The Ten Stupidest Duels in History July 5, 2014
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, Modern , trackback
Duelling was a sensible institution that, from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, reminded young men, and sometimes women, of a particular social class that – never mind how they had been spoilt growing up – words and actions had consequences. Most individuals who paced around in Hyde Park slashing the air with their swords, while behind them seconds arranged the rules, are to both be pitied and admired: they lived in a worse but also a better world than ours. If someone insulted your wife or sister then you could always send a glove in their direction and roll the dice with bullets, blade or empty plates. However, some duelists rather devalued the institution by picking fights over very, very silly things: and some of them died. There follow the ten stupidest reasons to fight a duel that I have yet come across: the question of stupid weapons will have to wait for another day. Of course, there and then it probably didn’t seem as petty, but the whole point of dueling was that you cooled off for twenty four hours before putting a rapier through a human being’s heart.
Marginalia Duel: France, 1824, 26 July. An unnamed Englishman found himself at Bagnères in France in the reading room of the Frescati. He scribbled some marginalia on a pamphlet to the effect that Wellington had won the Battle of Toulouse. He was, then, called out for this by one Pinac who died in the subsequent duel with a ‘ball in his belly’.
Flower Duel: Liechtenstein, 1892, mid August. Princess Pauline Metternich and the Countess Kielmannsegg had an argument about flower arrangements at the Vienna Exhibition. The result was a rare petticoat scrap, in Liechtenstein, to avoid legal problems. Both parties were injured in the sword fight that followed, the Princess on her nose. They then ‘embraced, kissed and made friends’ in the words of a contemporary report, before being tended to by a Polish woman doctor; both seconds were women too, interestingly.
Theatre Duel: Denmark, March 1970. Togo Esben, a stage director in Copenhagen, challenged Henning Ditlev, press secretary, to a fight because his name did not appear in a theatre program. They fought with flintlock pistols. Only one gun went off and the two drank champagne together afterwards with Esben’s name subsequently appearing in the program. The cause here was unquestionably stupid (or a publicity stunt?), but the date and the country tend to attract even more attention. The last duel before this in Denmark had been in 1912.
Dog Duel: Britain 1840 8 April . Captain Fleetwood’s dog jumped into the Serpentine river and then came out and shook itself over the dresses of two ladies. A Mr Brocksopp intervened angrily and… a duel was arranged on Wimbledon Common between the two men. Both missed with pistols. (Things didn’t always end so well with dogs, a duel in 1803 over a fight between two dogs ended, instead, in a death.)
Salute Duel: India 1704 15 May : One Captain South (not Smith as in some sources) wrote to Robert Hedges of Calcutta council and called him out for failing to give him a gun salute as he came into port on the good ship Chambers. Hedges, as it happened, sensibly refused to fight.
Dance Duel: France, 1816. Admiral de la Susse felt that an obese German at the ball at Faubourg St. Honoré was ‘waltzing against him’ (love it). The parties met subsequently at the Bois de Boulogne. The Admiral shot the German in the heart but once the German dropped it was found the Teuton had unchivalrously put on a heavy cuirass. The Admiral proceeded to give the recumbent German a good kicking.
Greek Duel: Britain, 1721 early July. Two young Irish men, Richard Grantham and Norton Fitzgerald, fought in London. They had previously been great friends and had spent the day before the fight, in company, going to bathe together at Chelsea, but had, then, argued over the spelling of a Greek word. Fitzgerald died of his wounds after a brief sword fight: Grantham too was badly injured. Note that one news report from the time claims the argument was over a ‘philosophical question’.
Hat Duel I: Germany, 1885 early Feb. Baron von Wille was killed in a duel after seventeen bullets had been exchanged (so much for Prussian efficiency). The cause of the argument had been that one of the officers ‘had by inadvertence put on the military cap belonging to the other’. The survivor was not named.
I am not sure about the sources for the last two: I’ve found contemporary reports in newspapers, but in itself that means nothing. The billiard story is much repeated around the net but that too means nothing… Never trust alliterating or sonorous names.
Hat Duel II: Russia, 1903, early October. Two bosom friends Popoff and Ponikwicki had a falling out in Minsk. Popoff accidentally knocked over Ponikwicki’s hat. Ponikwicki called his friend an idiot. A duel was arranged. Ponikwicki killed Popoff with the first shot. They were both lawyers. (To add to the triviality of this incident I may have misread ‘hat’ for ‘bat’. The type is not clear.)
Billiard Duel: France, 1843 early September. An argument arose over a game of billiards between Lenfant and Malfant in the district of Seine-et-Oise. Not only did the two argue over something not worth the blink of an eye, they also fought like imbeciles. Both drew lots and Malfant, winning, threw a red billiard ball directly at Lenfant’s head killing him with a single hit.
Any other duels for silly causes? drbeachcombing At yahoo DOT com Note we are looking for motives not method.
13 July 2014: StM writes ‘I thought it was odd that you left out one of the more famous cases of a silly duel motive. I refer to the case of Tycho Brahe, the noted Danish astronomer from the late 1500s. In his college days (1566), Tycho got into a drunken argument with his cousin over who had the better math skills. This soon escalated into a duel with swords and Tycho wound up having part of his nose cut off. Evidently, this is what happens when you have a duel at night while you are drunk. To try to give himself a more normal appearance, Tycho had a prosthetic made up of metal alloys. Curiously, Tycho eventually forgave his opponent. Some information about this duel can be found here: http://www.geocentricity.com/shop/about_tycho.html However, the author eventually goes on a strange conspiracy theory tangent at the end of his article and implies that Tycho was murdered (by mercury poisoning) by Johannes Kepler. But the duel information is accurate.’ Thanks StM
Loes writes, 25 Oct 2016, I’m not sure you mentioned this duel in your Beach blog. I found it in Dickens’ magazine ’All the year round’ , 1889, but it obviously was also in The Book of Days. Here it is:
