afterwards bid him depart his house: and this was all
I ever heard of the gentleman, with whom I proceeded in that manner,
because I thought myself obliged thereunto by the oath taken when I was
made Knight of the Bath.”
It seems that our hero was a very pugnacious defender of ladies’
top-knots and ribands, for he relates another quarrel of a similar
nature, in the case of a Scotch gentleman, “who, taking a riband in
the like manner from Mrs. Middleton, a maid of honour, in a back-room
behind Queen Anne’s lodging in Greenwich, she likewise desired me
to get her the said riband. I repaired, as formerly, to him in a
courteous manner to demand it; but he refusing, as the French cavalier
did, I caught him by the neck, and had almost thrown him down, when
company came in and parted us. I offered, likewise, to fight with this
gentleman, and came to the place appointed, by Hyde Park; but this also
was interrupted, by order of the Lords of the Council, and I never
heard more of it.”
His lordship, notwithstanding his constant quarrels, which he most
decidedly sought for, by his own account, asserts “that, although I
lived in the armies and courts of the greatest princes in Christendom,
yet I never had a quarrel with man for mine own sake; so that, although
in mine own nature I was ever choleric and hasty, yet I never, without
occasion given, quarrelled with anybody: for my friends often have I
hazarded myself, but never yet drew my sword for my own sake singly.”
It is difficult to reconcile this assertion with a quarrel he picked
with the same Balaguy, so much renowned amongst the ladies, of whom he
had already spoken. “I remembered myself,” he says, “of the bravado of
M. Balaguy, and, coming to him, told him that I knew how brave a man
he was, and that, as he had put me to one trial of daring when I was
last with him in the trenches, I would put him to another; and saying
that I had heard he had a fair mistress, and that the scarf he wore was
her gift, I would maintain I had a worthier mistress than he, and that
I would do as much for her sake as he, or any one else, durst do for
his.”
Balaguy very wisely declined the meeting, with a joke of somewhat an
indelicate nature: to which Lord Herbert replied, “that he spoke more
like a _paillard_ than a cavalier!” And here, strange to say, the
matter ended. To doubt the courage of Balaguy, is out of the question;
and it is but reasonable to infer that Lord Herbert was looked upon in
the court of France as a crackbrained knight-errant. In the case of
the young lady’s top-knot, there is little doubt but that the French
cavalier was her favourite, whom in a pettish moment she sought to
embroil with our hero; and the Frenchman very wisely considered the
whole business a childish joke.
The Quixotic character of Lord Herbert was fully illustrated after
the siege of Rees, when a trumpeter came from the Spanish army with a
challenge from a Spanish cavalier, purporting, that if any cavalier
would fight a single combat for the sake of his mistress, the said
Spaniard would meet him upon the assurance of a field. His lordship
was the only madman found to accept the defiance; and on this occasion
received from the Prince of Orange a very salutary piece of advice.
“His Excellency thereupon,” he says, “looking earnestly upon me, told
me he was an old soldier, and that he had observed two sorts of men who
used to send challenges of this kind: one of them, who, having lost
perchance some part of their honour in the field before the enemy,
would recover it again by a single fight; the other was of those who
sent it only to discover whether our army had in it men affected
to give trial of themselves in this kind. Howbeit, if this man was
a person without exception to be taken against him, he said, there
was none he knew upon whom he would sooner venture the honour of his
army than myself. Hereupon, by his Excellency’s permission, I sent
a trumpet to the Spanish army, when another trumpet came to me from
Spinola, saying, the challenge was made without his consent, and that
therefore he would not permit it.” This did not satisfy our knight; but
he forthwith repaired to the Spanish camp to seek out the challenger.
There he was received with great cordiality by Spinola; and, instead
of a battle, the visit ended in a festive dinner, during which a
conversation took place between his lordship and the Spanish general,
descriptive of the times. “_Di che moriva Signor Francesco Vere?_” To
which Lord Herbert replied, “_Per aver niente a fare_.” When Spinola
observed, “_E basta per un generale_.” Lord Herbert adds, “Indeed, that
brave commander, Sir Francis Vere, died, not in time of war, but in
peace.” He then parted from his noble host, with a particular request
to be allowed to fight the infidels if ever he undertook a crusade,
when he would be the first man who died in the quarrel.
It appears, however, that on one occasion a Frenchman, the favourite
Luynes, showed less of spirit than our countryman. Through some
misrepresentations Lord Herbert was recalled, and Luynes procured his
brother the Duke of Chaun, with a train of officers, “each of whom
had killed his man,” to go to England as ambassador extraordinary to
complain of the conduct of Lord Herbert. The inquiry terminated in his
favour, when he fell upon his knees before King James, in presence of
the Duke of Buckingham, to request that a trumpeter, if not a herald,
might be sent to Luynes to tell him that he had made a false relation
of the whole affair, and that he demanded satisfaction sword in hand.
The King answered, “that he would take it into consideration.” But
Luynes soon after died, and Herbert was again sent to France.
It may be easily imagined that Richelieu would not allow these edicts,
apparently humane, to put an end to a practice which was both directly
and indirectly of material service to his lofty ambition; and when
he could not bring to the scaffold illustrious victims, such as the
Cinque-Mars, De Thous, and Montmorency, he sought for guilt, real or
supposed, amongst those nobles who had infringed these useless laws.
Thus we find, in 1626, the young Prince de Chalais, of the house of
Talleyrand, killing in a duel the Count of Pont Gibaut, grandson of
Schomberg. He was immediately apprehended; but being a favourite of
Gaston d’Orleans the King’s brother, and moreover the lover of the
famous Duchess de Chevreuse, the cardinal was for the time deprived of
his victim, until the year 1626, when he was accused of a conspiracy
against his sovereign, sentenced to death, and executed the same day.
This judicial murder was attended with circumstances of a most cruel
nature. No executioner could be found to carry the sentence into
effect, when two malefactors were pardoned on condition that they would
perform the hateful duty; which they executed in so fearful a manner,
that the unfortunate young nobleman received thirty blows of the axe
ere his head was severed from the body.
The following year, history records another merciless act of the
cardinal. François de Montmorency, better known under the name of
Boutteville, was one of the most renowned duellists of the day. This
nobleman, whenever he heard that a person bore the reputation of a
courageous man, was in the practice of walking up to him, and quietly
saying, “I understand, sir, that you are courageous; I wish to enable
you to prove it,--what are your weapons?” Every morning the hall of his
hotel was crowded with what was called the “golden youth of France,”
where fencing and trials of skill at all arms were practised, and a
sumptuous collation laid out for the company. The excesses of these
desperadoes were so reckless, that a special edict appeared to keep
them within limits. Such was the audacity of Boutteville, that he
actually compelled the Count of Pont Gibaut on an Easter Sunday to
quit his devotions and fight him: he was also denounced for having
killed the Marquis de Portes and the Count de Thorigny. Shortly after,
fighting the Baron de la Frette, in which duel his second was killed,
he was obliged to absent himself from Paris: he fixed upon Brussels
to meet another adversary, the Marquis de Beuvron, a relation of
Thorigny, whose death he was anxious to avenge. The King, upon hearing
of this determination, wrote immediately to the Archduchess, who then
governed the Low Countries, to prevent this meeting; and directed the
Marquis de Spinola to settle their differences. For this purpose,
this nobleman invited them both to a splendid repast, and made them
embrace each other, with vows of everlasting friendship, and a total
forgiveness of all past injuries, in the presence of a numerous
company. Notwithstanding these solemn protestations, De Beuvron, on
quitting the house, whispered to Boutteville, “that he never would rest
satisfied until he had met him sword in hand.” Boutteville however
refused to meet him, on the plea of the solemn promise he had made the
Archduchess to abstain from any hostile act while on her territory;
but he entreated that princess to write to Louis XIII, to obtain the
King’s permission to return to France: to which application the monarch
replied, “that all that he could do, for the love he bore her, was to
allow him to remain in France without further prosecution, but he could
not permit him to make his appearance at court.”
Beuvron returned to Paris, wrote no less than eight letters to
Boutteville to request him to meet him there, and on his arrival
proposed a duel without seconds: to which Boutteville replied, “that
he would have had no objection to this arrangement, had not two of his
friends expressed a wish to join the party; and that he should have to
give _them satisfaction_ if they were, disappointed.” The following
day, the 12th of May, was fixed for the meeting, at three in the
afternoon, on the Place Royale, one of the most public places in the
capital; Boutteville declaring that “he would fight under sunshine,”
and following, in this remark, the example of the celebrated duellist
De Bussy, who, being challenged to fight by night, replied, “that
he would not condescend to display his valour to the stars, or even
to the moon, since they were not able to contemplate him properly,
or appreciate his skill; the obscurity of night being only fit to
screen deeds of darkness:” he further advised the parties to bring
two pioneers with them to dig their graves. It appears that strange
notions prevailed on such occasions; and Brantôme relates the case of a
gentleman who invited another to fight him on a winter’s night in their
shirts; to which he sent answer, “that he would not expose himself to
catch a cold, or a purging, which he dreaded more than his antagonist’s
valour.”
Howbeit, our champions met, with their four seconds; one of whom left
his sick bed for the purpose. The combat began with sword and dagger,
when, casting the former weapon away, the principals collared each
other, and fought with their daggers; which both holding at each
other’s throat, they mutually asked for quarter. In the mean time, one
of the seconds, the celebrated Bussy D’Amboise, had been run through
the throat by a mortal thrust; and another second, La Berthe, was also
put _hors de combat_. The principals very quietly went to lunch at a
barber’s shop; and, after seeing La Berthe’s wounds dressed, rode out
of Paris. Bussy had just time to cross himself, and die in the arms of
a worthy friar.
The fugitives, who were quietly quitting the kingdom, were recognised
by the emissaries of the sister of the deceased Bussy: Boutteville was
arrested, after having eaten a hearty supper, and retired to rest; he
was carried to the Bastille. On the 21st, being condemned to death,
he was executed the following day on the Place de Grève with great
military pomp, attended by the Bishop of Nantes: he was as anxious to
preserve his mustachoes as Sir Thomas More was to put his beard out of
the way of the executioner’s axe; when the worthy prelate observed,
“Oh! my son, you must no longer dwell on worldly matters! Do you still
think of life?” “I only think of my mustachoes!--the very finest in
France,” replied the penitent.