by Mark Twain
I had seen the heads and faces of ten youths gashed in every directionby the keen two-edged blades, and yet had not seen a victim wince, norheard a moan, or detected any fleeting expression which confessed thesharp pain the hurts were inflicting. This was good fortitude, indeed.Such endurance is to be expected in savages and prize-fighters, for theyare born and educated to it; but to find it in such perfection in thesegently bred and kindly natured young fellows is matter for surprise.It was not merely under the excitement of the sword-play that thisfortitude was shown; it was shown in the surgeon's room where anuninspiring quiet reigned, and where there was no audience. The doctor'smanipulations brought out neither grimaces nor moans. And in the fightsit was observable that these lads hacked and slashed with the sametremendous spirit, after they were covered with streaming wounds, whichthey had shown in the beginning.
The world in general looks upon the college duels as very farcicalaffairs: true, but considering that the college duel is fought by boys;that the swords are real swords; and that the head and face are exposed,it seems to me that it is a farce which had quite a grave side to it.People laugh at it mainly because they think the student is so coveredup with armor that he cannot be hurt. But it is not so; his eyes andears are protected, but the rest of his face and head are bare. Hecan not only be badly wounded, but his life is in danger; and he wouldsometimes lose it but for the interference of the surgeon. It isnot intended that his life shall be endangered. Fatal accidents arepossible, however. For instance, the student's sword may break, and theend of it fly up behind his antagonist's ear and cut an artery whichcould not be reached if the sword remained whole. This has happened,sometimes, and death has resulted on the spot. Formerly the student'sarmpits were not protected--and at that time the swords were pointed,whereas they are blunt, now; so an artery in the armpit was sometimescut, and death followed. Then in the days of sharp-pointed swords, aspectator was an occasional victim--the end of a broken sword flew fiveor ten feet and buried itself in his neck or his heart, and death ensuedinstantly. The student duels in Germany occasion two or three deathsevery year, now, but this arises only from the carelessness of thewounded men; they eat or drink imprudently, or commit excesses in theway of overexertion; inflammation sets in and gets such a headway thatit cannot be arrested. Indeed, there is blood and pain and dangerenough about the college duel to entitle it to a considerable degree ofrespect.
All the customs, all the laws, all the details, pertaining to thestudent duel are quaint and naive. The grave, precise, and courtlyceremony with which the thing is conducted, invests it with a sort ofantique charm.
This dignity and these knightly graces suggest the tournament, not theprize-fight. The laws are as curious as they are strict. For instance,the duelist may step forward from the line he is placed upon, if hechooses, but never back of it. If he steps back of it, or even leansback, it is considered that he did it to avoid a blow or contrive anadvantage; so he is dismissed from his corps in disgrace. It would seemnatural to step from under a descending sword unconsciously, and againstone's will and intent--yet this unconsciousness is not allowed. Again:if under the sudden anguish of a wound the receiver of it makes agrimace, he falls some degrees in the estimation of his fellows; hiscorps are ashamed of him: they call him "hare foot," which is the Germanequivalent for chicken-hearted.
CHAPTER VII
[How Bismark Fought]
In addition to the corps laws, there are some corps usages which havethe force of laws.
Perhaps the president of a corps notices that one of the membership whois no longer an exempt--that is a freshman--has remained a sophomoresome little time without volunteering to fight; some day, the president,instead of calling for volunteers, will APPOINT this sophomoreto measure swords with a student of another corps; he is free todecline--everybody says so--there is no compulsion. This is alltrue--but I have not heard of any student who DID decline; to declineand still remain in the corps would make him unpleasantly conspicuous,and properly so, since he knew, when he joined, that his mainbusiness, as a member, would be to fight. No, there is no law againstdeclining--except the law of custom, which is confessedly stronger thanwritten law, everywhere.
The ten men whose duels I had witnessed did not go away when their hurtswere dressed, as I had supposed they would, but came back, one afteranother, as soon as they were free of the surgeon, and mingled with theassemblage in the dueling-room. The white-cap student who won the secondfight witnessed the remaining three, and talked with us during theintermissions. He could not talk very well, because his opponent's swordhad cut his under-lip in two, and then the surgeon had sewed it togetherand overlaid it with a profusion of white plaster patches; neither couldhe eat easily, still he contrived to accomplish a slow and troublesomeluncheon while the last duel was preparing. The man who was the worsthurt of all played chess while waiting to see this engagement. A goodpart of his face was covered with patches and bandages, and all the restof his head was covered and concealed by them.
It is said that the student likes to appear on the street and in otherpublic places in this kind of array, and that this predilection oftenkeeps him out when exposure to rain or sun is a positive danger forhim. Newly bandaged students are a very common spectacle in the publicgardens of Heidelberg. It is also said that the student is glad toget wounds in the face, because the scars they leave will show so wellthere; and it is also said that these face wounds are so prized thatyouths have even been known to pull them apart from time to time andput red wine in them to make them heal badly and leave as ugly a scaras possible. It does not look reasonable, but it is roundly assertedand maintained, nevertheless; I am sure of one thing--scars are plentyenough in Germany, among the young men; and very grim ones they are,too. They crisscross the face in angry red welts, and are permanent andineffaceable.
Some of these scars are of a very strange and dreadful aspect; and theeffect is striking when several such accent the milder ones, which forma city map on a man's face; they suggest the "burned district" then. Wehad often noticed that many of the students wore a colored silk bandor ribbon diagonally across their breasts. It transpired that thissignifies that the wearer has fought three duels in which a decisionwas reached--duels in which he either whipped or was whipped--for drawnbattles do not count. [1] After a student has received his ribbon, heis "free"; he can cease from fighting, without reproach--except some oneinsult him; his president cannot appoint him to fight; he can volunteerif he wants to, or remain quiescent if he prefers to do so. Statisticsshow that he does NOT prefer to remain quiescent. They show that theduel has a singular fascination about it somewhere, for these freemen, so far from resting upon the privilege of the badge, are alwaysvolunteering. A corps student told me it was of record that PrinceBismarck fought thirty-two of these duels in a single summer term whenhe was in college. So he fought twenty-nine after his badge had givenhim the right to retire from the field.
1. FROM MY DIARY.--Dined in a hotel a few miles up the Neckar, in a roomwhose walls were hung all over with framed portrait-groups of the FiveCorps; some were recent, but many antedated photography, and werepictured in lithography--the dates ranged back to forty or fifty yearsago. Nearly every individual wore the ribbon across his breast. In oneportrait-group representing (as each of these pictures did) an entireCorps, I took pains to count the ribbons: there were twenty-sevenmembers, and twenty-one of them wore that significant badge.
The statistics may be found to possess interest in several particulars.Two days in every week are devoted to dueling. The rule is rigid thatthere must be three duels on each of these days; there are generallymore, but there cannot be fewer. There were six the day I was present;sometimes there are seven or eight. It is insisted that eight duels aweek--four for each of the two days--is too low an average to drawa calculation from, but I will reckon from that basis, preferring anunderstatement to an overstatement of the case. This requires about fourhundred and eighty or five hundred duelists a year--for in summer thecollege term is about
three and a half months, and in winter it is fourmonths and sometimes longer. Of the seven hundred and fifty students inthe university at the time I am writing of, only eighty belonged to thefive corps, and it is only these corps that do the dueling; occasionallyother students borrow the arms and battleground of the five corps inorder to settle a quarrel, but this does not happen every dueling-day.[2] Consequently eighty youths furnish the material for some two hundredand fifty duels a year. This average gives six fights a year to eachof the eighty. This large work could not be accomplished if thebadge-holders stood upon their privilege and ceased to volunteer.
