By the Sword

by Richard Cohen

  A month later they fought again, and this time it was Dupont who was wounded. As soon as he recovered they fought again, each receiving deep cuts. They were evidently evenly matched with swords, but Dupont had no wish to fight with pistols, as Fournier was a crack shot, reputed to amuse himself by smashing the short pipes of his fellow hussars from between their lips as they galloped by. The two men worked out an agreement that whenever afterwards they knowingly came within one hundred miles of each other, they would meet midway and renew the fight, always with swords, until one of them at last confessed himself beaten or “satisfied”—or was killed.

  They wrote to each other and met and fought many times over ten or twelve years, always shaking hands, sometimes even dining together afterwards. Each eventually became a general and, during 1813, was ordered to Switzerland. Dupont arrived at his post at night, to discover Fournier billeted in the adjoining apartment. They soon set to, until Dupont ran his sword though Fournier’s neck, pinning him to the wall. There he might have bled to death, but brother officers arrived in time to save him.

  At this point Dupont explained that he was due to be married and wanted some conclusion to the rivalry. He proposed that the two opponents each arm themselves with pistols, go into the nearby wood together, pace off a hundred steps, counting out each step aloud, then turn and fight it out. Fournier agreed, and the next morning the men lined up for their final rendezvous.

  Dupont twice tricked his rival into firing at empty clothing, first his coat, then his hat, and advanced on him with weapons primed. “General,” he said, “your life is in my hands, but I do not wish to take it. I want this matter to end, however; so should you challenge me again please remember that the weapons of choice will be pistols—your favorite weapons—and that I am entitled to the first two shots—distance, three feet.” And so the nineteen-year feud was dissolved.

  Some time in the late nineteenth century Joseph Conrad discovered the rivalry in a ten-line paragraph in a small provincial paper published in the south of France and took it for his story “The Duel” or “The Point of Honor.” “Napoleon I,” it begins, “whose career had the quality of a duel against the whole of Europe, disliked dueling between the officers of his army. The great military emperor was not a swashbuckler.” In Conrad’s hands the two men became Ferand (a bellicose Gascon, like d’Artagnan) and d’Hubert. “What horrible perversion of madness!” reflects the old chevalier who is both uncle and confidant of d’Hubert’s fiancée. “Nothing can account for such inhumanity but the sanguinary madness of the Revolution which has tainted a whole generation.”31§

  But more was yet to come. In 1977, Ridley Scott directed Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel in a film of the story, The Duellists. The three accounts—the historical one and the two fictional retellings—provide a marked contrast in what we can learn from a duel and its effect on its participants. Scott’s film captures the brutality and ferocity of dueling better than any other. As Conrad had summed up: “A duel, whether regarded as a ceremony in the cult of honor, or even when reduced in its moral essence to a form of manly sport, demands a perfect singleness of intention, a homicidal austerity of mood.” Scott’s film has that. Yet in Conrad’s hands—unlike in real life and in a way quite overlooked in Scott’s version—the swordfighting (“no one could deny that it was very close, very scientific”) issues in a moment of redemption and, for General d’Hubert, the discovery of love through trial. Conrad’s tale is the best work of fiction about nineteenth-century dueling.

  AT ONE TIME THE “POINT OF HONOR” HAD BEEN OUTLAWED BY kings because it threatened their highborn retainers, but by the mid–nineteenth century butcher, baker, and candlestick maker could take to the dueling ground, just as Francis Bacon had foretold. “The practice spread to the bourgeois political classes, the literati, the journalists, the pamphleteers,” wrote the British historian Gregor Dallas. The old aristocracy despaired; dueling had become democratized.32

  French politicians knew that their country needed a new moral code to adapt to a new democratic order, and rather than turn to ancient Rome, republican France chose to reclaim the values of chivalric honor from its own past. An 1868 book by the great liberal political writer Lucien Prévost-Paradol maintained that self-interest had to be replaced by the free exercise of honor, or better still the duel, “the last powerful rampart of aging societies.” France, he insisted, “is the unique example in the world of a society in which the point of honor has become the principal guarantee of good order and which enjoins the duties and the sacrifices that religion and patriotism have lost the power to inspire.”33

