Duels, as I have before said, were unknown amongst the ancients, however acute and fastidious might have been their feelings of what is called honour, and the duties which it imposes. The lie—the blow—the most slanderous abuse—were not then considered a stain upon a man’s character requiring an appeal to arms in order to verify the old saying, that the dead are always in the wrong. When Eurybiades raised his stick against Themistocles, the youthful hero merely replied, “Strike, but listen to me!” Lycurgus did not deem it necessary to avenge the blow he received from Alcander, although it deprived him of an eye; nor did Cæsar bring Cato to account for the ridicule he heaped upon him in the senate. Agrippa, one of the bravest chiefs of Augustus, allowed the son of Cicero to throw a cup at his head; and it appears that this rude custom often prevailed at their festive boards.
Cæsar relates that two of his centurions, who could never agree, decided that they should both rush on the ranks of the enemy, to put each other’s valour to the test. Sophocles, being advised to prosecute a man who had struck him, calmly replied, “If a donkey kicked me, would you recommend me to go to law?” Indeed, the Roman law clearly stated that a blow did not dishonour—Ictus fustium infamiam non importat.
The advocates of personal meetings have gone so far as to maintain that duels are recorded in Holy Writ, for such they consider the murder of Abel, and the combat between David and Goliath: they have also compared the combats of the Roman gladiators to duelling—a most absurd view of the subject, since those victims of Roman ferocity entertained no personal hostility towards each other; and Sully, in his Memoirs, justly observes, that “duellists have revived the base profession of gladiators, and rendered themselves more contemptible and hateful than the unfortunates who bore that name.”
CHAPTER III.
THE ORIGIN OF DUELLING.
Since no traces of this practice can be found in the records of antiquity, we must seek for its origin in more modern times, and we shall find that it arose from an association of brute courage with superstition of the most credulous and degrading nature. In those rude ages when personal valour and prowess were considered the greatest qualifications for public and private estimation, the strongest was sure to rule. Religion and love, two of the most mighty levers of mankind, were soon associated to warrant the commission of the most ruthless excesses, and the palm of victory was supposed to be suspended over the head of each combatant by the Deity and woman: a just cause could be maintained by the sword alone, and true love only proved by the lance.
The barbarous courage of the northern nations has been fully illustrated by their historian Tacitus, and it was their firm belief that both public and private quarrels could only be decided by single combat; when we consider that these savage and superstitious hordes afterwards overran the whole of Europe, the practice of a personal appeal to arms may be easily traced to their irruption in the fifth century, when their innumerable masses poured forth from their ancient and gloomy forests, to seek a more congenial clime, and a more profitable field for the display of their overwhelming power. The Anglo-Saxons inundated the British isles; while the Lombards, the Suevi, the Vandals, the Visigoths and Ostrogoths, established their iron sway in Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Sarmatia.3
Thus did these barbarians establish an universal militarism, the parent of feudality—its first-born offspring, when only two classes were recognised in society—the powerful and the weak—the lord and the villain. The soldier and the militant priest reigned with despotic rule; all learning and intellectual improvement were considered hostile to their mighty power, and every institution that they framed was consistent with ignorance and barbarity.4
To give their decrees a greater moral weight, they were clothed with the sanctity of a divine law. The sword was considered the only mode of arbitrating between right and wrong. Whatever the priest had stigmatized by bell, book, and candle, was considered detestable in the eyes of God, and therefore doomed to worldly destruction: plunged in an abyss of apathetic stupidity in all matters where judgment should have decided, or hurried headlong by a vortex of superstitious fears, man had no light to guide him but the ignis fatuus of bigotry.
All these barbarous races knew no other mode of deciding differences but that of brute force. Tacitus informs us that, when a tribe of Germans contemplated a war with any neighbouring race, they endeavoured to take one of them prisoner, and, by setting the captive to fight one of their own people, formed an idea of their chances of success. Plutarch informs us that Alexander tried the same expedient ere he commenced his attack on Darius.5
In vain had the Romans endeavoured to civilize the Cimbri and the Teutones. In vain did Varus seek to arbitrate amongst them, and terminate their bloody feuds; if, for a moment they seemed to yield to his suggestions, it was the better to conceal their preparations for the destructive insurrection they meditated.
A speedy recourse to arms must have been the natural result of any difference that arose amongst men who never assembled but in warlike array, whether the object of the meeting was public or private: and, superstition inducing them to believe that the gods would shield the innocent, an “ordeal” was established, by which the accuser was to make good his assertions, and the accused defend his innocence; and these combats were thence called judicial.6
The first legal establishment of these ordeals is to be found in the laws of Gundebald, King of the Burgundians, A. D. 501. This law enacted that Gundebald, being fully convinced that many of his “subjects suffered themselves to be corrupted by their avarice, or hurried on by their obstinacy, so as to attest by oath what they knew not, or what they knew to be false: in order to put a stop to such scandalous practices, whenever two Burgundians are at variance, if the defendant shall swear that he owes not what is demanded of him, or that he is not guilty of the crime laid to his charge; and the plaintiff, on the other hand, not satisfied therewith, shall declare that he is ready to maintain, sword in hand, the truth of what he advances; if the defendant does not then acquiesce, it shall be lawful for them to decide the controversy by dint of sword. This is likewise understood of the witnesses of either party; it being just that every man should be ready to defend with his sword the truth which he attests, and to submit himself to the judgment of Heaven.”
To a certain extent, to the shame of the civilized world be it said, this savage and absurd decree is acted upon in the present age!
The manner in which these judicial combats were carried on was equally ferocious and disgusting. “The accuser was with the peril of his own body to prove the accused guilty; and, by offering his glove, to challenge him to this trial, which the other must either accept, or else acknowledge himself culpable of the crime whereof he was accused. If it were a crime deserving death, then was the combat for life and death either on horseback or on foot. If the offence only deserved imprisonment, then was the combat accomplished when the one had subdued the other, by forcing him to yield, or disabling him from defending himself. The accused had the liberty to choose a champion in his stead; but the accuser must appear in his own person, and with equality of weapons. No women were allowed to behold the contest, nor male children under the age of thirteen. The priests and the people did silently pray that the victory might fall on the guiltless; and, if the fight were for life or death, a bier stood ready to carry away the dead body of him who should be slain. None of the people might cry out, shriek, make any noise, or give any sign whatever; and hereunto, at Hall in Suevia, (a place appointed for a camp-fight,) was so great a regard taken, that the executioner stood beside the judges, ready with his axe to cut off the right hand and left foot of any party so offending. He that, being wounded, did yield himself, was at the mercy of the other, to be killed