September 11, 2013
To Punish or Defend? The Regency Duel
Although one might need to read Georgette Heyer, rather than Jane Austen, to get a peek at a Regency duel, however, the activity is by no means ignored in Austen’s novels.
In Pride and Prejudice, Mrs. Bennet voices her fears that her husband will fight Mr. Wickham, leaving her daughters to be turned out of their home by the Collins’. This may have been due to her over dramatic sense of self pity, but in fact, Sense and Sensibility’s Col Brandon and Mr. Willoughby do meet in an attempt to defend the (doubtable) honor of Eliza Williams.“One meeting was unavoidable…I could meet [Willoughby] in no other way. Eliza had confessed to me, though most reluctantly, the name of her lover; and when he returned to town, which was within a fortnight after myself, we met by appointment, he to defend, I to punish his conduct. We returned unwounded, and the meeting, therefore, never got abroad.”According to one definition, “A duel is an arranged engagement in combat between two individuals, with matched weapons in accordance with agreed-upon rules.” During the 17th and 18th centuries (and earlier), duels were mostly fought with swords (the rapier, later the smallsword, and finally the French foil), but beginning in the late 18th century and during the 19th century, duels were more commonly fought using pistols. Special sets of duelling pistols were crafted for the wealthiest of noblemen for this purpose. The duel was based on a code of honour. Duels were fought not so much to kill the opponent as to gain "satisfaction", that is, to restore one's honour by demonstrating a willingness to risk one's life for it, and as such the tradition of duelling was originally reserved for the male members of nobility; however, in the modern era it extended to those of the upper classes generally. From the early 17th century duels became illegal in the countries where they were practised. By about 1770 however, the duel had undergone a number of important changes. Firstly, unlike their counterparts in many continental nations, English duellists had enthusiastically adopted the pistol and few duels were now being fought with the sword. Secondly, the office of 'second' had developed into 'seconds' or 'friends' being chosen by the aggrieved parties to conduct their honour dispute. These friends would attempt to resolve a dispute upon terms acceptable to both parties and, should this fail, they would arrange and oversee the mechanics of the encounter. By this time the values of the duel had spread into the broader and emerging society of gentlemen. Research shows that much the largest group of later duellists were military officers, followed by the young sons of the metropolitan elite. Duelling was also popular for a time amongst doctors and, in particular, amongst the legal professions. Quantifying the number of duels in Britain is difficult, but there are about 1,000 attested between 1785 and 1845 with fatality rates running at at least 15% and probably somewhat higher. The last duel in England was fought in 1852. In 1862, in an article entitled Dead (and gone) Shots, Charles Dickens recalled the rules and myths of Irish duelling in his periodical All the Year Round. Under the United Kingdom law, to kill in the course of a duel was formally murder, but for much of the history of the duel the courts were very lax in applying the law, since the legal professions were themselves sympathetic to the culture of honour. The Anglican Church was generally hostile to duelling, although some clergymen duelled, but non-conformist sects were relentlessly hostile. The sovereigns generally opposed duelling but rarely were active in suppressing it. Even towards the end of duelling Queen Victoria expressed the hope that Lord Cardigan, prosecuted for wounding another in a duel, "would get off easily". The reasons for the disappearance of the duel are controversial, but include the emergence of a new middle class hostile to honour culture, the development of collective imperialist ideologies rather than individualistic ideals and finally the need of the higher orders to present a law-abiding front in the face of the increasing challenges to the traditional order of society offered by those from below. The prohibition on duelling in the military was more rigidly observed (though exceptions were not unheard of), due to the ease by which a skilled but unscrupulous individual could gain rapid promotion by challenging senior officers to duels, killing them, and thus gaining promotion by seniority. It would also be bad for discipline, as officers could query any orders they did not agree with and contradict officers on important points, backed up by the threat of duels.Colonel Brandon and Willoughby fight a duel in a 2008 film adaptation of Sense and Sensibility


- To first blood, in which case the duel would be ended as soon as one man was wounded, even if the wound was minor.
- Until one man was so severely wounded as to be physically unable to continue the duel.
- To the death (or "à l'outrance"), in which case there would be no satisfaction until one party was mortally wounded.
- In the case of pistol duels, each party would fire one shot. If neither man was hit and if the challenger stated that he was satisfied, the duel would be declared over. If the challenger was not satisfied, a pistol duel could continue until one man was wounded or killed, but to have more than three exchanges of fire was considered barbaric and, on the rare occasion that no hits were achieved, somewhat ridiculous.

- In 1798 HRH The Duke of York, well known as "The Grand Old Duke of York", duelled with Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Lennox and was grazed by a bullet along his hairline.
- Irish political leader Daniel O'Connell killed John D'Esterre in a duel in February, 1815. O'Connel offered D'Esterre's widow a pension equal to the amount her husband had been earning at the time, but the Corporation of Dublin, of which D'Esterre was a member, rejected O'Connell's offer and voted the promised sum to D'Esterre's wife themselves. However, D'Esterre's wife consented to accept an allowance for her daughter, which O'Connell regularly paid for more than thirty years until his death. The memory of the duel haunted him for the remainder of his life.
- The Russian poet Alexander Pushkin prophetically described a number of duels in his works, notably Onegin's duel with Lensky in Eugene Onegin. The poet was mortally wounded in a controversial duel (1837) with Georges d'Anthès, a French officer rumoured to be his wife's lover. D'Anthès, who was accused of cheating in this duel, married Pushkin's sister-in-law and went on to become a French minister and senator.
- In 1843, two other Frenchmen are said to have fought a duel by means of throwing billiard balls at each other.
- In 1808, two Frenchmen are said to have fought in balloons over Paris, each attempting to shoot and puncture the other's balloon; one duellist is said to have been shot down and killed with his second.
- William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne fought a duel with Colonel William Fullarton (1780)
- William Pitt the Younger fought a duel with George Tierney (1798)
- George Canning fought a Regency duel with Lord Castlereagh (1809)
- The Duke of Wellington fought a duel with Lord Winchilsea (1829)
Posted in: alexander, brandon, duel, duelling, georgette heyer, hamilton, party, pistol, pushkin, Regency, regency duel, sword, willoughby
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