  He was sadly vindicated when France suffered her humiliating defeat two years later at German hands but he had already committed suicide while serving as minister in Washington, D.C., at least in part in despair at his country’s declaration of war. But his cause was not forgotten. On New Year’s Day 1871, a leading Paris newspaper, Le Petit Journal, expressed the conviction that though French soldiers had been badly led at the war’s outset, the “honor” and “chivalric loyalty” of the ordinary fighting man had emerged unblemished. What was needed was a revival of the idea of honor along with the skills and ritual practices that sustained it. The paper felt that religion and patriotism had lost their power to inspire. What could replace them? The answer came back once more: the point of honor.

  These ideas would inspire the work of the feminist playright Ernest Legouvé, who was also an avid fencer. “I would like our democracy,” he wrote in 1872, “to remain aristocratic in its manners and its sentiments, and nothing can achieve that end more effectively than familiarity with the sword.”34 He advocated “the principles of today and the manners of yesteryear.” Suddenly fencing and the duel experienced an enormous resurgence. Experts likened a fencing bout to a contest between nations and argued that a soldier who fenced would spill his blood in battle more readily since he believed he was defending not only his country but his “personal honor and dignity” as well. Anatole France, the critic and novelist who would receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1921, described the sword as “the first tool of civilization, the only means man has found to reconcile his brutal instincts and his ideal of justice.”35 “I would not want to live 24 hours in a society constituted without the duel,” Jules Janin, a fellow writer, weighed in. “The duel makes of each of us a strong and independent power … it takes up the cause of justice the moment the law abandons it; alone it punishes what the laws are unable to punish, scorn and insult.… We are still a civilized people today because we have conserved the duel.”36 Other advocates argued that fencing stimulated self-regard and mutual respect.

  Swordplay was central to the new republic for more than political reasons. It harkened back to a world of hierarchy and birthright, yet was the emblem of a new democracy, of modern individualism. Beyond that, Frenchmen brooded about a war of revenge that would wipe out the shame of 1870: “Think of it always,” the saying went, “speak of it never.” France at that time was undergoing what Robert Nye has called “a crisis of masculine identity.” Hence, as he puts it, “the extraordinary revival of the idea of honor in France in the late nineteenth century and of the skills and ritual practices that sustained it.”37 Fencing, at least in theory, now recognized no social boundaries; it was “a male social universe of perfect individualism and equality.” The upsurge in fencing and dueling came from a political need to restore the values of chivalry and the desire of the French male to reinterpret what kind of man he wanted to be.

  Certainly the contrast is striking. By 1840 salles had dwindled to about ten nationwide. By 1890 there were more than a hundred registered masters in Paris alone, and clubs had sprouted in every provincial city. Most good-sized towns had at least two salles. Bordeaux’s clubs attracted 250 fencers, and Lyons and Marseilles came close to that. Many of the new department stores and a score of Parisian newspapers maintained clubs to keep their male personnel fit.

  The salle was an école de politesse, seen as civili
zing its contestants. Fencers, it was argued, shared a freemasonry of mutual respect and a “cordiality which smoothed over the most irritating issues.”38 An experienced fencer would learn “all the ways he could avoid conflict without loss of honor or dignity.”39 The refined deportment of most masters was testimony that low-born men could be shaped by their art to a higher social calling. When a master did the season at Deauville or attended the opera, the fencing press reported the event with pride. The Société de l’encouragement de l’escrime, founded in 1882 for Parisian amateurs, began hosting an annual gala evening featuring the best amateurs and professionals, attracting a social elite in evening dress. At the Elysée Palace, the president of the republic’s sinister son-in-law, Daniel Wilson, organized Sunday-morning sessions for the cream of the republican judicial and political establishments.

