“Gentlemen fought with each other on horseback, and with their arms; while villains fought on foot, and with staves. Hence a stick was considered a weapon of degradation, since a man who had been struck with it had been treated like a villain.
“Moreover, it was only villains who fought with their faces uncovered, therefore they alone could receive a blow in the face: thus a slap in the face became an injury that could only be obliterated with blood, for the man whose face had been slapped had been treated like a low-born person.
“The German races were not less alive to this view of the Point of Honour; they were, if possible, still more punctilious: the most distant relations took part in disputes, and all their codes were founded on this principle. Accordingly, the laws of the Lombards ordained, that if a man, accompanied by his followers, went to assault another who was not upon his guard, to bring shame and ridicule upon him, he should pay one-half of the composition which he would have had to give in the event of his having killed him. Thus do we see our ancestors keenly alive to an affront; but they had no particular view of any affront of a specific nature as regards the weapon made use of, or the part of the body that was struck.”
It is to chivalry that this eloquent writer attributes the rise of gallantry, when sentiments of love were associated with a sense of strength, valour, and protection; and this spirit was inherent in the practice of tournaments, which, uniting tender passions with noble deeds, gave to gallantry a greater importance than it would otherwise have obtained, had they merely been trials of skill and courage in a passage of arms; and to this day the term gallant is applied to a man brave, high-spirited in his bearing, splendid and magnificent in his appearance, and devoted to the service of the fair.
CHAPTER XI.
DUELS DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
During this century the social body in France underwent a total renovation and reform. A long despotism had brutalised the public mind, and rendered it unfit to receive any generous impressions, or to be capable of any noble reaction against tyranny. The nation was sick of glory, and of a magnificence which had drained its wealth: still, it murmured silently and moodily, until master-minds should appear, to bring these elements of discord into action. Apathy had succeeded energetic deeds, and indolence ushered in vice stripped of all its gaudy attractive fascination, and in all its natural baseness and turpitude. Philip d’Orleans, Regent of the kingdom during the minority of the fifteenth Louis, plunged the court into every possible species of debauch; and the polished gallantry of former days was succeeded by the most degrading excesses. Libertinism, in all its hideous deformity, no longer sought the concealment of a prudent mask; but profligacy was considered fashionable, consequently the pride and boast of its votaries. Vice had become the reigning ton; and, where a blush was raised, it was upon the conviction of a virtuous action.
Abandoned to all the voluptuousness of a profligate court, the Regent displayed neither authority nor energy in repressing evils, and only considered the possession of power valuable as being the means of commanding fresh pleasures. The former edicts on duelling were now disregarded, since the laws were not enforced, and no punishment awaited their transgressors. Six weeks after the death of the King, two officers of the guards fought on the quay of the Tuileries in open day; but, as these young men belonged to families of the long-robe, the Duke d’Orleans, out of respect to the parliament, which he dreaded, merely removed them from their corps, and sentenced them to a fortnight’s imprisonment. This duel had been fought about an Angola cat; and the duke, when reprimanding the parties, told them that in such a matter of dispute, it should have been settled with claws instead of swords.
Courtly intrigues now became frequently mixed up with duelling, and the jealousies and quarrels of fashionable women were the constant sources of disputes between their lovers. The court of honour, consisting of the marshals of France, an institution which we have seen established in the reign of Louis XIV, would decline interfering when any of the parties were not of high birth or distinguished rank. An instance of this proud distinction occurred in the following case: “An abbé of the name of D’Aydie had fought with a clerk in the provincial department, at an opera-dancer’s house, and wounded him. The Duchess de Berry, daughter of the Regent, immediately ordered that the Abbé d’Aydie should be deprived of his preferment, and obliged to become a knight of Malta. The scribe, on recovering from his wound, was constantly seeking his antagonist, who was compelled to fight him four times, until the duchess brought the parties before the court of honour, presided over by Marshal de Chamilly; who, upon hearing of the condition of one of the parties, exclaimed, ‘What the deuce does he come here for?—a fellow who calls himself Bouton—do you presume to think that we can be your judges? do you take us for bishops or keepers of the seals?—and the fellow too dares to call us my lords!’ ”
To understand these punctilious feelings, it must be remembered that the marshals of France were only called my lords by the nobility, being considered the judges of the higher orders; and such an appellation from a roturier was deemed an affront.
This D’Aydie, it should also be known, was the lover of the Duchess de Berry, who naturally feared that the low-bred clerk might deprive her of her paramour by an untimely end. The tribunal recommended the Regent to imprison the lover of his daughter, as a punishment for having fought a low-born fellow, who, on account of his ignoble condition, was discharged as beneath their notice. The duchess, however, did not approve of this finding of the court; but, after procuring the liberation of her favourite, pursued the unfortunate clerk with such rancour that she at last got him hanged; thereby exciting, according to Madame de Crequi, “the horror and the animadversion of all Paris.” Strange to say, this despicable princess died a month after, on the very same day that the clerk was hanged: the execution took place on the 19th of June, and she breathed her last on the 19th of July!
A duel took place between Contades and Brissac, when both were wounded, in the very conservatories of the palace. After a few days’ concealment, they appeared before the parliament as a mere matter of form, and Contades was made a marshal of France. Another duel, fought in open day on the quay of the Tuileries between two noblemen, Jonzac and Villette, was also passed over with little or no animadversion; and Duclos, in his Secret Memoirs, asserts that the Regent openly insinuated that duelling had gone too much out of fashion.
Duelling was not only resorted to by men of the sword, but by men of finance; and the celebrated Law of Lauriston, who was placed at the head of this department, had commenced his famed career by several hostile meetings. Howbeit, he so managed matters as not to compromise the security of his gambling-house, in the Rue Quincampoix, by quarrels, although an assassination ultimately exposed this hell to a serious investigation. One of the murderers was a Count Horn, a Belgian nobleman of distinguished family; but who, notwithstanding the powerful interest made in his behalf, was sentenced to be broken on the wheel. The Regent in this case was inflexible, nor would he even commute the punishment into a less degrading execution. This firmness was attributed to his partiality for his creature Law, whose bank was of great assistance to his constant debaucheries. Madame de Crequi, who was a relative of the criminal, and who exerted her best endeavours to save him, attributes this murder of what she calls “the Jew who had robbed him,” to other motives; and asserts that his Highness’s implacable hostility arose from having once found him with one of his favourites, the Countess de Parabère; when the duke disdainfully said to him, “Sortez, Monsieur!” to which the other replied, “your ancestors, sir, would have said Sortons!”
Voltaire attributes a similar reply to Chalot, when placed in the same situation with the Prince de Conti. Madame de Crequi exonerates herself from the suspicion of having misapplied the repartee, by observing, “there once lived an old Jew called Solomon, who maintained that there was nothing new under the sun.”
Madame de Crequi and other writers of the times affirm that duels had become so frequent that nothing else was heard of,