March 6, 2012 • 42 mins
Pretty much everything you know about duels is true - it's a challenge to violence to defend honor. But did you know the U.S. Navy used to publish detailed guidelines in its midshipmen's handbook? Learn all there is to know about dueling in this episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to you Stuff you should
Know from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is Charles W.
Chuff Bryant and uh, you've got stuff you should know
(00:23):
on guard. Yeah, it's too shame it means a touch
and friends. I thought this was one of the funniest
openings of an article ever. By the way, did you
like it? I thought that very first part was hysterical
when I read it. Well, you know what, it just
so happens. I don't have an intro for this one,
so I think you might want to read it. Should
we just read it? Yeah? Ed Grabanowski never lets us down.
(00:44):
He's good the Grabster h This is how duels work.
Ladies and gentlemen. Pistols at dawn. The challenge is issued.
To turn it down would leave you marked as a
coward for life. You meet at the chosen spot, facing
your opponent at a distance of twenty paces. You're dueling.
Pistols are loaded. One or both of you could be
severely wounded or killed. Today doctors are standing by them
(01:06):
in the damage if possible, while your friends eye each
other warily. Why is this all happening because you made
fun of his hat? So good? That is about right too,
if we find out and the rest of the article, Yeah,
well done, Grabster. It's not much of an exaggeration. Apparently,
throughout the history of people or ever since, we've had
swords at least um men have challenged other men to
(01:28):
duels and other people have died as the result. You know,
I thought this is a great article. Um, I thought
so too. This is definitely something I knew like virtually
nothing about. Yeah, officially, me too. But I did find
out that things like uh while West duels shootouts very
very close to reality. Sure, they apparently happened to coincide
(01:51):
at a time when dueling was very popular in America,
and this kind of all it was. It was the
Old West version of Pistols at Dawn and um. As
an aside, probably the best dueling movie of all time,
The Quicken the Dead, The Quicken the Dead. It's exactly right.
If you have not seen that, pause, pause this podcast,
get off your treadmill, put your ice cream down, whatever
(02:12):
you're doing, go watch The Quicken the Dead. And then
come back and resume this podcast. Yeah. You know, what
I always appreciate about that movie was that there were
how many how many quick draw shootouts? Like, let's say
they were ten in the movie. Each one of them
was different. He filmed him different and had a different
feel Like. I just thought that was so creative, like
(02:34):
each one had its own little flavor. That's our Sam Raymie.
He's so good man. I love that movie. Um, he's
got something new coming out, doesn't he? Mr Hollywood guy?
Come on, he's got something coming He's not doing the
New Spider Man. What's uh? I don't know. I think
he might be working on another Evil Dead, like a
modern remake the uptake, or he might just be producing that.
(02:55):
If he does that, then'll be the second time he's
remade The Evil Dead, and Well Dead two is a
remake of the Evil Dad. Yeah pretty much? Okay, Um,
so Chuck. A duel for anybody who doesn't know, is
basically a one on one battle, as is evidenced by
the etomology and apparently we said entomology before. I don't
(03:16):
know that. I don't like some eleven year old kid
called us out on that. I think he might have
misertus because I definitely know the difference between etomology and entomology.
Etomology etomology of the word duel is um. I think
Latin right, duello, I'm sorry, dwell um, which is a
contraction of a duo too and bellum war obviously antebellum
(03:38):
pre war. Okay, I never realized that, huh, okay, But
duo too. It's basically a war between two individuals is
a duel um and it's been around for quite a
long time. Um, I guess we should probably just get
to the get to the meat of it first. Let's
let's talk about duels and then we'll talk a little
(03:58):
bit about the history. Let's just throw down the gauntlet.
So somebody does throw down the gauntlet, and a gauntlet
is a glove. And when you throw down a gauntlet
at the feet of somebody that was at the height
of dueling, um enough to issue a challenge you and
I are going to try to kill one another for
a little bit. Were not necessarily we'll get to that. Um.
(04:19):
When you went to a duel, you had a second
which basically was the guy who came along a friend,
a trusted individual. Uh. It was it was like the
best man at your death. He was there to like
help you prepare your firearms or your sword. Um. He
was there to basically make sure you weren't ambushed. Um.
(04:43):
He was supposedly a neutral third party, a second um.
Supposedly uh and uh. Supposedly we would try to talk
talk it down and diffuse it. That was the first
role of the second But I don't know how much
I buy that. And Ed even points out, like more
times than not, the second way to actually fight the
other second and sometimes there was third and force that
(05:04):
would fight the other third en force. And that's I
looked at this as it's the same as like a
bar fight today. There's always usually like a friend nearby
that's you know, he's got your back, but it's really
between you and that jerk. But if things get out
of hand, he like gets a beer bottle all of
a sudden, then you get involved and his friend gets involved.
(05:25):
So it's sort of like that. I think, Yeah, if
he tries to get in the middle of the two things,
he ends up like River Phoenix at the end of
stand by Me and takes a knife to the neck
and dies in a bar that was so sad satis
ending a River Phoenix character. Let's say, since he really died,
then that's we should point that out. He had a
sad ending in real life as well. Um, So Chuck.
(05:49):
When you declared duel, you could use any weapon, but
for a very long time, basically all you had available
to you was a heavy sword. Yes, and you had
used the same weapon, and depending on what code of
dueling you were following, the challenger or challenge E would
pick that weapon, right. Um, and you mentioned dueling codes.
(06:10):
There were several dueling codes and the one that became
the most widespread was the Dueling Code of seventeen seventy seven,
the Irish code UM, which is cited extensively in this article.
And I believe you're prepared to give everyone a treat
and read some of the rules from the code. Yeah,
the code Duello uh. It replaced um, the floss uh Duellatorium,
(06:35):
which was in the fourteen hundreds, the ill Duello in
fifteen fifty. Apparently the Germans had their own dueling code
which um it was set by the fect Schulen dueling schools.
Imagine there's was just because they were German. It was
probably a little more hardcore, although everything was pretty hardcore
(06:55):
back then. It was. But if you look at the
dueling codes um, a lot of the rules appear to
be set up so that you don't kill the other person.
The whole point of a duel is not to kill
the other person's to regain honor. Dueling is the result
of an insult. When somebody insults you and you challenge
(07:17):
them to a duel, you are seeking to say, I'm
going to get my satisfaction from you. Basically, you punked
me out in public, and that can't happen, that's another
way to put it, because I would be looked at
as a coward, and that would be a knock on
my family's and my ancestors honor. Even Yeah, you had
to protect the honor of your ancestors backwards and forwards
(07:40):
in in space or time on either side of you.
That's right, as I was saying, some of the uh,
some of the rules are intended to prevent harm or injury,
Like you see people like facing away from each other
and turning and firing. That was a designed so that
when you're using a clumsy seven teenth century firearm, Yeah,
(08:02):
the chances of you hitting anybody, but a bystander way
off in the distance is pretty low. Yeah. From what
I gathered after reading a handful of these rules is
that the Code Duello encouraged injury but not death. Yeah.
What they didn't encourage was purposefully uh firing in the air,
as sometimes happened when neither one of them really wanted
(08:25):
to get hurt. They didn't really like that because that
sort of takes all the the jotspah out of the
duel to begin with. You're very excited to read these rules,
aren't you jumping ahead a little bit? No? No No, no,
we're not there yet. Um. But one of the rules,
uh was that the winner could pretty much do whatever
they wanted it once you've won the duel. If let's
say there's an injury, you could kill him if you wanted.
(08:48):
You could just humiliate him if you wanted. You could
be a good guy and say, you know what, my
honor has been squashed. It's great, so, uh, let me
give you a hand up, a little buddy, and you're
a good person for doing that. I would say, so
I could see you totally doing that, Chuck. That wouldn't
I would have been that. There's no way I would
have been dueling to begin with. You you could also
(09:11):
cut the other person's head off after finishing them off,
or maybe finish them off by cutting his head off
and then posting it in a public place, right um.
I said also that the Irish code is very widespread,
so much so that this to me is one of
the facts of the podcast. It was reprinted in full
as part of the Midshipman's Handbook of the U. S.
(09:32):
Navy up until eighteen sixty two, when the Navy outlawed
or band dueling among officers. But up until that time,
it was like, hey, you're probably gonna get a duel
at some point in time, and here's what the Navy
says about that. And what the Navy says is what
the Irish saying. Women typically did not duel and when
they did, uh, it says in the article here it
(09:54):
was viewed on as an oddity and a strange, amusing spectacle,
which like Foxy boxing is today, well or the it's
kind of like the first catfights. Yeah, is that sexist totally?
But I mean that's what they that's apparently what they
they viewed duels among women as it was an amusement
for men because women are just so stupid. But that
(10:15):
that right, except except if you were dumb enough to
make uh that kind of judgment about Llamo pen Yeah,
you probably would have had your head cut clean off
your body. She was a genuine dueler swordswoman, and depending
on who you talked to, it's either her father who
trained her, or a lover who was a great fencer.