  During this period salles des armes evolved from often unhygienic exercise rooms to tastefully outfitted clubs, with elected membership and masters engaged as salaried employees. Yet fencing was not yet a “sport.” This final evolution began only in the 1890s and in many respects required the abandonment of the very qualities that fencing’s early advocates had hoped would build men of integrity. Once innovations such as scoring and formal competition arrived, fair play came under attack; winning at all costs had come to stay. In this new world France would for a long time remain supreme.

  ONE OF THE MOST ARDENT SWORDSMEN OF THE PERIOD WAS Georges Clemenceau, who served as prime minister of France from 1906 to 1909 and again from 1917 to 1920. “The Tiger” was always a fierce political radical, even if by the end of his career a somewhat overtaken one. He fought twelve duels: seven with the pistol, five with the sword, at both of which he was expert, a first-class marksman and an even more gifted fencer. He preferred the sword, but in most of his encounters he was the challenger and rarely had choice of weapons. His rivals generally chose pistols, possibly because they believed he would never aim to kill and might opt to miss altogether; whereas with an épée he might satisfy himself only with significant bloodletting. It was said in the Chamber of Deputies that there were three things about Clemenceau to dread: his sword, his pistol, and his tongue; but in all his duels only one of his opponents was ever seriously hurt.‖

  There survives an engaging book, dated now, by the American journalist Wythe Williams that includes a detailed discussion with Clemenceau about fencing. “The adversaries who dared face the point of his sword had no chance,” writes Williams with evident admiration. “He delighted in first disarming them with a flashing but terrific coup en seconde, the most powerful blow in swordplay, almost paralyzing the arm. The Tiger would laugh, mockingly, and bow while waiting for the weapon to be retrieved. Then he would flick his opponent in a part of the anatomy of his own choosing. He would perform the operation delicately, with just enough damage for the satisfaction of honor, and the termination of the affair.”41

  A duel in Paris around 1900. First blood was usually enough to finish the affair. (illustration credit 8.2)

  This kind of heroic archaism, fostering a belief that willpower alone could triumph over mere material opposition, helped inspire a wartime doctrine that sent hundreds of thousands of young men to their deaths: a terrible consequence that finally snuffed out dueling, along with much else of the old order. The grand phrases that might be appropriate to the salle did not apply to wooded countryside packed with enemy machine guns; yet Clemenceau was unapologetic about his conduct. Whenever a political rival provoked his ire, he would demand satisfaction. “You see, we had been taught as children that one could not honorably escape a challenge,” he told Williams. “I was never one to believe that a wrong could be righted by a bullet or a swordthrust, but, following my upbringing, I made up my mind to give a proper account of myself if provoked to a point where a duel was unavoidable. As a result, I left my mark several times with pistol and épée, and in turn I carry scars.”

  Dueling regularly meant practicing regularly, so Clemenceau attended a salle in the rue Monsieur le Prince. It was run by one of the most famous masters in Paris, a robust character named Emile Mérignac, a handsome man with twirled moustache and pointed beard who would talk constantly during a bout and particularly loved to quote from the famous duel scene in Cyrano de Bergerac, rounding off attacks with “At the end of the thrust I arrive!”

  He admired Clemenceau as a fencer even more than as a statesman and believed that had he ever really competed he would have rated as highly as Lucien Gaudin, France’s leading swordsman. “Monsieur Clemenceau had a powerful arm and his fingers were of steel,” Mérignac explained. “He was stocky but could glide with the speed of a jungle beast. Frequently he terrified his opponents at the very beginning of a fight. On a number of occasions we argued about our respective methods. I always favored the lighter foil over the épée, but this, according to Le Tigre, was a fancy, defensive weapon. ‘Going on to the attack is always my way,’ he told me. ‘It gives me authority. It opens up the target, confuses my opponent, and sets up my decisive thrust.’ ” For Mérignac, Clemenceau’s fencing strategy, his character, and his political style were as one.

