How Does A Duel Work?

Опубликовано: 03 Май 2016
на канале: BrainStuff - HowStuffWorks

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Has someone impeached your honor? Achieve satisfaction through dueling by following these easy steps!

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Hi. I’m Jonathan Strickland. This is BrainStuff. Today’s question: How do duels work?

The English word “duel” seems to come from cramming together the Latin words “duo-“, meaning “two”, and “bellum”, meaning war. “Duellum,” or eventually, just “duel.”

So a duel is combat between two people.

The duel of honor was a specific cultural practice taking place mostly in Europe and the Americas, starting around the Renaissance and fizzling out in the early 20th century.

There’s no one list of universal rules, but there were some especially popular guides -- for example, the Irish Code Duello of 1777. Let’s see how a duel according to the Code Duello might go down.

First off – who would duel? There were some notable exceptions, but most duels of honor took place between men of the aristocracy.

And what could cause a duel? Any insult to someone’s honor. Honor is a difficult concept to define succinctly, but it meant something like “a man’s reputation for respectability and aristocratic virtues.”

But whether someone had an affair with your wife or simply made harsh jest of your new powdered wig, honor was on the line. And according to the 1824 “British Code of Duel,” honorable men were not only expected to accept duels when challenged; they were expected to demand them when offended.

So: The offended party issues a formal challenge. Depending on the offense, the duel might be averted by an apology. If so, the two parties have to apologize for their offenses in the order they were committed.

But according to the Code Duello, some offenses to honor couldn’t be fixed by apology alone. So a personal insult, maybe. But a punch to the nose was a point of no return: You pretty much had to duel to repair your honor.

Duels could involve any number of weapons, usually chosen by the person being challenged. In France in 1843 two men reportedly dueled to the death with billiard balls – and yes, one of them was killed by a billiard ball straight to the face. But the two most common dueling weapons were, first, swords, and later, pistols.

The two dueling parties usually appointed “seconds.” These were like lieutenants. The seconds had the job of trying to resolve the conflict before it came to violence, and they were also responsible for preparing the duelists’ weapons.

You’d think from this arrangement that the seconds would tend to keep cool heads, but according to Rule 25 of the Code Duello, “Where seconds disagree, and resolve to exchange shots themselves, it must be at the same time and at right angles with their principals.”

"Principals" meaning duelists - not their own personal philosophies. And honestly, it ends up with a whole lot of people shooting at each other.

Many duels didn’t end in death. In fact, in England, between 1760 and 1820, there were 172 known duels (though probably plenty more that were off the books), but only 69 known fatalities from duels.

Often, duels using swords could be called off once at least one swordsman had been bloodied. And those who used pistols often intentionally fired wide of the target – though the Code Duello strictly prohibits “dumb shooting or firing in the air,” referring to such practices as “children’s play.” But despite this command, many duelists simply didn’t aim to kill.

Crazy duel fact from the 21st century: In 2002, an Iraqi official suggested that Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush could avoid an all-out war if they settled their differences through a one-on-one duel on neutral territory. The White House declined the challenge.

SOURCES:

http://people.howstuffworks.com/duel....

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/duel/sfe...

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history...

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/200...

https://www.gwu.edu/~magazine/archive...

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/duel/sfe...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obitu...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2...

https://books.google.com/books?id=3Up...