(10:37):
And uh, however, I think she liked the ladies as well,
because later in her life, after performing in bars and
a dressed as a man, but not to like say
hey I am a man. I think it was just like, hey,
I'm more comfortable in these clothes. It's easier to move
in these clothes exactly. Um, she uh dug up the
corpse of a dead nun right put in the dorm room,
(11:00):
set that room on fire to take her own death
so she could escape the convent with her female lover.
She was a pretty uh progressive rock and chick back then. Yeah,
she was pretty cool. Um, and that was after she
retired from the opera Early Sea. Yeah, so she she
was pretty cool. No foxy boxing there, No, I don't
(11:22):
even know what that is. I haven't seen that. It's
exactly what it sounds like, yeah, it was kind of
big in the I think the eighties, maybe the seventies
of like just women like boxing one another, but not
really and then like it's it's incredibly sexist. There were
a lot of fights at my school, my high school.
(11:43):
I mean not like a lot, like it was a
rough of school, but it always struck me even as
a youngster that like, when guys would get in a fight,
it was always horrific, and then when girls would get
in a fight, the dudes would be sitting around laughing
at it. I saw a girl fight in high school
once that was really disturbing. It was more disturbing then
any guy fight I've ever seen because girls fight dirty. Yeah,
(12:03):
both of these girls were fighting very dirty. It was
really horrible. M One of the I think like the
assistant principal jumped in and got like smacked around and
ended up backing off. Yeah, that was a bad fight.
So there was nothing funny about that one. No, not
at all. And I mean, really, is there anything funny
about anybody fighting? No? I don't think so, unless it's like,
(12:24):
I don't know, clowns, Yeah, clowns fighting, Yeah, that'd be funny.
Clown fight. That's hilarious unless one of them dies, that's right,
Uh chuck. So we mentioned that seconds are in charge
of issuing apologies, and you can't just go over and say, um,
hey man, guys, sorry, he'll never do it again. Can
he have his gauntlet back? That just doesn't work. There's standards,
(12:47):
there's rules to issuing an apology, and as I understand,
you're prepared to explain the rule from the Code Duello
for issuing apology. I think even it's rule number one,
very first rule, as it should be. Let's hear, the
first offense requires the first apology, though the retort may
have been more offensive than the insult. Example, A tells
(13:11):
B he is impertinent, ETCETERA B retorts that he lies.
Yet A must make the first apology because he gave
the first offense, and then, after one fire, B may
explain away the retort by a subsequent apology. Very nice,
thank you, thank you very much. Um. So, basically, no
(13:32):
matter how bad the retort is from the first insult, Yes,
whoever insults the other person first has to apologize first,
then they shooting one another, and then the second person
can apologize. Um. You also have rules to whether or
not or how a um an apology can be accepted,
or if an apology a verbal one is even worth
(13:55):
anything at all? What situation that is it? Won't you?
I point you to rule number five Josh as a
blow is strictly prohibited under any circumstances among gentlemen. So
no hitting, evidently, yeah no, Or if you do, that's it. Yeah,
there's no going back, No vertebal apology can be received
for such an insult. The alternatives therefore, the offender handing
(14:19):
a cane to the injured party to be used on
his own back at the shame time, begging pardon and
fightering on until one or both are disabled, or exchanging
three shots and then asking pardon without profit of the cane.
So if you wanted apology after smacking someone in the face, um,
but you didn't want the cane, you guys have just
(14:40):
shooted each other three times, or I imagine maybe deal
three blows with a sword. Right. But by this time
seventy seven firearms were all the rage for dueling, which
we'll get to. Um, so you've got to duel. All
the apologies have been either not offered or rejected, and
it's time for the due it's uh, there's certain etiquette, right.
(15:04):
You mentioned um that there's rules against not really doing
this wholeheartedly, Like if you're going to get into a duel,
you have to do it wholeheartedly as as far as
the code duelloh um is concerned. But this is also
one of the more frequently broken rules because most people
who were in duels didn't really want to die, and
(15:25):
they probably didn't want to kill the other person either,
because I imagine when you're in a duel with somebody
and that's your reality at that moment, and it's not
just some guys and powdered wigs out, you know, in
an apple tree, and it's avoid engraving or wood carving,
but it's really what's going on in your world. Right then,
I'm sure you are acutely interested in not killing and
(15:47):
not dying at that moment. Yeah. I would applied them
with alcohol. I would have been the guy being like,
come on, man, you would have made a great second,
like can we just have this ale here and talk
it over and laugh about it? Right, it's an right,
but they took it way more seriously than So. There's
this rule that says, man, if you're going to get
(16:07):
in a duel, you have to do it all the way.
It's called Rule thirteen. No dumb shooting or fighting in
the air is admissiable. In any case, the challenger ought
not to have challenge without receiving offense, and the challenged ought,
if he gave a finch, to have made an apology
before he came on the ground. Therefore, children's play must
(16:30):
be dishonorable on one side of the other end is
accordingly prohibited. Very nice. Um, so you've got all these
we need strickling Huh No, No, I think that's great. Okay. Um,
so so you you've got this rule that says you
you do this all the way. But that's not necessarily
how a lot of duels worked. Um, guys would agree
(16:51):
ahead of time, like, hey, we're actually gonna do the duel,
but we'll both shoot into the air. Um, you don't
want an idea, which, which, by the way, is what happened,
is how Alexander Hamilton died at the hands of the
treacherous Aaron Burr. Let's go ahead and talk about it. Well,
they were political rivals, they were both um, they were
in a law firm together, and that's where they first
(17:12):
learned to hate one another, and then they were in
a very small country at the time. They were very
big fish in the same small pond um and things
got out of hand. And I can't remember who challenged
you to a duel, do you? Uh? Yes, it was
a series of insults. And this was at a time
where the losing presidential candidate would become vice president, which
(17:36):
could you imagine that these days? Yeah, they'd be pretty
awesome kind of. I think it'd be nice. It would.
It would temper things, it would. I guess it was
for balance of power. It was a consolation price, that's true. Uh,
So they disliked each other. There were a bunch of insults,
and Burr challenged Hamilton's in Weehawken, New Jersey, and uh
(17:58):
they're varying accounts um on what happened. But what we
do know that happened Hamilton's got shot, Bird didn't Whether
or not Hamilton's fired in the air is a good guy,
that's what I heard, or got hit and was like
and fired up in the air. Never, it's debatable. Alexander
Hamilton was a crack shot. You great timing. He had
catlike reflexes. Aaron Burr shot Hamilton's Hamilton's fired into the air.
(18:22):
Aaron Burr was actually, uh, I think arrested for murder,
wasn't he? He was charged with murder and basically acquitted
in the end. But um, this is a time when
it was like kind of on the OLPs they were
beginning to outlaw dueling anyway, and it ruined his career,
basically ruined his political career. From that point, people are like,
who's on the twenty and by twenty, of course, I
(18:44):
mean who's on the tin? Yeah, Jackson's on the twenty,
but Alexander Hamilton's un stopped emailing. You've got nothing but
twenties though in your role, so that I can't even
tell him he's on the time. And did they even
make dollar bills? Um? So, chuck, let's get two seconds,
which again I wanted to say that, um oh before
I got ahead of ourselves. I'm sorry. Um. Also, you
(19:05):
should never duel at night. The only time when you
can legitimately hold a duel at night, meaning that the
same night of the offense. Um, it was when the
person was going to be leaving town before daybreak. No
need to even read that one that speaks for itself,
and that makes good sense. Basically they're cooler. Heads prevailed
generally the next day, h which is a great rule
(19:26):
in marriage in life. I'm always a big fan of
sleep on it. Why don't we sleep on it? Yep,
you're absolutely right. But and but sometimes the wife will
still wake up just as angry the next day. It happens,
But most times the worst is waking up in the
middle of the night angry. Yeah. That's pretty bad when
the rage is seething. Um, So, Chuck, do you want
(19:50):
to talk about seconds? Yes? Uh? Seconds Uh. They had
very specific rules for the role of the second Um.
They had to take care of the guns in the
same a and load in the presence of one another.
I can't shake the feeling that we're both in trouble. Um.
They would have to, like I said, load the guns
together and in front of each other, and the gun
(20:12):
was already agreed upon. Um. They have a smooth a
smooth boar. Yeah, and I think the rifle boar would
would be a more accurate, longer distance shot. So they said,
we can't use up. Yeah. It's like shot putting a
football or throwing it in a tight spiral, which one
is going to get further with more accuracy. Exactly. That
makes sense. But yeah, so you want to load in
the presence of one another, yeah, saying look, see the
(20:35):
boar smooth, and we're doing it right here so everyone
can see it. There are sports, everyone pay attention. And
we also mentioned how they are bound to offer or
to try to get an apology generated to avoid a duel.
