Duels in France

A contest with deadly weapons arranged between two people in order to settle a point of honor.
"Honor," being the key word. 

Duels in French Law 

  • The last official duel was held in France in 1547.
  • Between 1608 and 1723, there were at least eight royal orders to ban dueling. 
  • None of them worked very well. 
  • In 1837, the Crown tried to make it so that dueling made the participants attempted murders. But judges usually acquitted duelists. 

Dueling Rules 

1. A gentleman could not refuse a duel, otherwise he would lose face and honor. If a gentleman refused a duel, the man wold be publicly denounced in a notice. 

2. One COULD honorably refuse a duel if challenged by a man he did not consider a true gentlemen. Rejection from a duel was the ultimate insult. 

3. Pick a second. The second's job was to ensure that the duel was carried out under honorable conditions: on a proper field, with equally deadly weapons, etc. It was also the job of a second to seek peaceful resolution. 
4. The challenger allowed his foe the choice of weapons and conditions. They would pick a time. 

5. The seconds would find a suitable dueling ground, far from law enforcement.  Duels were sometimes even fought on sandbars in rivers where the legal jurisdiction of the time was hazy at best.

6. A gentleman was not to show his fear. If he stepped off of his mark, his opponent's second had the right to shoot him on the spot. 

Dueling in France 

This is a good New Yorker Article. 

Key points: 
​
 "In France, during the reign of Henry IV, at least four thousand men died in private combat. (One source puts that number at an astonishing ten thousand.)"

"One French nobleman simply sent a card to his neighbors that read, 'I have reduced your house to ashes, ravished your wife, and hanged your children. Your mortal enemy, Lagarde.'"

[At the end of the 19th Century:] " The French duel had, in fact, become something of a dog-and-pony show, where onlookers could anticipate a frisson, but not a funeral. Mark Twain, visiting Europe in the eighteen-seventies, reported that during a pistol duel each man’s gallery, for its own safety, was positioned directly behind the duelist."
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