Humans are funny little creatures. I suspect that God keeps us around for our entertainment value. Each culture provides God its own entertainment. The British by invading basically every country on earth wearing tall, furry hats. We Americans provide grand stunts, like landing on the moon, or an automobile race around the world in 1908 when there were no roads or gas stations. And the French took love, dining, and dueling to a high, almost comic level. In France, the great and near great dueled well into the 20th century. The great French mathematician, Galois dueled to the death over love or politics. The great rationalist philosopher, Descartes, fought a duel, disarmed his opponent, and forgave him because of love. The science fiction writing philosopher, Cyrano de Bergerac, was famous for many duels, typically over the insults in his writing (or his nose).
Instead of writing about those fellows, this post is about two Napoleonic generals, Pierre Dupont de l’Étang and François Fournier-Sarlovèze, who fought 30 duels with each other over 19 years writing a contract to kill each other whenever possible. They didn’t start as generals, of course, but rose through the ranks, though dueling was illegal, in theory, most of the time. They dueled on foot and horseback, mostly with swords, but also with pistols, and managed to wound each other at every meeting. They never quite managed to kill one another, or settle things, but they kept going at it till they became friends, of a sort. They were not that bad dualists, Fournier was a crack shot with a pistol and had killed others in duels. DuPont was better with the sword, but both were good at dodging death by blocking their vital organs.
The antaganism started with a duel, as one might expect. Fournier, a lieutenant at the time, had just killed a popular Strasbourg townsman named Blumm in a pistol duel. The townsman had no experience with pistols so this was sort-of murder, and resented. There was to be a party that evening, and Fournier’s commanding officer sent captain DuPont with a message to Fournier to keep him away until tempers subsided. Fournier attempted to attend anyway, and felt insulted by DuPont’s efforts to keep him out. Fournier challenged DuPont, and DuPont accepted, choosing military swords. Fournier would have challenged the commanding officer, but one does challenge so far above one’s station in France.
They met the next day at dawn. DuPont won the first duel, injuring Fournier by a severe cut to the shoulder. At this point, first blood, most American dualists would have called it quits, and might have become friends. In the duel between Thomas Hart Benton and Andrew Jackson, Benton put two bullets into Jackson but didn’t kill them, and they went on to become friends, and colleagues in congress. But for these two, one deadly meeting was not enough. They decided to duel again as soon as Fournier recovered. That took a month. Fournier rechallenged, they fought again with military swords. This time DuPont was injured. At the next duel, both were injured. Again and again, whenever they met, with swords, cutlases, lances, rapiers, and at last with pistols.
They drew up a contract that they would try to kill each other whenever they were 30 leagues from each other (90 miles) and not otherwise occupied with a war. The duels would pause whenever one of them was promoted since one didn’t duel with someone of higher rank. The two proved to be excellent officers and advanced at a good rate, with occasional stops in prison because of the political turmoil of the time, but not because of their dueling. Fournier went to jail for financial mismanagement and for insulting Napoleon after the Russian Campaign, DuPont went to jail too, for losing to the Spanish, and later for supporting the Royalists. They were released because the army always needs good officers who are brave and successful (Read about their lives on Wikipedia, or here).
Sometimes they would meet by accident and try to kill each other in bars, restaurants, and hotels. Mostly they would meet by arrangement at appointed times in the woods, sharing a hearty meal and good insults before dueling. Sometimes they chatted with each other through the duels. They appreciated each others skill and complimented each other on promotions, especially when it allowed them to try to kill one another (there is a comic movie like this — Mr and Mrs Smith?). During one encounter, DuPont stuck Fournier to the wall through the neck with his sword, and Fournier requested that he move closer so they could continue fighting this way. Now that’s dedication.
Eventually, DuPont got engaged and they decided to fight to the death, hunting each other in a woods with pistols (two each). As it happened, DuPont disarmed Fournier, and forced him to agree to fight no more. It was a happy ending suitable to a movie. Actually, a movie made about them, “The Dualists, 1967.” DuPont became minister for War for Louis XVIII (released for being too royalist), and wrote poetry including “the art of war”. Fournier helped write the French code of military conduct.
Dueling didn’t stop here, but continued in France well into the 20th century. The last dual between members of the government was in 1967, see photo below. René Ribière, Gaullist speaker of the National Assembly fought Gaston Differe, Mayor of Marseilles and Socialist candidate for the French presidency. They used epees, long, sharp swords. Differe wounded Ribiére twice, both times in the arm, and Jean de Lipkowskiin called an end to the duel “. Several French duels of the 20th century, are caught on film.
The point of this essay, assuming there is one, is the love of God for us. A less loving God would have had the comedy of the generals end after only two or three duals, or after one killed the other. Here, He allowed them to fight till friendship prevailed. Also of note is that that French are not surrender monkeys, as some claim. They are masters of honor and history, and we love them.
Robert E. Buxbaum, December 28, 2022. In the US, dueling is more like gang warfare, I include here pirates like William Kidd and John Lafitte, the Hamilton-Burr duel with trick pistols, the western shootouts of Jim Bowie, Wyatt Earp, etc., the Chicago rivalries of the 1930s and the drug wars of Detroit. At present, Detroit has four shootings per day, but only one death per day. The movie “8 Mile” includes fights, shooting, and several rap duels, fought with deadly words. If you won’t fight for something, there is a sense that it isn’t worth much.