They're supposed to according to the code UH and then
rule twenty five if if they can't come to any
(20:56):
kind of resolution and the seconds clearly or eyeball on
one another, like oh dude, you're going down to it's
on between us. They had rules for that as well,
like rule where seconds disagree and resolved to exchange shots themselves.
It must be at the shame time and at right angles.
With their principles, I don't get the right angles thing.
(21:18):
How is that physically possible? I don't know. I took
that to mean they shoot from the same angle that
would be parallel, not right angle. Well, I don't think
it meant right angle in the geometric sense. I think
it meant the correct angle, as in the same angle.
Maybe I'm wrong. Do you think it meant like geometry
(21:41):
I think the authors had put in a full day
by the time they got to this rule, or maybe
at right angles. That meant, if these two are shooting here,
then they have to shoot there. So they don't there's
no crossfire coming at them. Okay, so they make a square.
I don't know, we'll have to look into that um.
And then how do you know when a duels over,
(22:01):
especially when it doesn't necessarily result in the decapitation of one.
When you cut somebody's head off and posted on a
pike in the town square, the duels over. But there's
also more nuanced endings possible. Right rule number five if
Schauds are used, Mr Turbec, the parties engage until one
is well bloodied, disabled or disarmed, or until after receiving
(22:25):
a wound and blood being drawn, unless the unless the
person who's disabled insists that it's only a flesh point. Right,
he does have a Did you notice his his money
Python reference in here? No, that's definitely not the only
article with the money Python reference from him. What is it? Well,
later on he's talking about how nobles weren't allowed to
(22:46):
work and they made money off of rent from their
huge tracts of land. That's for money. By then, I
don't remember that part. Do you remember that she's got
huge tracts of land? I don't remember. That's a good part.
Good for you for noticing that he's always sneaking them
in um. And also, any wounds sufficient to agitate the
(23:08):
nerves or make the handshake must end the business of
the day. I mean that would be that's kind of
a loose if you ask me. Yeah, but that does
mean that the duel is over. So that's uh. If
you if you want to know more, if you want
to know all the rules, you can get your hands
on a pre eighteen sixty two US Navy Midshipman's Handbook.
(23:31):
Apparently PBS has all of them as well on frontline site.
We don't. I'm sorry, um, but chuck. Dueling was for
a very long time the pursuit of nobles right. As
a matter of fact, it was used to differentiate nobles
from common people. Like in a lot of medieval Europe
(23:52):
European countries, Um, commoners weren't allowed to duel. It was out,
it was illegal. Yeah, and before gun that a lot
of commoners couldn't even afford swords because swords are expensive
to make and even more expensive than firearms once they
came around, so a lot of them couldn't duel in
the traditional sense, although the Grabster points out that there
(24:14):
were plenty of dual like circumstances among commoners too. It
was probably just the bar fight. You just can't let
the local fuzz find out what you're doing. Yes, and
noblemen were expected to duel, right, and the whole point
of dueling was the protection of honor. And honor as
a concept, as the Grabster points out, is is not
what we think of it today. Um. Honor is basically
(24:36):
like if you were rich, if you have a title,
if you are a member of an important family, you
have honor automatically it's attached to you. Yeah, it doesn't
mean that you were a good upstanding guy. It just
means like, this is your station in life. You were
you're blessed basically by being born rich and white. Exactly.
It's like the one percent um and you have honor.
(24:58):
And it's fragile, extremely at all times. Uh, it's prone
to be insulted at the drop of the drop of
a glove, especially, but even the drop of the hat. Um.
And not only is your honor at stake, but the
honor of your family for generations forward, generations backward, and
any schmow of noble rank um. I imagine if a
(25:20):
commoner came up and insulted your family, you just cut
their head off right there, and there's no duel. It's
just death for the commoner, right. But if another person
of nobility comes up and insult your family honor, then
you say it's on. I challenge you to a duel.
At this point, and you've mentioned cowardice already, but at
this point, the other person has a choice. Very socially speaking,
(25:44):
they don't really have a choice that they do have
a choice. They can either accept the duel or they
can be a coward. And in the same vein, the
person whose honor is insulted has a choice. They can
either issue a challenge to a duel or they can
let it slide. Either if you let it slide, or
you sure could duel, you're a coward. And that was
a big deal back then. Yeah, it wasn't just like,
(26:07):
you know, Jimmy's a sissy because he wouldn't fight me
at school. It was which haunts you for the rest
of your life. That's true, But your family was was insulted,
you could lose your honor, like they would take it
away legally sometimes, Um, they could publish an account of
it to the church who and you know in the
church they're gonna tell everybody you're a coward. Uh. It
(26:30):
was not an abstract thing. Kings who would not uphold
their honor could lose their noble ranking. They would just
take it away. And you could actually be punished and
excommunicated and your voting rights revoked for cowardice, serious stuff.
Back then. You could also be imprisoned and killed and
just it just generally bad things fed to dragons. Probably.
(26:51):
I don't know if you could be killed. I just
I just said that, well, if a dragon's evening you,
you wish someone would kill you. A good point. Um,
So I think probably the whole this whole code, this
whole dueling code is and how refined it became was
out of the frequency of dueling. Right. Yeah. Apparently, like
you said, these people um sat around with their huge
(27:14):
tracts of land. Well they couldn't work. No, they like
you couldn't work if you wanted to work, you couldn't
if you were of noble noble blood. Yeah, I mean,
you literally could not hold a job even if if
you're like if you found you were really good at something.
But I really like Blacksmith in making these these shoes,
these sports shoes. You're a nobleman, you have to make
(27:36):
your money off of rent. So the end result of
that is after a lot of sitting around and uh
fox hunting and mead drinking, you get a little bored,
and so dueling kind of became a sport for board nobleman. Yeah,
these young guys are like, well, I got nothing better
to do, so let me go down to the pub
and uh throw down the gauntlet on someone, or just
(27:59):
be really easy, really irritable to where anything that happens
to me. You bought me in the bar and like
all right, it's on, or you looked at my lady.
That was a big one. Yeah. Um, the other aspect
of it wasn't just boredom. It was also that you
were the better person in a field where you know,
there is a definite set hierarchy. Earls are equal to earls,
(28:20):
and dukes equal to dukes, and viscounts equal to viscants,
um viceroys equal device rays. That whole kind of thing
I could continue, I don't. I can't continue. You called
my bluff, um. But this is a way to differentiate
yourself among your rank by saying I challenge you to duel,
and I won. And the reason that differentiates me is
(28:44):
not only am I the winner, but it means that
God favors me. And apparently that that was used that
was the predecessor to the legal systems we had today. Well, yeah,
let's let's get to this. This is the commoners, uh
would duel early on in the eleventh in twelve centuries um,
you would have trial by combat. Sometimes it was like
(29:05):
dunking a witch. Like if the witch floated, she was
a witch, and then she got burned out of the steak.
If she drowned, then she wasn't really a witch and
she was pure of heart. So if you win the duel,
then you're at in fact innocent of your crime. Yes,
because God favored the winner of the duel, and more importantly,
the guy who accused you was now dead, so you
must be innocent. Although you may also fight a court
(29:27):
appointed really professional duelists. That's awesome and I can't imagine
beating that guy. Yeah, who would that? What was the
most Sky in the Max Mad Max three. Master Blaster. Yeah,
Master Blaster, you fight Master Blaster. Yeah you kill them. Boy,
what a reveal that was when they took off his mask. Yeah.
(29:48):
Powerful stuff. A lot of times, if you were good
at dueling, you would just use it to get out
of stuff like, Hey, I don't want to pay this bill,
so let's duel about it, and that settle it. And
I know I'm really good with the swords, so you
don't stand a chance. Yeah, it's all over. Not just
um debts, but also like if you had a political rival,
(30:10):
um that later became really big in Missouri. Yes, Um,
if you wanted somebody's land, anything, anybody who who had
something you wanted or who you owed something to, you
could just challenge them to a duel, kill them in
their problem solved. This is one of the reasons why
I think that noble classes were eventually removed from the
(30:30):
face of the earth. Well, you mentioned Missouri. Between eighteen
sixteen and eighteen twenty four, the the elect territorial elections
became so fraught with dueling to get rid of your
rival that, um. The first governor of California, Peter Burnett, said,
Peter Burgh. Now Peter Burnett said it became desirable to
kill off certain aspirants to get them out of the way.
(30:52):
So in Missouri even just you know, killed the dude
before election day and you're all set. Yeah. Can you
imagine like new Ingrich and Mitt Romney dueling one another? No,
because no. Um, So you've got dueling evolving from early
legal uh an early legal system, to the board noble
(31:16):
classes to the elimination of political rivals. Um. And it
comes from even further back than that though, like the duel,
the idea of one person battling another person in some
sort of combat and a formal rule driven way grabs
(31:37):
her goes back to jostin competitions in the Middle Ages,
I think, go back to glatutorial combat further back than that.