2. They have to borrow the arms because they could not get themelsewhere or otherwise. As I understand it, the public authorities, allover Germany, allow the five Corps to keep swords, but DO NOT ALLOW THEMTO USE THEM. This is law is rigid; it is only the execution of it thatis lax.
Of course, where there is so much fighting, the students make it a pointto keep themselves in constant practice with the foil. One often seesthem, at the tables in the Castle grounds, using their whips or canes toillustrate some new sword trick which they have heard about; and betweenthe duels, on the day whose history I have been writing, the swords werenot always idle; every now and then we heard a succession of the keenhissing sounds which the sword makes when it is being put through itspaces in the air, and this informed us that a student was practicing.Necessarily, this unceasing attention to the art develops an expertoccasionally. He becomes famous in his own university, his renownspreads to other universities. He is invited to Goettingen, to fightwith a Goettingen expert; if he is victorious, he will be invitedto other colleges, or those colleges will send their experts to him.Americans and Englishmen often join one or another of the five corps. Ayear or two ago, the principal Heidelberg expert was a big Kentuckian;he was invited to the various universities and left a wake of victorybehind him all about Germany; but at last a little student in Strasburgdefeated him. There was formerly a student in Heidelberg who had pickedup somewhere and mastered a peculiar trick of cutting up under insteadof cleaving down from above. While the trick lasted he won in sixteensuccessive duels in his university; but by that time observers haddiscovered what his charm was, and how to break it, therefore hischampionship ceased.
A rule which forbids social intercourse between members of differentcorps is strict. In the dueling-house, in the parks, on the street,and anywhere and everywhere that the students go, caps of a color groupthemselves together. If all the tables in a public garden were crowdedbut one, and that one had two red-cap students at it and ten vacantplaces, the yellow-caps, the blue-caps, the white caps, and the greencaps, seeking seats, would go by that table and not seem to see it, norseem to be aware that there was such a table in the grounds. The studentby whose courtesy we had been enabled to visit the dueling-place, worethe white cap--Prussian Corps. He introduced us to many white caps, butto none of another color. The corps etiquette extended even to us, whowere strangers, and required us to group with the white corps only, andspeak only with the white corps, while we were their guests, and keepaloof from the caps of the other colors. Once I wished to examine someof the swords, but an American student said, "It would not be quitepolite; these now in the windows all have red hilts or blue; they willbring in some with white hilts presently, and those you can handlefreely." When a sword was broken in the first duel, I wanted a pieceof it; but its hilt was the wrong color, so it was considered best andpolitest to await a properer season.
It was brought to me after the room was cleared, and I will now makea "life-size" sketch of it by tracing a line around it with my pen, toshow the width of the weapon. [Figure 1] The length of these swords isabout three feet, and they are quite heavy. One's disposition to cheer,during the course of the duels or at their close, was naturally strong,but corps etiquette forbade any demonstrations of this sort. Howeverbrilliant a contest or a victory might be, no sign or sound betrayedthat any one was moved. A dignified gravity and repression weremaintained at all times.
When the dueling was finished and we were ready to go, the gentlemen ofthe Prussian Corps to whom we had been introduced took off their capsin the courteous German way, and also shook hands; their brethren of thesame order took off their caps and bowed, but without shaking hands; thegentlemen of the other corps treated us just as they would have treatedwhite caps--they fell apart, apparently unconsciously, and left us anunobstructed pathway, but did not seem to see us or know we were there.If we had gone thither the following week as guests of another corps,the white caps, without meaning any offense, would have observed theetiquette of their order and ignored our presence.
[How strangely are comedy and tragedy blended in this life! I had notbeen home a full half-hour, after witnessing those playful sham-duels,when circumstances made it necessary for me to get ready immediately toassist personally at a real one--a duel with no effeminate limitation inthe matter of results, but a battle to the death. An account of it, inthe next chapter, will show the reader that duels between boys, for fun,and duels between men in earnest, are very different affairs.]