Dueling in Europe

General | France | Britain | Ireland | Russia | Germany | The rest of the world

General

The Sentiment of the Sword: A Country-House Dialogue by Captain Sir Richard F. Burton. Reprinted by Journal of Non-lethal Combatives, February 2000. Written as a sort of addendum to the Book of the Sword. Burton discusses duelling frequently, especially in the "eighth evening."

"The Revival of Dueling" by Alexander Young for Appleton's Journal (1873).

We suppose that Spain is the only country that calls itself civilized when the duello is still the recognized mode of settling disputes among gentlement, and this continued subservience to the point of honor is justly regarded by the author of "Castilian Days" as a fact which shows more clearly than any other the lack of modern civilization in its people.

From The Making of America.

Web directory to primary resources concerning sword dueling (mostly 16th and 17th century). From Don Danulf's Academy of Defence.

"Of Honor and Honorable Quarrels" Fairly long and detailed discussion of dueling with swords, concentrating on the 16th and 17th centuries, from William E. Wilson's The Arte of Defense: A Manual on the use of the Rapier. Also see his main fencing page, which houses a nice collection of early modern fencing manuals.

Web Archive: "Guns and Roses" by Petter Kjoesnes & Thomas Hutton. Short school report on Renaissance dueling. "Duelling is the sport where noble men's lives come to an end when they get a little bit jealous or confused in a stupidly [sic] little matter."

France

French code ("copied from Millingen's History of Dueling"), printed as an appendix to George W. Hooper's Down the river; or, Practical lessons under the code duello (1874), a humorous novel.

"An Old-Time Duel" by Charles Shanks for Appleton's Journal, 1869. An account of the long-running duel feud between Fournier and Dupont. The two agreed to keep dueling until one of them died. The terms were:

1. A fight shall be arranged whenever the parties are within thirty leagues of one another.
2. There shall be no excuse from fighting except illness, or military duty.
3. Pistols shall not be used except by mutual consent.
4. Death, surrender, or mutual agreement, shall alone terminate the fight.

I haven't seen it yet in print, but I'm betting this is the inspiration for Conrad's The Duel (and therefore the 1978 film, "The Duellists"). From The Making of America.

Web Archive: "Dueling: Noble Resistance to the Establishment of Absolutism in France"by Gary Spechko, from The Principality of Avacal (Society for Creative Anachronism) .

Web Archive: Review of Francois Billacois' The Duel: Its Rise and Fall in Early Modern France by Gary Spechko, for The Principality of Avacal (Society for Creative Anachronism) .

Amazon. The Duel : Its Rise and Fall in Early Modern France by Francois Billacois.

Yale University Press blurb.

"Duelling stories of the 16th c. - From the French of Brantome" Paraphrase of George H Powell's paraphrase of Brantome. These "various strange true tales of duels" illustrate the rules and customs of 16th century French dueling.

Britain

The Duello in Elizabethan England by Maelgwyn Dda, originally for the Academy of the Rapier. Short research essay.

Details on the English "Trial by Battle" from The Complete Newgate Calendar.

Narrative of the 1838 Eliot-Mirfin duel and the judicial after-effects. From The Complete Newgate Calendar. As so often happened in Britain, the duelist was sentenced to death, but pardoned and served a short jail term.

Ireland

Amazon. That Damn'd Thing Called Honour : Duelling in Ireland 1570-1860 by James Kelly. Also in hardcover.

by Brigid Clesham . Duel fought at Kilmaine, in South Mayo, Ireland. From Mayo Alive, 1996.

Russia

See also the page on Pushkin.

Web Archive: Short biography of M. Y. Lermontov, who came to prominence from poem on the death of Pushkin and died at the age of 27 in a duel. An English translation of the poem is included. Biography by Lydia Libedinkskaya.

Amazon. Ritualized Violence Russian Style : The Duel in Russian Culture and Literature by Irina Reyfman.

Germany

Ancient Tradition Still Lives On by Thane B. Terrill (originally for Macao Chinese-language newspaper). Good summary article on the continuing tradition of Mensur, German fraternity dueling in which stationary opponents duel primarily in order to acquire honorable wounds.

Amazon. Dueling: The Cult of Honor in Fin-de-Siecle Germany by Kevin McAleer. Also available in hardcover.

The rest of the world / comparative approaches

"Honor, Masculinity, and Ritual Knife Fighting in Nineteenth-Century Greece" by Thomas W. Gallant for he American Historical Review Vol 105. The author compares lower-class knife fighting in Greece, especially the Ionian islands under British control, with gentlemens' dueling in Europe and the Americas.

"Miscellany: Dueling Among the Maori" from Appleton's Journal 1874.

"The Life of Mary Read" from A General History of the Pyrates by Captain Charles Johnson. Mary Read fought and killed her lover's enemy.

Mary Read from Steve Belanger's The Pirates Life: Dead Men Tell No Tales.