But um, in Europe, in western Europe, northwestern Europe, it
came from jousting, right, Yeah, And it makes sense to me, uh,
Like you said, the joust is pretty much a duel
on horseback. Then you had the chivalric code, which sort
(31:59):
of lines up with the code of the duel. And
also you skipped right past what to me is one
of the facts of the podcast. Oh no, I didn't
know was coming. Go ahead, you go ahead. Well when nights, uh,
only uh, noble noblemen were allowed to be knights and
to joust against one another. So they would raise their
visor at the beginning to say, hey, look at me,
(32:19):
I'm not just sending along my assistant, who's a lot
better at this than I am, as Heath Ledger did,
As Heath Ledger did. What what was that first night? Yeah,
that's a good movie, that's all right. Uh. So they
would reveal their identities, and that josh, as you know,
was evolved into the military salute. Years later, the lift
of the visor evolved into that the hand. I guess
(32:41):
pretty cool, very cool. Um. Eventually, though, firearms came around
and they found that yeah, these incredibly heavy suits of
armor that can protect you even from a joust. Generally, um,
are no match for this. Must get the smooth board,
must get with terrible aim and accuracy, which if it'll
kill you. Yeah. In our night's podcast, that was kind
(33:03):
of the end of the night exactly. It was also
what the end of Samurai. Yeah, guns ruined everything. Yeah,
well they changed everything for the worst. Um, and then
you have uh as a result, the no no More
need for a heavy sword because there's no need for armor.
(33:26):
Armor doesn't work, no heavy swords, which they do. An
evolution and sword making, and you have, at least in Europe.
I think Japan already had far lighter, more better swords.
But um in the West. The evolution of swords led
to the sport of fencing as a direct result of
dueling and the loss of armor, and it became more contest,
(33:47):
especially after the Italian said, I don't want to die.
Let's put a little put a little rubber tip on
the internet. My sister was in defencing. Call interesting, old sister.
I've always uh, I've always wanted to try that. Well,
I think you should go to town. You could take classes, right, totally.
I think it's a kind of expensive startup. Sure, like
(34:10):
the whole get up in in a decent sword and
all that, but a foil if in the vernacular. But
I'm I'm sure once you got all that stuff, you're fine. Yeah.
That would end up being like my venture into ice hockey,
though I could just end up having a closet full
of gear really ever gets used. I didn't know you're
in the hockey. I was at one point, uh, mid twenties. Yeah,
(34:32):
I learned how to ice skate pretty well, and then
me and all my friends got hockey gear and we're like, hey,
let's play, and uh, that was pretty much where it ended. Yeah, pistols,
so Josh, and when did you get into pistols? Well no, no, no,
I didn't get into pistols ever. But um, when pistols
came along, basically leveled the playing field because pistols are
(34:53):
actually cheaper than swords and cheaper than getting trained and fencing.
You can just practice shooting, you know, coke cans in
the backyard. So all of a sudden, it democratize it.
It was no longer the sport of noblemen because anyone
could do it right. And this is a time when um,
the word cocktail was invented to describe the strong drink
(35:17):
you had in the morning, like an old fashioned um.
So America was super drunk. So dueling seemed like a
really good idea, and it took off as a sport, well,
not as a sport, but basically as a as a
socially accepted pastime because America doesn't have kings or dukes
or anything, and there are a lot of guns at
the time, and everybody started shooting one another in duels well,
(35:38):
which is one of the big reasons dueling began to die. Uh,
I thought, and it pointed out that I was wrong.
I thought it maybe because people called forward the end
of it and said, you know, this is wrong, we
shouldn't be doing this. But since dueling began, the church
and other legal bodies said said, we don't like this
because it takes the Uh it kind of cripples I
(35:59):
leegal stim because you're taking into your own hands. And
the church didn't like it. They were like, we want
to judge these people on their crimes. And it also
kind of violates one of the big bigger commandments. Absolutely
forget about the crusades for that one. But sure. Uh.
Military leaders didn't like it because it was killing off
able young bodied men. Yeah, and then later on war itself,
(36:23):
like the Civil War and the First World War really
were like, hey, there's more serious things going on. People
really die in battle, like it sort of became a
bit of fools undertaking. Well what I understand. I think
it also hit home to the horrors of combat, made
people not want to kill one another as much like
(36:44):
real deal combat. Yeah, and the Civil War and the
First World War. Like you said, we're linked to declines
in the US and Europe respectively of dueling. Um and
there's I guess also one of the other reasons dueling
declined was because when it was exposed to the male classes,
it wasn't just super rich people killing each other anymore,
(37:06):
which was the original purpose, which is why the lower
classes were like, who cares? Dueling is fine, Go, that's fine,
We're doing our own thing. And then once it's, like
you said, democratized and spread to the middle and lower classes,
it became a problem. And then eventually it was we
were left with dueling banjo's and that was about as
serious as it got. I think that that is an
(37:27):
excellent way to end this podcast. Dude, you got you can't.
I'm not even gonna ask if you have an anything more.
If you want to learn more about dueling and you
want to see some of these cool rules, you can
type duel into the search bar at how stuff works
dot com. Yeah, and I said search bar, which means
it's time for a listener mail. WHOA. I'm gonna say
(37:50):
whoa from now on, apparently, Chuck, Before we do listener mail,
we should announce our big south By Southwest extrap agans
two days two days in March, we'll call it Okay
March eleven, we will be live podcasting and this is
for south By Southwest attendees and badge holders only. Unfortunately,
uh Driscoll Hotel, Maximilian Room, three pm, Live podcast done.
(38:16):
What's happened in the next day. The next day from
five to nine at Fidough Irish Pub at to fourteen
West fourth Street in Austin, we are going to be
having a stuff you Should Know variety show. It's open
to the public. You don't have to be a badge holder,
free note cover and as a matter of fact, if
you were on the first hundred people through the door,
you get a free ticket for a free drink. That's right, yeah. Um.
(38:37):
And this is going to feature the likes of Hodgement,
Eugene Merman's gonna do some stand up for us, the
musical stylings of Lucy Waywright Roach who plays Jerry in
our TV pilot which you're gonna premiere. Um and let's
see Crooks local Austin Man. And then the Henry Clay
people are going to play some music as well. And
again we're gonna be showing clips from our TV pilot
(38:59):
that's going to air a science channel, and this is
the public debut. That's right. So if you are in
the just let's just say the west from Texas to California,
or actually you could go from the east. Just make
a point to be there. That's all I'm saying. You
can crash on my floor. Actually you can't, but you
can crash in your van. All right, back to it, Okay, yeah, Josh,
(39:22):
this is a shout out. Remember Joanne uh stand alonis
who nominated us to get nominated for a Grammy Award.
Grammy nominated, nominated, Right, we didn't make it because we're
not a celebrity reading our autopography, which is the only
people who get nominated for spoken word. I'm we're not um.
But Joanne is the founder and CEO of the Amazon Institute,
(39:43):
which we've talked about before, and she's doing a lot
of great work to help preserve the Amazon uh it
is Amazon Institute dot com. And they're having a little
contest where you can win two round trip tickets to Bogata, Columbia,
And this is how you do it. You go to
Amazon Institute dot com. Any listener who wants to can
(40:05):
participate by clicking our projects in the navigation bar. And
basically what you do is create a page on razoo
dot com to fundraise for them, and between now and
the end of June, June at midnight Eastern, the page
with the most funds gets to choose between two round
trip flights to Bogata or one ticket to travel with
(40:26):
her as your guide. Um, and it just covers air fare,
but she says, they'll hook you up with all the
information and cheap places to stay and um, flights depart
you've got to be over eighteen flights depart from New
York A see Port Lauderdale, Miami. I guess only okay
because they are limitations and you can always get a
(40:47):
connection to one of those cities. And travel dates are
August through December of this year. Tickets provided by Avianca
Airlines and uh they use Razoo because it's very transparent.
You can see where all the money is going. Very cool.
So Joanne, thank you for your participation with our show. Yeah,
we appreciate and with the Amazon Institute and uh go
(41:10):
out and win tickets to Columbia. People give them the
give them the website again it is Amazon Institute dot
com and you create a page to help them raise
money on Razu. What's the tab that you click our
projects and you could win a trip well. As always Chuck,
remember we put out the word for um NGOs and
(41:31):
nonprofits who need a good plug. We're always looking for those.
Um Yeah, we want to hear about them. Send them
to us. You can tweet to us at s y
s K podcast. That's our Twitter handle. Um You can
also reach us on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash snow,
and you can send us a nice link the email
(41:52):
at Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com. Be sure to
check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Join Halstework staff as we explore the most promising and
perplexing possibilities of tomorrow, brought to you by the reinvented
(42:13):
two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to you Stuff you should
Know from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is Charles W.
