NICE, January 3, 1764.
MADAM,--In your favour which I received by Mr. M--l, you remind me of
my promise, to communicate the remarks I have still to make on the
French nation; and at the same time you signify your opinion, that I am
too severe in my former observations. You even hint a suspicion, that
this severity is owing to some personal cause of resentment; but, I
protest, I have no particular cause of animosity against any individual
of that country. I have neither obligation to, nor quarrel with, any
subject of France; and when I meet with a Frenchman worthy of my
esteem, I can receive him into my friendship with as much cordiality,
as I could feel for any fellow-citizen of the same merit. I even
respect the nation, for the number of great men it has produced in all
arts and sciences. I respect the French officers, in particular, for
their gallantry and valour; and especially for that generous humanity
which they exercise towards their enemies, even amidst the horrors of
war. This liberal spirit is the only circumstance of antient chivalry,
which I think was worth preserving. It had formerly flourished in
England, but was almost extinguished in a succession of civil wars,
which are always productive of cruelty and rancour. It was Henry IV. of
France, (a real knight errant) who revived it in Europe. He possessed
that greatness of mind, which can forgive injuries of the deepest dye:
and as he had also the faculty of distinguishing characters, he found
his account, in favouring with his friendship and confidence, some of
those who had opposed him in the field with the most inveterate
perseverance. I know not whether he did more service to mankind in
general, by reviving the practice of treating his prisoners with
generosity, than he prejudiced his own country by patronizing the
absurd and pernicious custom of duelling, and establishing a punto,
founded in diametrical opposition to common sense and humanity.
I have often heard it observed, that a French officer is generally an
agreeable companion when he is turned of fifty. Without all doubt, by
that time, the fire of his vivacity, which makes him so troublesome in
his youth, will be considerably abated, and in other respects, he must
be improved by his experience. But there is a fundamental error in the
first principles of his education, which time rather confirms than
removes. Early prejudices are for the most part converted into habits
of thinking; and accordingly you will find the old officers in the
French service more bigotted than their juniors, to the punctilios of
false honour.
A lad of a good family no sooner enters into the service, than he
thinks it incumbent upon him to shew his courage in a rencontre. His
natural vivacity prompts him to hazard in company every thing that
comes uppermost, without any respect to his seniors or betters; and ten
to one but he says something, which he finds it necessary to maintain
with his sword. The old officer, instead of checking his petulance,
either by rebuke or silent disapprobation, seems to be pleased with his
impertinence, and encourages every sally of his presumption. Should a
quarrel ensue, and the parties go out, he makes no efforts to
compromise the dispute; but sits with a pleasing expectation to learn
the issue of the rencontre. If the young man is wounded, he kisses him
with transport, extols his bravery, puts him into the hands of the
surgeon, and visits him with great tenderness every day, until he is
cured. If he is killed on the spot, he shrugs up his shoulders--says,
quelle dommage! c'etoit un amiable enfant! ah, patience! What pity! he
was a fine Boy! It can't be helpt! and in three hours the defunct is
forgotten. You know, in France, duels are forbid, on pain of death: but
this law is easily evaded. The person insulted walks out; the
antagonist understands the hint, and follows him into the street, where
they justle as if by accident, draw their swords, and one of them is
either killed or disabled, before any effectual means can be used to
part them. Whatever may be the issue of the combat, the magistrate
takes no cognizance of it; at least, it is interpreted into an
accidental rencounter, and no penalty is incurred on either side. Thus
the purpose of the law is entirely defeated, by a most ridiculous and
cruel connivance. The meerest trifles in conversation, a rash word, a
distant hint, even a look or smile of contempt, is sufficient to
produce one of these combats; but injuries of a deeper dye, such as
terms of reproach, the lie direct, a blow, or even the menace of a
blow, must be discussed with more formality. In any of these cases, the
parties agree to meet in the dominions of another prince, where they
can murder each other, without fear of punishment. An officer who is
struck, or even threatened with a blow must not be quiet, until he
either kills his antagonist, or loses his own life. A friend of mine,
(a Nissard) who was in the service of France, told me, that some years
ago, one of their captains, in the heat of passion, struck his
lieutenant. They fought immediately: the lieutenant was wounded and
disarmed. As it was an affront that could not be made up, he no sooner
recovered of his wounds, than he called out the captain a second time.
In a word, they fought five times before the combat proved decisive at
last, the lieutenant was left dead on the spot. This was an event which
sufficiently proved the absurdity of the punctilio that gave rise to
it. The poor gentleman who was insulted, and outraged by the brutality
of the aggressor, found himself under the necessity of giving him a
further occasion to take away his life. Another adventure of the same
kind happened a few years ago in this place. A French officer having
threatened to strike another, a formal challenge ensued; and it being
agreed that they should fight until one of them dropped, each provided
himself with a couple of pioneers to dig his grave on the spot. They
engaged just without one of the gates of Nice, in presence of a great
number of spectators, and fought with surprising fury, until the ground
was drenched with their blood. At length one of them stumbled, and
fell; upon which the other, who found himself mortally wounded,
advancing, and dropping his point, said, "Je te donne ce que tu m'as
ote." "I'll give thee that which thou hast taken from me." So saying,
he dropped dead upon the field. The other, who had been the person
insulted, was so dangerously wounded that he could not rise. Some of
the spectators carried him forthwith to the beach, and putting him into
a boat, conveyed him by sea to Antibes. The body of his antagonist was
denied Christian burial, as he died without absolution, and every body
allowed that his soul went to hell: but the gentlemen of the army
declared, that he died like a man of honour. Should a man be never so
well inclined to make atonement in a peaceable manner, for an insult
given in the heat of passion, or in the fury of intoxication, it cannot
be received. Even an involuntary trespass from ignorance, or absence of
mind, must be cleansed with blood. A certain noble lord, of our
country, when he was yet a commoner, on his travels, involved himself
in a dilemma of this sort, at the court of Lorrain. He had been riding
out, and strolling along a public walk, in a brown study, with his
horse-whip in his hand, perceived a caterpillar crawling on the back of
a marquis, who chanced to be before him. He never thought of the petit
maitre; but lifting up his whip, in order to kill the insect, laid it
across his shoulders with a crack, that alarmed all the company in the
walk. The marquis's sword was produced in a moment, and the aggressor
in great hazard of his life, as he had no weapon of defence. He was no
sooner waked from his reverie, than he begged pardon, and offered to
make all proper concessions for what he had done through mere
inadvertency. The marquis would have admitted his excuses, had there
been any precedent of such an affront being washed away without blood.
A conclave of honour was immediately assembled; and after long
disputes, they agreed, that an involuntary offence, especially from
such a kind of man, d'un tel homme, might be attoned by concessions.
That you may have some idea of the small beginning, from which many
gigantic quarrels arise, I shall recount one that lately happened at
Lyons, as I had it from the mouth of a person who was an ear and eye
witness of the transaction. Two Frenchmen, at a public ordinary,
stunned the rest of the company with their loquacity. At length, one of
them, with a supercilious air, asked the other's name. "I never tell my
name, (said he) but in a whisper." "You may have very good reasons for
keeping it secret," replied the first. "I will tell you," (resumed the
other): with these words he rose; and going round to him, pronounced,
loud enough to be heard by the whole company, "Je m'appelle Pierre
Paysan; et vous etes un impertinent." "My name is Peter Peasant, and
you are an impertinent fellow." So saying, he walked out: the
interrogator followed him into the street, where they justled, drew
their swords, and engaged. He who asked the question was run through
the body; but his relations were so powerful, that the victor was
obliged to fly his country, was tried and condemned in his absence; his
goods were confiscated; his wife broke her heart; his children were
reduced to beggary; and he himself is now starving in exile. In England
we have not yet adopted all the implacability of the punctilio. A
gentleman may be insulted even with a blow, and survive, after having
once hazarded his life against the aggressor. The laws of honour in our
country do not oblige him either to slay the person from whom he
received the injury, or even to fight to the last drop of his own
blood. One finds no examples of duels among the Romans, who were
certainly as brave and as delicate in their notions of honour as the
French. Cornelius Nepos tells us, that a famous Athenian general,
having a dispute with his colleague, who was of Sparta, a man of a
fiery disposition, this last lifted up his cane to strike him. Had this
happened to a French petit maitre, death must have ensued: but mark
what followed--The Athenian, far from resenting the outrage, in what is
now called a gentlemanlike manner, said, "Do, strike if you please; but
hear me." He never dreamed of cutting the Lacedemonian's throat; but
bore with his passionate temper, as the infirmity of a friend who had a
thousand good qualities to overbalance that defect.
