Well-Armed Lamb
Member
- Joined
- Apr 29, 2006
- Messages
- 69
I recently read a terrific book by Paul Kirchner, who's known for his illustrations of Col. Jeff Cooper's books but is a fine writer in his own right: DUELING WITH THE SWORD AND PISTOL: 400 YEARS OF ONE-ON-ONE COMBAT. The book is what you'd expect from the title -- lots and lots of accounts of duels, famous and obscure, fought afoot, on horseback, with swords, knives, pistols, rifles, as well as some profiles of noteworthy duellists. You can get the book on Amazon here:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/1581604580/ref=dp_olp_0?ie=UTF8&condition=all
Note that one of the sellers is PKirchner_45 -- that's the author, and if you buy from him he'll happily sign it for you.
Anyway, aside from such wonderful entries as the duel fought on horseback by an enraged dwarf; or the battle among French king Henri III's gay favorites, the mignons, who were the objects of some contempt but proved themselves plenty tough and became admired when a duel between two of them turned into a general hack-and-slash festival; or the two Mexican senoritas who grabbed swords and fought a topless duel over the man who was dating both of them -- the book raises a really interesting subject that I hadn't thought much about: the code duello was designed to minimize lethality. People died in duels, plenty of 'em, but often (even usually, in later years) the object was just to demonstrate that the parties were not afraid and that honor had been satisfied. So folks would use smoothbore pistols at distance, and stop on injuries of note, or after a few exchanges, that sort of thing.
Which got me wondering: with that as a stricture, how would people fight duels today, if the duelling ideology had persisted? Modern firearms are danged accurate, and I certainly wouldn't care to trade shots with anybody who even half knew what he was doing at the ranges they used in the old days. The possibilities that come to mind would be really long range: large-caliber revolver duels, Elmer Keith style, or thousand-yard rifle duels. Even then, duels with modern equipment would probably be *way* more likely to be lethal than duels of days gone by.
(Kirchner draws an interesting contrast between the European and American systems: the old, aristocratic way involved the formalized code duello, but on the American frontier, a different system evolved: the challenger advised the challenged party something along the lines of, "Next time I see you, you'd best be armed!" ...and then tried to ambush the object of his ire whenever or wherever. That actually reminds me of a lot of the drunken/enraged homicides of today -- the ones that begin with the aggressor saying, "I'm gonna get my gun and come back here!")
Anyway, the book's a really fun read; check it out.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/1581604580/ref=dp_olp_0?ie=UTF8&condition=all
Note that one of the sellers is PKirchner_45 -- that's the author, and if you buy from him he'll happily sign it for you.
Anyway, aside from such wonderful entries as the duel fought on horseback by an enraged dwarf; or the battle among French king Henri III's gay favorites, the mignons, who were the objects of some contempt but proved themselves plenty tough and became admired when a duel between two of them turned into a general hack-and-slash festival; or the two Mexican senoritas who grabbed swords and fought a topless duel over the man who was dating both of them -- the book raises a really interesting subject that I hadn't thought much about: the code duello was designed to minimize lethality. People died in duels, plenty of 'em, but often (even usually, in later years) the object was just to demonstrate that the parties were not afraid and that honor had been satisfied. So folks would use smoothbore pistols at distance, and stop on injuries of note, or after a few exchanges, that sort of thing.
Which got me wondering: with that as a stricture, how would people fight duels today, if the duelling ideology had persisted? Modern firearms are danged accurate, and I certainly wouldn't care to trade shots with anybody who even half knew what he was doing at the ranges they used in the old days. The possibilities that come to mind would be really long range: large-caliber revolver duels, Elmer Keith style, or thousand-yard rifle duels. Even then, duels with modern equipment would probably be *way* more likely to be lethal than duels of days gone by.
(Kirchner draws an interesting contrast between the European and American systems: the old, aristocratic way involved the formalized code duello, but on the American frontier, a different system evolved: the challenger advised the challenged party something along the lines of, "Next time I see you, you'd best be armed!" ...and then tried to ambush the object of his ire whenever or wherever. That actually reminds me of a lot of the drunken/enraged homicides of today -- the ones that begin with the aggressor saying, "I'm gonna get my gun and come back here!")
Anyway, the book's a really fun read; check it out.
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