  RUSSIA SCRAMBLED TO IMITATE ALL THINGS FRENCH—BUT WHEREAS the French were by now content with sporting and ceremonial bouts, Russia experienced a burst of enthusiasm for a practice previously held in contempt, one that brought about the deaths of such great writers as Pushkin and Lermontov. Both men wrote of their dueling days, and the subject also captivated Chekhov, Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Dostoevsky (appearing in all but two of his works, a unique preoccupation). Two poets, Nikolai Gumilyov and Maximilian Voloshin, fought a duel over a non-existent woman.

  For a long time dueling was both socially discouraged and formally outlawed, and regulations were stringent. Under Czar Peter I (r. 1682–1725), even those contemplating a duel could be hanged, along with their seconds. On one occasion the czar, seeing his favorite courtier dance with his sword at his side, slapped him hard across the face. All this was before the duel arrived in Russia; but several wars would take its army abroad, where it would come into contact with the dueling tradition. “We would fight with sabers over nothing,” recalled one veteran, “then would make up, and would not remember the quarrel.”42 The court soon succumbed to its seductive appeal.

  In 1787 Catherine the Great issued a Manifesto on Duels that distinguished between the offender and the offended. She commanded her nobles to regulate themselves, tacitly admitting duels by the back door. Her son, Paul I, thrust the door wide open, even laying it down that European monarchs should challenge each other, their prime ministers serving as seconds, rather than fight wars. True to his word, he duly challenged Napoleon Bonaparte to fight him in Hamburg. He received no answer.

  As usual, pro-dueling sentiments did not hold sway for long. Three years into his reign, Nicholas I (r. 1825–55) published an entire corpus of laws against the practice. Even mention of dueling was banned: papers did not report Pushkin’s fatal duel until almost six weeks after his death. The Russian aristocracy considered the practice barbaric, disliking it for its foreign origin and believing it epitomized irrational submission to alien ideas. One essayist ridiculed those of his countrymen who “borrowed from the French their point d’honneur for the sake of fashion.”43 In theatrical comedies, dueling was featured as something to be laughed at.

  Yet the monarchy’s efforts to ban dueling were as ineffective as those of its European neighbors, and the practice began, slowly and begrudgingly, to be accepted. As elsewhere, early examples resembled common brawls, breaking out uninvigilated at the moment of offense. Turgenev came to lament that Russia’s weaknesses could be accounted for by the absence of a culture of chivalry. By the end of the nineteenth century, with Moscow and Saint Petersburg in love with all things French, no self-respecting officer or gentleman could ignore the new sensation. The first codes appeared after 1894, when Czar Alexander III effectively legalized dueling, but the practice was enthusiastically pursued long before that.

 
Dueling finally came to Russia for almost the opposite reason it had been reborn in France: as a refuge from the suffocating tyranny of the czars. It acquired distinct political overtones, serving as a statement of opposition to the existing order. “The independence and initiative it accorded to an individual,” Irina Reyfman writes, “made it Russians’ favorite regulator of personal conflicts.”44 A Frenchman would send his seconds to a rival; but Russians delivered their challenges violently, with a face slap (at least) inescapable.

  Chest, the Russian word for “honor,” ranges in meaning from proven valor and virtue to recognition for social eminence, respect, honesty, and, in later usage, human dignity. It denotes both externally recognized social standing or merit and internal appreciation of one’s own worth. Montesquieu had written of honor being the foundation of monarchies and the defining possession of the noble class.45 He was speaking ironically, but the Russian nobility was keen to distinguish itself as a class. They took to dueling as a means of doing so.

  Aleksandr Pushkin (1799–1837), a Byronic figure celebrated as much for the figure he cut and for his antics as for his emotive romantic poetry, was one of Russia’s most legendary bretteurs (Russians used the French word for anyone who dueled frequently). Short and slight of build but hardy, Pushkin had a furious temper, inherited from his father. At school he excelled in two subjects: poetry and swordplay.46a Early on he acquired a taste for the joint pleasures of taking offense and taking satisfaction. Although dueling was still illegal, no one with pretensions to being a gentleman could ignore a challenge if personal honor was at stake.