Chuff Bryant and uh, you've got stuff you should know
(00:23):
on guard. Yeah, it's too shame it means a touch
and friends. I thought this was one of the funniest
openings of an article ever. By the way, did you
like it? I thought that very first part was hysterical
when I read it. Well, you know what, it just
so happens. I don't have an intro for this one,
so I think you might want to read it. Should
we just read it? Yeah? Ed Grabanowski never lets us down.
(00:44):
He's good the Grabster h This is how duels work.
Ladies and gentlemen. Pistols at dawn. The challenge is issued.
To turn it down would leave you marked as a
coward for life. You meet at the chosen spot, facing
your opponent at a distance of twenty paces. You're dueling.
Pistols are loaded. One or both of you could be
severely wounded or killed. Today doctors are standing by them
(01:06):
in the damage if possible, while your friends eye each
other warily. Why is this all happening because you made
fun of his hat? So good? That is about right too,
if we find out and the rest of the article, Yeah,
well done, Grabster. It's not much of an exaggeration. Apparently,
throughout the history of people or ever since, we've had
swords at least um men have challenged other men to
(01:28):
duels and other people have died as the result. You know,
I thought this is a great article. Um, I thought
so too. This is definitely something I knew like virtually
nothing about. Yeah, officially, me too. But I did find
out that things like uh while West duels shootouts very
very close to reality. Sure, they apparently happened to coincide
(01:51):
at a time when dueling was very popular in America,
and this kind of all it was. It was the
Old West version of Pistols at Dawn and um. As
an aside, probably the best dueling movie of all time,
The Quicken the Dead, The Quicken the Dead. It's exactly right.
If you have not seen that, pause, pause this podcast,
get off your treadmill, put your ice cream down, whatever
(02:12):
you're doing, go watch The Quicken the Dead. And then
come back and resume this podcast. Yeah. You know, what
I always appreciate about that movie was that there were
how many how many quick draw shootouts? Like, let's say
they were ten in the movie. Each one of them
was different. He filmed him different and had a different
feel Like. I just thought that was so creative, like
(02:34):
each one had its own little flavor. That's our Sam Raymie.
He's so good man. I love that movie. Um, he's
got something new coming out, doesn't he? Mr Hollywood guy?
Come on, he's got something coming He's not doing the
New Spider Man. What's uh? I don't know. I think
he might be working on another Evil Dead, like a
modern remake the uptake, or he might just be producing that.
(02:55):
If he does that, then'll be the second time he's
remade The Evil Dead, and Well Dead two is a
remake of the Evil Dad. Yeah pretty much? Okay, Um,
so Chuck. A duel for anybody who doesn't know, is
basically a one on one battle, as is evidenced by
the etomology and apparently we said entomology before. I don't
(03:16):
know that. I don't like some eleven year old kid
called us out on that. I think he might have
misertus because I definitely know the difference between etomology and entomology.
Etomology etomology of the word duel is um. I think
Latin right, duello, I'm sorry, dwell um, which is a
contraction of a duo too and bellum war obviously antebellum
(03:38):
pre war. Okay, I never realized that, huh, okay, But
duo too. It's basically a war between two individuals is
a duel um and it's been around for quite a
long time. Um, I guess we should probably just get
to the get to the meat of it first. Let's
let's talk about duels and then we'll talk a little
(03:58):
bit about the history. Let's just throw down the gauntlet.
So somebody does throw down the gauntlet, and a gauntlet
is a glove. And when you throw down a gauntlet
at the feet of somebody that was at the height
of dueling, um enough to issue a challenge you and
I are going to try to kill one another for
a little bit. Were not necessarily we'll get to that. Um.
(04:19):
When you went to a duel, you had a second
which basically was the guy who came along a friend,
a trusted individual. Uh. It was it was like the
best man at your death. He was there to like
help you prepare your firearms or your sword. Um. He
was there to basically make sure you weren't ambushed. Um.
(04:43):
He was supposedly a neutral third party, a second um.
Supposedly uh and uh. Supposedly we would try to talk
talk it down and diffuse it. That was the first
role of the second But I don't know how much
I buy that. And Ed even points out, like more
times than not, the second way to actually fight the
other second and sometimes there was third and force that
(05:04):
would fight the other third en force. And that's I
looked at this as it's the same as like a
bar fight today. There's always usually like a friend nearby
that's you know, he's got your back, but it's really
between you and that jerk. But if things get out
of hand, he like gets a beer bottle all of
a sudden, then you get involved and his friend gets involved.
(05:25):
So it's sort of like that. I think, Yeah, if
he tries to get in the middle of the two things,
he ends up like River Phoenix at the end of
stand by Me and takes a knife to the neck
and dies in a bar that was so sad satis
ending a River Phoenix character. Let's say, since he really died,
then that's we should point that out. He had a
sad ending in real life as well. Um, So Chuck.
(05:49):
When you declared duel, you could use any weapon, but
for a very long time, basically all you had available
to you was a heavy sword. Yes, and you had
used the same weapon, and depending on what code of
dueling you were following, the challenger or challenge E would
pick that weapon, right. Um, and you mentioned dueling codes.
(06:10):
There were several dueling codes and the one that became
the most widespread was the Dueling Code of seventeen seventy seven,
the Irish code UM, which is cited extensively in this article.
And I believe you're prepared to give everyone a treat
and read some of the rules from the code. Yeah,
the code Duello uh. It replaced um, the floss uh Duellatorium,
(06:35):
which was in the fourteen hundreds, the ill Duello in
fifteen fifty. Apparently the Germans had their own dueling code
which um it was set by the fect Schulen dueling schools.
Imagine there's was just because they were German. It was
probably a little more hardcore, although everything was pretty hardcore
(06:55):
back then. It was. But if you look at the
dueling codes um, a lot of the rules appear to
be set up so that you don't kill the other person.
The whole point of a duel is not to kill
the other person's to regain honor. Dueling is the result
of an insult. When somebody insults you and you challenge
(07:17):
them to a duel, you are seeking to say, I'm
going to get my satisfaction from you. Basically, you punked
me out in public, and that can't happen, that's another
way to put it, because I would be looked at
as a coward, and that would be a knock on
my family's and my ancestors honor. Even Yeah, you had
to protect the honor of your ancestors backwards and forwards
(07:40):
in in space or time on either side of you.
That's right, as I was saying, some of the uh,
some of the rules are intended to prevent harm or injury,
Like you see people like facing away from each other
and turning and firing. That was a designed so that
when you're using a clumsy seven teenth century firearm, Yeah,
(08:02):
the chances of you hitting anybody, but a bystander way
off in the distance is pretty low. Yeah. From what
I gathered after reading a handful of these rules is
that the Code Duello encouraged injury but not death. Yeah.
What they didn't encourage was purposefully uh firing in the air,
as sometimes happened when neither one of them really wanted
(08:25):
to get hurt. They didn't really like that because that
sort of takes all the the jotspah out of the
duel to begin with. You're very excited to read these rules,
aren't you jumping ahead a little bit? No? No No, no,
we're not there yet. Um. But one of the rules,
uh was that the winner could pretty much do whatever
they wanted it once you've won the duel. If let's
say there's an injury, you could kill him if you wanted.
(08:48):
You could just humiliate him if you wanted. You could
be a good guy and say, you know what, my
honor has been squashed. It's great, so, uh, let me
give you a hand up, a little buddy, and you're
a good person for doing that. I would say, so
I could see you totally doing that, Chuck. That wouldn't
I would have been that. There's no way I would
have been dueling to begin with. You you could also
(09:11):
cut the other person's head off after finishing them off,
or maybe finish them off by cutting his head off
and then posting it in a public place, right um.
I said also that the Irish code is very widespread,
so much so that this to me is one of
the facts of the podcast. It was reprinted in full
as part of the Midshipman's Handbook of the U. S.
(09:32):
Navy up until eighteen sixty two, when the Navy outlawed
or band dueling among officers. But up until that time,
it was like, hey, you're probably gonna get a duel
at some point in time, and here's what the Navy
says about that. And what the Navy says is what
the Irish saying. Women typically did not duel and when
they did, uh, it says in the article here it
(09:54):
was viewed on as an oddity and a strange, amusing spectacle,
which like Foxy boxing is today, well or the it's
kind of like the first catfights. Yeah, is that sexist totally?
But I mean that's what they that's apparently what they
they viewed duels among women as it was an amusement
for men because women are just so stupid. But that
(10:15):
that right, except except if you were dumb enough to
make uh that kind of judgment about Llamo pen Yeah,
you probably would have had your head cut clean off
your body. She was a genuine dueler swordswoman, and depending
on who you talked to, it's either her father who
trained her, or a lover who was a great fencer.
(10:37):
And uh, however, I think she liked the ladies as well,
because later in her life, after performing in bars and
a dressed as a man, but not to like say
hey I am a man. I think it was just like, hey,
I'm more comfortable in these clothes. It's easier to move
in these clothes exactly. Um, she uh dug up the
corpse of a dead nun right put in the dorm room,
(11:00):
set that room on fire to take her own death
so she could escape the convent with her female lover.
She was a pretty uh progressive rock and chick back then. Yeah,
she was pretty cool. Um, and that was after she
retired from the opera Early Sea. Yeah, so she she
was pretty cool. No foxy boxing there, No, I don't
(11:22):
even know what that is. I haven't seen that. It's
exactly what it sounds like, yeah, it was kind of
big in the I think the eighties, maybe the seventies
of like just women like boxing one another, but not
really and then like it's it's incredibly sexist. There were
a lot of fights at my school, my high school.
(11:43):
I mean not like a lot, like it was a
rough of school, but it always struck me even as
a youngster that like, when guys would get in a fight,
it was always horrific, and then when girls would get
in a fight, the dudes would be sitting around laughing
at it. I saw a girl fight in high school
once that was really disturbing. It was more disturbing then
any guy fight I've ever seen because girls fight dirty. Yeah,
(12:03):
both of these girls were fighting very dirty. It was
really horrible. M One of the I think like the
assistant principal jumped in and got like smacked around and
ended up backing off. Yeah, that was a bad fight.
So there was nothing funny about that one. No, not
at all. And I mean, really, is there anything funny
about anybody fighting? No? I don't think so, unless it's like,
(12:24):
I don't know, clowns, Yeah, clowns fighting, Yeah, that'd be funny.
Clown fight. That's hilarious unless one of them dies, that's right,
Uh chuck. So we mentioned that seconds are in charge
of issuing apologies, and you can't just go over and say, um,
hey man, guys, sorry, he'll never do it again. Can
he have his gauntlet back? That just doesn't work. There's standards,
(12:47):
there's rules to issuing an apology, and as I understand,
you're prepared to explain the rule from the Code Duello
for issuing apology. I think even it's rule number one,
very first rule, as it should be. Let's hear, the
first offense requires the first apology, though the retort may
have been more offensive than the insult. Example, A tells
(13:11):
B he is impertinent, ETCETERA B retorts that he lies.
Yet A must make the first apology because he gave
the first offense, and then, after one fire, B may
explain away the retort by a subsequent apology. Very nice,
thank you, thank you very much. Um. So, basically, no
(13:32):
matter how bad the retort is from the first insult, Yes,
whoever insults the other person first has to apologize first,
then they shooting one another, and then the second person
can apologize. Um. You also have rules to whether or
not or how a um an apology can be accepted,
or if an apology a verbal one is even worth
(13:55):
anything at all? What situation that is it? Won't you?
I point you to rule number five Josh as a
blow is strictly prohibited under any circumstances among gentlemen. So
no hitting, evidently, yeah no, Or if you do, that's it. Yeah,
there's no going back, No vertebal apology can be received
for such an insult. The alternatives therefore, the offender handing
(14:19):
a cane to the injured party to be used on
his own back at the shame time, begging pardon and
fightering on until one or both are disabled, or exchanging
three shots and then asking pardon without profit of the cane.
So if you wanted apology after smacking someone in the face, um,
but you didn't want the cane, you guys have just
(14:40):
shooted each other three times, or I imagine maybe deal
three blows with a sword. Right. But by this time
seventy seven firearms were all the rage for dueling, which
we'll get to. Um, so you've got to duel. All
the apologies have been either not offered or rejected, and
it's time for the due it's uh, there's certain etiquette, right.
(15:04):
You mentioned um that there's rules against not really doing
this wholeheartedly, Like if you're going to get into a duel,
you have to do it wholeheartedly as as far as
the code duelloh um is concerned. But this is also
one of the more frequently broken rules because most people
who were in duels didn't really want to die, and
(15:25):
they probably didn't want to kill the other person either,
because I imagine when you're in a duel with somebody
and that's your reality at that moment, and it's not
just some guys and powdered wigs out, you know, in
an apple tree, and it's avoid engraving or wood carving,
but it's really what's going on in your world. Right then,
I'm sure you are acutely interested in not killing and
(15:47):
not dying at that moment. Yeah. I would applied them
with alcohol. I would have been the guy being like,
come on, man, you would have made a great second,
like can we just have this ale here and talk
it over and laugh about it? Right, it's an right,
but they took it way more seriously than So. There's
this rule that says, man, if you're going to get
(16:07):
in a duel, you have to do it all the way.
It's called Rule thirteen. No dumb shooting or fighting in
the air is admissiable. In any case, the challenger ought
not to have challenge without receiving offense, and the challenged ought,
if he gave a finch, to have made an apology
before he came on the ground. Therefore, children's play must
(16:30):
be dishonorable on one side of the other end is
accordingly prohibited. Very nice. Um, so you've got all these
we need strickling Huh No, No, I think that's great. Okay. Um,
so so you you've got this rule that says you
you do this all the way. But that's not necessarily
how a lot of duels worked. Um, guys would agree
(16:51):
ahead of time, like, hey, we're actually gonna do the duel,
but we'll both shoot into the air. Um, you don't
want an idea, which, which, by the way, is what happened,
is how Alexander Hamilton died at the hands of the
treacherous Aaron Burr. Let's go ahead and talk about it. Well,
they were political rivals, they were both um, they were
in a law firm together, and that's where they first
(17:12):
learned to hate one another, and then they were in
a very small country at the time. They were very
big fish in the same small pond um and things
got out of hand. And I can't remember who challenged
you to a duel, do you? Uh? Yes, it was
a series of insults. And this was at a time
where the losing presidential candidate would become vice president, which
(17:36):
could you imagine that these days? Yeah, they'd be pretty
awesome kind of. I think it'd be nice. It would.
It would temper things, it would. I guess it was
for balance of power. It was a consolation price, that's true. Uh,
So they disliked each other. There were a bunch of insults,
and Burr challenged Hamilton's in Weehawken, New Jersey, and uh
(17:58):
they're varying accounts um on what happened. But what we
do know that happened Hamilton's got shot, Bird didn't Whether
or not Hamilton's fired in the air is a good guy,
that's what I heard, or got hit and was like
and fired up in the air. Never, it's debatable. Alexander
Hamilton was a crack shot. You great timing. He had
catlike reflexes. Aaron Burr shot Hamilton's Hamilton's fired into the air.
(18:22):
Aaron Burr was actually, uh, I think arrested for murder,
wasn't he? He was charged with murder and basically acquitted
in the end. But um, this is a time when
it was like kind of on the OLPs they were
beginning to outlaw dueling anyway, and it ruined his career,
basically ruined his political career. From that point, people are like,
who's on the twenty and by twenty, of course, I
(18:44):
mean who's on the tin? Yeah, Jackson's on the twenty,
but Alexander Hamilton's un stopped emailing. You've got nothing but
twenties though in your role, so that I can't even
tell him he's on the time. And did they even
make dollar bills? Um? So, chuck, let's get two seconds,
which again I wanted to say that, um oh before
I got ahead of ourselves. I'm sorry. Um. Also, you
(19:05):
should never duel at night. The only time when you
can legitimately hold a duel at night, meaning that the
same night of the offense. Um, it was when the
person was going to be leaving town before daybreak. No
need to even read that one that speaks for itself,
and that makes good sense. Basically they're cooler. Heads prevailed
generally the next day, h which is a great rule
(19:26):
in marriage in life. I'm always a big fan of
sleep on it. Why don't we sleep on it? Yep,
you're absolutely right. But and but sometimes the wife will
still wake up just as angry the next day. It happens,
But most times the worst is waking up in the
middle of the night angry. Yeah. That's pretty bad when
the rage is seething. Um, So, Chuck, do you want
(19:50):
to talk about seconds? Yes? Uh? Seconds Uh. They had
very specific rules for the role of the second Um.
They had to take care of the guns in the
same a and load in the presence of one another.
I can't shake the feeling that we're both in trouble. Um.
They would have to, like I said, load the guns
together and in front of each other, and the gun
(20:12):
was already agreed upon. Um. They have a smooth a
smooth boar. Yeah, and I think the rifle boar would
would be a more accurate, longer distance shot. So they said,
we can't use up. Yeah. It's like shot putting a
football or throwing it in a tight spiral, which one
is going to get further with more accuracy. Exactly. That
makes sense. But yeah, so you want to load in
the presence of one another, yeah, saying look, see the
(20:35):
boar smooth, and we're doing it right here so everyone
can see it. There are sports, everyone pay attention. And
we also mentioned how they are bound to offer or
to try to get an apology generated to avoid a duel.
They're supposed to according to the code UH and then
rule twenty five if if they can't come to any
(20:56):
kind of resolution and the seconds clearly or eyeball on
one another, like oh dude, you're going down to it's
on between us. They had rules for that as well,
like rule where seconds disagree and resolved to exchange shots themselves.
It must be at the shame time and at right angles.
With their principles, I don't get the right angles thing.
(21:18):
How is that physically possible? I don't know. I took
that to mean they shoot from the same angle that
would be parallel, not right angle. Well, I don't think
it meant right angle in the geometric sense. I think
it meant the correct angle, as in the same angle.
Maybe I'm wrong. Do you think it meant like geometry
(21:41):
I think the authors had put in a full day
by the time they got to this rule, or maybe
at right angles. That meant, if these two are shooting here,
then they have to shoot there. So they don't there's
no crossfire coming at them. Okay, so they make a square.
I don't know, we'll have to look into that um.
And then how do you know when a duels over,
(22:01):
especially when it doesn't necessarily result in the decapitation of one.
When you cut somebody's head off and posted on a
pike in the town square, the duels over. But there's
also more nuanced endings possible. Right rule number five if
Schauds are used, Mr Turbec, the parties engage until one
is well bloodied, disabled or disarmed, or until after receiving
(22:25):
a wound and blood being drawn, unless the unless the
person who's disabled insists that it's only a flesh point. Right,
he does have a Did you notice his his money
Python reference in here? No, that's definitely not the only
article with the money Python reference from him. What is it? Well,
later on he's talking about how nobles weren't allowed to
(22:46):
work and they made money off of rent from their
huge tracts of land. That's for money. By then, I
don't remember that part. Do you remember that she's got
huge tracts of land? I don't remember. That's a good part.
Good for you for noticing that he's always sneaking them
in um. And also, any wounds sufficient to agitate the
(23:08):
nerves or make the handshake must end the business of
the day. I mean that would be that's kind of
a loose if you ask me. Yeah, but that does
mean that the duel is over. So that's uh. If
you if you want to know more, if you want
to know all the rules, you can get your hands
on a pre eighteen sixty two US Navy Midshipman's Handbook.
(23:31):
Apparently PBS has all of them as well on frontline site.
We don't. I'm sorry, um, but chuck. Dueling was for
a very long time the pursuit of nobles right. As
a matter of fact, it was used to differentiate nobles
from common people. Like in a lot of medieval Europe
(23:52):
European countries, Um, commoners weren't allowed to duel. It was out,
it was illegal. Yeah, and before gun that a lot
of commoners couldn't even afford swords because swords are expensive
to make and even more expensive than firearms once they
came around, so a lot of them couldn't duel in
the traditional sense, although the Grabster points out that there
(24:14):
were plenty of dual like circumstances among commoners too. It
was probably just the bar fight. You just can't let
the local fuzz find out what you're doing. Yes, and
noblemen were expected to duel, right, and the whole point
of dueling was the protection of honor. And honor as
a concept, as the Grabster points out, is is not
what we think of it today. Um. Honor is basically
(24:36):
like if you were rich, if you have a title,
if you are a member of an important family, you
have honor automatically it's attached to you. Yeah, it doesn't
mean that you were a good upstanding guy. It just
means like, this is your station in life. You were
you're blessed basically by being born rich and white. Exactly.
It's like the one percent um and you have honor.
(24:58):
And it's fragile, extremely at all times. Uh, it's prone
to be insulted at the drop of the drop of
a glove, especially, but even the drop of the hat. Um.
And not only is your honor at stake, but the
honor of your family for generations forward, generations backward, and
any schmow of noble rank um. I imagine if a
(25:20):
commoner came up and insulted your family, you just cut
their head off right there, and there's no duel. It's
just death for the commoner, right. But if another person
of nobility comes up and insult your family honor, then
you say it's on. I challenge you to a duel.
At this point, and you've mentioned cowardice already, but at
this point, the other person has a choice. Very socially speaking,
(25:44):
they don't really have a choice that they do have
a choice. They can either accept the duel or they
can be a coward. And in the same vein, the
person whose honor is insulted has a choice. They can
either issue a challenge to a duel or they can
let it slide. Either if you let it slide, or
you sure could duel, you're a coward. And that was
a big deal back then. Yeah, it wasn't just like,
(26:07):
you know, Jimmy's a sissy because he wouldn't fight me
at school. It was which haunts you for the rest
of your life. That's true, But your family was was insulted,
you could lose your honor, like they would take it
away legally sometimes, Um, they could publish an account of
it to the church who and you know in the
church they're gonna tell everybody you're a coward. Uh. It
(26:30):
was not an abstract thing. Kings who would not uphold
their honor could lose their noble ranking. They would just
take it away. And you could actually be punished and
excommunicated and your voting rights revoked for cowardice, serious stuff.
Back then. You could also be imprisoned and killed and
just it just generally bad things fed to dragons. Probably.
(26:51):
I don't know if you could be killed. I just
I just said that, well, if a dragon's evening you,
you wish someone would kill you. A good point. Um,
So I think probably the whole this whole code, this
whole dueling code is and how refined it became was
out of the frequency of dueling. Right. Yeah. Apparently, like
you said, these people um sat around with their huge
(27:14):
tracts of land. Well they couldn't work. No, they like
you couldn't work if you wanted to work, you couldn't
if you were of noble noble blood. Yeah, I mean,
you literally could not hold a job even if if
you're like if you found you were really good at something.
But I really like Blacksmith in making these these shoes,
these sports shoes. You're a nobleman, you have to make
(27:36):
your money off of rent. So the end result of
that is after a lot of sitting around and uh
fox hunting and mead drinking, you get a little bored,
and so dueling kind of became a sport for board nobleman. Yeah,
these young guys are like, well, I got nothing better
to do, so let me go down to the pub
and uh throw down the gauntlet on someone, or just
(27:59):
be really easy, really irritable to where anything that happens
to me. You bought me in the bar and like
all right, it's on, or you looked at my lady.
That was a big one. Yeah. Um, the other aspect
of it wasn't just boredom. It was also that you
were the better person in a field where you know,
there is a definite set hierarchy. Earls are equal to earls,
(28:20):
and dukes equal to dukes, and viscounts equal to viscants,
um viceroys equal device rays. That whole kind of thing
I could continue, I don't. I can't continue. You called
my bluff, um. But this is a way to differentiate
yourself among your rank by saying I challenge you to duel,
and I won. And the reason that differentiates me is
(28:44):
not only am I the winner, but it means that
God favors me. And apparently that that was used that
was the predecessor to the legal systems we had today. Well, yeah,
let's let's get to this. This is the commoners, uh
would duel early on in the eleventh in twelve centuries um,
you would have trial by combat. Sometimes it was like
(29:05):
dunking a witch. Like if the witch floated, she was
a witch, and then she got burned out of the steak.
If she drowned, then she wasn't really a witch and
she was pure of heart. So if you win the duel,
then you're at in fact innocent of your crime. Yes,
because God favored the winner of the duel, and more importantly,
the guy who accused you was now dead, so you
must be innocent. Although you may also fight a court
(29:27):
appointed really professional duelists. That's awesome and I can't imagine
beating that guy. Yeah, who would that? What was the
most Sky in the Max Mad Max three. Master Blaster. Yeah,
Master Blaster, you fight Master Blaster. Yeah you kill them. Boy,
what a reveal that was when they took off his mask. Yeah.
(29:48):
Powerful stuff. A lot of times, if you were good
at dueling, you would just use it to get out
of stuff like, Hey, I don't want to pay this bill,
so let's duel about it, and that settle it. And
I know I'm really good with the swords, so you
don't stand a chance. Yeah, it's all over. Not just
um debts, but also like if you had a political rival,
(30:10):
um that later became really big in Missouri. Yes, Um,
if you wanted somebody's land, anything, anybody who who had
something you wanted or who you owed something to, you
could just challenge them to a duel, kill them in
their problem solved. This is one of the reasons why
I think that noble classes were eventually removed from the
(30:30):
face of the earth. Well, you mentioned Missouri. Between eighteen
sixteen and eighteen twenty four, the the elect territorial elections
became so fraught with dueling to get rid of your
rival that, um. The first governor of California, Peter Burnett, said,
Peter Burgh. Now Peter Burnett said it became desirable to
kill off certain aspirants to get them out of the way.
(30:52):
So in Missouri even just you know, killed the dude
before election day and you're all set. Yeah. Can you
imagine like new Ingrich and Mitt Romney dueling one another? No,
because no. Um, So you've got dueling evolving from early
legal uh an early legal system, to the board noble
(31:16):
classes to the elimination of political rivals. Um. And it
comes from even further back than that though, like the duel,
the idea of one person battling another person in some
sort of combat and a formal rule driven way grabs
(31:37):
her goes back to jostin competitions in the Middle Ages,
I think, go back to glatutorial combat further back than that.
But um, in Europe, in western Europe, northwestern Europe, it
came from jousting, right, Yeah, And it makes sense to me, uh,
Like you said, the joust is pretty much a duel
on horseback. Then you had the chivalric code, which sort
(31:59):
of lines up with the code of the duel. And
also you skipped right past what to me is one
of the facts of the podcast. Oh no, I didn't
know was coming. Go ahead, you go ahead. Well when nights, uh,
only uh, noble noblemen were allowed to be knights and
to joust against one another. So they would raise their
visor at the beginning to say, hey, look at me,
(32:19):
I'm not just sending along my assistant, who's a lot
better at this than I am, as Heath Ledger did,
As Heath Ledger did. What what was that first night? Yeah,
that's a good movie, that's all right. Uh. So they
would reveal their identities, and that josh, as you know,
was evolved into the military salute. Years later, the lift
of the visor evolved into that the hand. I guess
(32:41):
pretty cool, very cool. Um. Eventually, though, firearms came around
and they found that yeah, these incredibly heavy suits of
armor that can protect you even from a joust. Generally, um,
are no match for this. Must get the smooth board,
must get with terrible aim and accuracy, which if it'll
kill you. Yeah. In our night's podcast, that was kind
(33:03):
of the end of the night exactly. It was also
what the end of Samurai. Yeah, guns ruined everything. Yeah,
well they changed everything for the worst. Um, and then
you have uh as a result, the no no More
need for a heavy sword because there's no need for armor.
(33:26):
Armor doesn't work, no heavy swords, which they do. An
evolution and sword making, and you have, at least in Europe.
I think Japan already had far lighter, more better swords.
But um in the West. The evolution of swords led
to the sport of fencing as a direct result of
dueling and the loss of armor, and it became more contest,
(33:47):
especially after the Italian said, I don't want to die.
Let's put a little put a little rubber tip on
the internet. My sister was in defencing. Call interesting, old sister.
I've always uh, I've always wanted to try that. Well,
I think you should go to town. You could take classes, right, totally.
I think it's a kind of expensive startup. Sure, like
(34:10):
the whole get up in in a decent sword and
all that, but a foil if in the vernacular. But
I'm I'm sure once you got all that stuff, you're fine. Yeah.
That would end up being like my venture into ice hockey,
though I could just end up having a closet full
of gear really ever gets used. I didn't know you're
in the hockey. I was at one point, uh, mid twenties. Yeah,
(34:32):
I learned how to ice skate pretty well, and then
me and all my friends got hockey gear and we're like, hey,
let's play, and uh, that was pretty much where it ended. Yeah, pistols,
so Josh, and when did you get into pistols? Well no, no, no,
I didn't get into pistols ever. But um, when pistols
came along, basically leveled the playing field because pistols are
(34:53):
actually cheaper than swords and cheaper than getting trained and fencing.
You can just practice shooting, you know, coke cans in
the backyard. So all of a sudden, it democratize it.
It was no longer the sport of noblemen because anyone
could do it right. And this is a time when um,
the word cocktail was invented to describe the strong drink
(35:17):
you had in the morning, like an old fashioned um.
So America was super drunk. So dueling seemed like a
really good idea, and it took off as a sport, well,
not as a sport, but basically as a as a
socially accepted pastime because America doesn't have kings or dukes
or anything, and there are a lot of guns at
the time, and everybody started shooting one another in duels well,
(35:38):
which is one of the big reasons dueling began to die. Uh,
I thought, and it pointed out that I was wrong.
I thought it maybe because people called forward the end
of it and said, you know, this is wrong, we
shouldn't be doing this. But since dueling began, the church
and other legal bodies said said, we don't like this
because it takes the Uh it kind of cripples I
(35:59):
leegal stim because you're taking into your own hands. And
the church didn't like it. They were like, we want
to judge these people on their crimes. And it also
kind of violates one of the big bigger commandments. Absolutely
forget about the crusades for that one. But sure. Uh.
Military leaders didn't like it because it was killing off
able young bodied men. Yeah, and then later on war itself,
(36:23):
like the Civil War and the First World War really
were like, hey, there's more serious things going on. People
really die in battle, like it sort of became a
bit of fools undertaking. Well what I understand. I think
it also hit home to the horrors of combat, made
people not want to kill one another as much like
(36:44):
real deal combat. Yeah, and the Civil War and the
First World War. Like you said, we're linked to declines
in the US and Europe respectively of dueling. Um and
there's I guess also one of the other reasons dueling
declined was because when it was exposed to the male classes,
it wasn't just super rich people killing each other anymore,
(37:06):
which was the original purpose, which is why the lower
classes were like, who cares? Dueling is fine, Go, that's fine,
We're doing our own thing. And then once it's, like
you said, democratized and spread to the middle and lower classes,
it became a problem. And then eventually it was we
were left with dueling banjo's and that was about as
serious as it got. I think that that is an
(37:27):
excellent way to end this podcast. Dude, you got you can't.
I'm not even gonna ask if you have an anything more.
If you want to learn more about dueling and you
want to see some of these cool rules, you can
type duel into the search bar at how stuff works
dot com. Yeah, and I said search bar, which means
it's time for a listener mail. WHOA. I'm gonna say
(37:50):
whoa from now on, apparently, Chuck, Before we do listener mail,
we should announce our big south By Southwest extrap agans
two days two days in March, we'll call it Okay
March eleven, we will be live podcasting and this is
for south By Southwest attendees and badge holders only. Unfortunately,
uh Driscoll Hotel, Maximilian Room, three pm, Live podcast done.
(38:16):
What's happened in the next day. The next day from
five to nine at Fidough Irish Pub at to fourteen
West fourth Street in Austin, we are going to be
having a stuff you Should Know variety show. It's open
to the public. You don't have to be a badge holder,
free note cover and as a matter of fact, if
you were on the first hundred people through the door,
you get a free ticket for a free drink. That's right, yeah. Um.
(38:37):
And this is going to feature the likes of Hodgement,
Eugene Merman's gonna do some stand up for us, the
musical stylings of Lucy Waywright Roach who plays Jerry in
our TV pilot which you're gonna premiere. Um and let's
see Crooks local Austin Man. And then the Henry Clay
people are going to play some music as well. And
again we're gonna be showing clips from our TV pilot
(38:59):
that's going to air a science channel, and this is
the public debut. That's right. So if you are in
the just let's just say the west from Texas to California,
or actually you could go from the east. Just make
a point to be there. That's all I'm saying. You
can crash on my floor. Actually you can't, but you
can crash in your van. All right, back to it, Okay, yeah, Josh,
(39:22):
this is a shout out. Remember Joanne uh stand alonis
who nominated us to get nominated for a Grammy Award.
Grammy nominated, nominated, Right, we didn't make it because we're
not a celebrity reading our autopography, which is the only
people who get nominated for spoken word. I'm we're not um.
But Joanne is the founder and CEO of the Amazon Institute,
(39:43):
which we've talked about before, and she's doing a lot
of great work to help preserve the Amazon uh it
is Amazon Institute dot com. And they're having a little
contest where you can win two round trip tickets to Bogata, Columbia,
And this is how you do it. You go to
Amazon Institute dot com. Any listener who wants to can
(40:05):
participate by clicking our projects in the navigation bar. And
basically what you do is create a page on razoo
dot com to fundraise for them, and between now and
the end of June, June at midnight Eastern, the page
with the most funds gets to choose between two round
trip flights to Bogata or one ticket to travel with
(40:26):
her as your guide. Um, and it just covers air fare,
but she says, they'll hook you up with all the
information and cheap places to stay and um, flights depart
you've got to be over eighteen flights depart from New
York A see Port Lauderdale, Miami. I guess only okay
because they are limitations and you can always get a
(40:47):
connection to one of those cities. And travel dates are
August through December of this year. Tickets provided by Avianca
Airlines and uh they use Razoo because it's very transparent.
You can see where all the money is going. Very cool.
So Joanne, thank you for your participation with our show. Yeah,
we appreciate and with the Amazon Institute and uh go
(41:10):
out and win tickets to Columbia. People give them the
give them the website again it is Amazon Institute dot
com and you create a page to help them raise
money on Razu. What's the tab that you click our
projects and you could win a trip well. As always Chuck,
remember we put out the word for um NGOs and
(41:31):
nonprofits who need a good plug. We're always looking for those.
Um Yeah, we want to hear about them. Send them
to us. You can tweet to us at s y
s K podcast. That's our Twitter handle. Um You can
also reach us on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash snow,
and you can send us a nice link the email
(41:52):
at Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com. Be sure to
check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Join Halstework staff as we explore the most promising and
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(42:13):
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