The Wonderful World of Dueling Pistols
Honor is a funny thing: today an attribute talked about, but all too rarely upheld. But what is it? Reputation? Public esteem? A good name? There was a time that honor was a way of life, and had to be protected at all costs, even to the death. Today an entire subgenre of pistols produced as guardians of this practice remains as a testament to the ‘bad old days’ of dueling.
As early as 712 AD in Germany, so called judicial duels were fought between feuding parties to determine who was right or wrong. If you had a disagreement with your neighbor over where your property line was, you didn’t go to court or call the local surveyor, you grabbed a weapon of your choosing and took it to the town square at noon (so that neither man fought with the sun in their eyes). The last one standing settled the dispute.
the effect that strict rules became established about proper conduct. For example, commoners fought with farm tools such as clubs and axes, while gentlemen fought with swords. Even men and women could fight it out with the man handicapped—forced to fight with a hand tied behind his back or sunk up to his waist in a pit, while the female was allowed to circle around him. By the 1500s, this type of contest was replaced by jury trials, however trials by combat between two gentlemen for a question of honor, soon to be known as a duel, remained a fixture of Medieval justice.
By the Renaissance, a very rigid and elaborate code concerning the formalities of dueling evolved in Italy. If one gentleman insulted another, even in the most trivial of manners, said insulted gentleman would demand a public apology. To this day, the notion of ‘I beg your pardon’ when making a social goof is thought by some to stem from this practice. Should the apology not be forthcoming, a duel could be offered to satisfy the offendeds’ honor. Each man would choose an assistant, or second, who would negotiate the form of weapons, the time of the event, and where the combat would take place. By the 1600s, the weapons increasingly chosen for these tests of manhood were pistols, mostly because this meant that even the slowest, oldest, or most decrepit gentleman could have a fair duel.
the rest in my column at Guns.com
A set of Liegoise percussion pistols for dueling. You do know Liegoise, don’t you?