In rec.martial-arts.moderated on Tue, 21 Sep 2004 20:10:02 UTC
Post by Gaidhealvery little point in one of them dying to show whom exactly was the slightly
better fighter. There were of course duels for precisely that, as well as
duels, to the death as often as not, but commonly first blood as well, to
settle minor disputes, insults and so on. It was not an ethical code that
Umm.. you might want to look a bit closer on that.
You've conflated several periods and countries for example.
That chivalry and knightly honour as they understood it, and not the
Victorian idea, was done is known. Have a look at various incidents
like the Combat of the Thirty and other 100 years wars stories.
The "first blood" idea is quite late as far as duelling goes, it's 18thC
French, or maybe even later[1]. 16thC and before was pretty well always
fatal in duelling, or to clear victory, meaning the other was crippled.
Brantome, writing in the late 1500s, has quite a lot on that. Bryson's
"the 16thC Italian Duel" concentrates on one time and place but has
other information.
It's quite clear that duels were fought to the death over minor insults,
it's why they were banned in almost all European countries. But only
when civilians carried swords, which is not till the 16thC more or less.
Seemingly about the time gunpowder really took over the battlefield.
That was the same time that the thrusting sword was the civilian weapon
of choice, and those killed people very easily. No one knows why more
civilians were carrying them, why rapiers became popular, why duelling
took off. Lots of theories, no solid answers.
While there was civilian fighting prior to that, it was mostly a
lowerclass sport, especially in England. See the statutes banning sword
and buckler fighting on Sundays in the 1300s. Aside from the various
judicial duels, which was mostly a german thing as far as I can see,
and seldom fought with swords but with weapons maybe strange to both,
like the duelling shields in Talhoffer, although the knightly class
appear to have fought with pollaxes or sword and spear.
The big hassle with the western traditions is that most people have got
their info via a selection of Victorian myths and movies. Most coffee
table and even school history books are heavily Victorian influenced, as
that's when the first attempts at social history were done. Even if
you get some debunking, like the knowledge that the chivalric codes were
only about how you dealt with your own class, most people still have a
lot of received knowledge that is badly distorted.
The whole duel thing is a case in point... civilian fighting, how and
why, changed massively in 500 years....
Zebee
[1] and as far as I can tell, the French were the main users of it
in the 19thC. The usual terms everywhere were not "first blood" but
"satisfaction", and what that was differed. See Aldo Nadi's account
of his duel in 1922, clearly not "first blood". Various accounts of
duels in France in the late 1800s range from stopping at a minor cut
to serious slashing of both. I wonder if this idea about "stopping
at first blood" came not from real duels, but from the mock fights.
The Marxbruder (yes! really!) and Fetherfechten fighting fraternities
of the 1400s and 1500s competed till someone was touched, as did the
singlestick fighters in England in the 1700s.