I need not expatiate upon the folly and the mischief which are
countenanced and promoted by the modern practice of duelling. I need
not give examples of friends who have murdered each other, in obedience
to this savage custom, even while their hearts were melting with mutual
tenderness; nor will I particularize the instances which I myself know,
of whole families ruined, of women and children made widows and
orphans, of parents deprived of only sons, and of valuable lives lost
to the community, by duels, which had been produced by one unguarded
expression, uttered without intention of offence, in the heat of
dispute and altercation. I shall not insist upon the hardship of a
worthy man's being obliged to devote himself to death, because it is
his misfortune to be insulted by a brute, a bully, a drunkard, or a
madman: neither will I enlarge upon this side of the absurdity, which
indeed amounts to a contradiction in terms; I mean the dilemma to which
a gentleman in the army is reduced, when he receives an affront: if he
does not challenge and fight his antagonist, he is broke with infamy by
a court-martial; if he fights and kills him, he is tried by the civil
power, convicted of murder, and, if the royal mercy does not interpose,
he is infallibly hanged: all this, exclusive of the risque of his own
life in the duel, and his conscience being burthened with the blood of
a man, whom perhaps he has sacrificed to a false punctilio, even
contrary to his own judgment. These are reflections which I know your
own good sense will suggest, but I will make bold to propose a remedy
for this gigantic evil, which seems to gain ground everyday: let a
court be instituted for taking cognizance of all breaches of honour,
with power to punish by fine, pillory, sentence of infamy, outlawry,
and exile, by virtue of an act of parliament made for this purpose; and
all persons insulted, shall have recourse to this tribunal: let every
man who seeks personal reparation with sword, pistol, or other
instrument of death, be declared infamous, and banished the kingdom:
let every man, convicted of having used a sword or pistol, or other
mortal weapon, against another, either in duel or rencountre,
occasioned by any previous quarrel, be subject to the same penalties:
if any man is killed in a duel, let his body be hanged upon a public
gibbet, for a certain time, and then given to the surgeons: let his
antagonist be hanged as a murderer, and dissected also; and some mark
of infamy be set on the memory of both. I apprehend such regulations
would put an effectual stop to the practice of duelling, which nothing
but the fear of infamy can support; for I am persuaded, that no being,
capable of reflection, would prosecute the trade of assassination at
the risque of his own life, if this hazard was at the same time
reinforced by the certain prospect of infamy and ruin. Every person of
sentiment would in that case allow, that an officer, who in a duel robs
a deserving woman of her husband, a number of children of their father,
a family of its support, and the community of a fellow-citizen, has as
little merit to plead from exposing his own person, as a highwayman, or
housebreaker, who every day risques his life to rob or plunder that
which is not of half the importance to society. I think it was from the
Buccaneers of America, that the English have learned to abolish one
solecism in the practice of duelling: those adventurers decided their
personal quarrels with pistols; and this improvement has been adopted
in Great Britain with good success; though in France, and other parts
of the continent, it is looked upon as a proof of their barbarity. It
is, however, the only circumstance of duelling, which savours of common
sense, as it puts all mankind upon a level, the old with the young, the
weak with the strong, the unwieldy with the nimble, and the man who
knows not how to hold a sword with the spadassin, who has practised
fencing from the cradle. What glory is there in a man's vanquishing an
adversary over whom he has a manifest advantage? To abide the issue of
a combat in this case, does not even require that moderate share of
resolution which nature has indulged to her common children.
Accordingly, we have seen many instances of a coward's provoking a man
of honour to battle. In the reign of our second Charles, when duels
flourished in all their absurdity, and the seconds fought while their
principals were engaged, Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, not content with
having debauched the countess of Shrewsbury and publishing her shame,
took all opportunities of provoking the earl to single combat, hoping
he should have an easy conquest, his lordship being a puny little
creature, quiet, inoffensive, and every way unfit for such personal
contests. He ridiculed him on all occasions; and at last declared in
public company, that there was no glory in cuckolding Shrewsbury, who
had not spirit to resent the injury. This was an insult which could not
be overlooked. The earl sent him a challenge; and they agreed to fight,
at Barns-Elms, in presence of two gentlemen, whom they chose for their
seconds. All the four engaged at the same time; the first thrust was
fatal to the earl of Shrewsbury; and his friend killed the duke's
second at the same instant. Buckingham, elated with his exploit, set
out immediately for the earl's seat at Cliefden, where he lay with his
wife, after having boasted of the murder of her husband, whose blood he
shewed her upon his sword, as a trophy of his prowess. But this very
duke of Buckingham was little better than a poltroon at bottom. When
the gallant earl of Ossory challenged him to fight in Chelsea fields,
he crossed the water to Battersea, where he pretended to wait for his
lordship; and then complained to the house of lords, that Ossory had
given him the rendezvous, and did not keep his appointment. He knew the
house would interpose in the quarrel, and he was not disappointed.
Their lordships obliged them both to give their word of honour, that
their quarrel should have no other consequences.
I ought to make an apology for having troubled a lady with so many
observations on a subject so unsuitable to the softness of the fair
sex; but I know you cannot be indifferent to any thing that so nearly
affects the interests of humanity, which I can safely aver have alone
suggested every thing which has been said by, Madam, Your very humble
servant.