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Dueling in SE Col. Summers Park, 2-5 Sunday (today! soon!)

Something from the past weekend of fighting was notable to me (other than the standard awesomeness of the usual battle and camaraderie). Some old friends showed up for battle towards the end of the day. Steve, who is known for a kendo past and some extremely fast and ferocious katana style attacks came and when we fought, as is common and expected in kendo, he delivered a lot of “late hits”. To encourage you being on your guard, in kendo swordsmen can strike each other whenever, even while separating after contact has been made. This is not how we usually fight in Mu Ryu, but I was a sport about it and didn’t really remind Steve that he was breaching standard etiquette and I was up for the challenge of it.

Arriving with Musashi-esque strategic timing Chopper soon rolled through on a red tall bike. As I was hella tired insisted that I get a break before battling fresh Chopper, who swings his sword powered like an ax. So he and Steve fought. Ultraviolence. & Steve kept late hitting Chopper. And this began to clearly annoy Chopper and I could see the steam begin to rise. & of course that raises the spirit to swing for the stars. Anyways, soon enough Chopper gave Steve a talking to about the late hits and was very thorough and polite about it – & the irony is that the 1st day Chopper came to Mu Ryu he fought (me) and losing points was frustrating him because he is fierce wild man. So once he kept on swinging and swinging and we saw that the consequence of late hitting is that you keep hitting until somebody can’t keep hitting – lesson: no late hitting! except accidentally, which we all do.

Anyways, back to the point, that the entire exchange brought to mind the following quote from 19th century Highland broadsword master Thomas Mathewson:

It is the cultivation of this art that unfetters the body, strengthens it and makes it upright; it is it that gives a becoming deportment and an easy carriage, activity and agility, grace and dignity;- it is it that opportunely awes petulance, softens and polishes savageness and rudeness, and animates a proper confidence; it is it which in teaching us to conquer ourselves, that we may be able to conquer others, imprints respect, and gives true valour, good nature and politeness; in fine, which makes a man fit for society.

Come fight!

Donald McBane: swordsman, soldier, Scotsman, gambler, pimp & author of The Expert Swordman’s Companion: Or the True Art of Self-Defence, With an Account of the Author’s Life, and his Transactions during the Wars with France.

At 23 he left his apprenticeship as a tobacco spinner for the army and adventure. After a few years another soldier started appropriating McBane’s pay whereupon McBane challenged him for redress. After an initial rout where his broadsword wielding opponent knocked McBane’s sword from his hand, beat him and pawned his sword, McBane took additional lessons on the smallsword versus the broadsword. Next time McBane skewered him through and kept studying until he was his master’s top student.

More battles, injuries, and duels over trifles continued. McBane continied studying the swordin Dublin under a French master. Laster in Belgium he was forced to fight and win 24 bouts with the locale’s establishd master’s to teach in peace.

Soon enough McBane discovered some of his fellow swordsmen were sidelining in prositution and gambling and he

resolved to have a share of that Gain, or at least to have a fair Tryall for it. I Fought all the four, one by one: the last of them was Left-handed; he and I went to the Rampart where we searched one another for Fire Arms. Finding none, we drew and had two or three clean Turns: at last he put up his Hand and took a Pistol from the Cock of his Hat; he cocked it against his shoulder and presented it to me, upon which I asked Quarters, but he refused, calling me an “English Bouger,” and Fired at me and run for it. One of the balls Went through my Cravat. I thinking I was shot did not Run as I was wont to do, but run as I could after him, crying for the Guard … at last I overtook him…and gave him a thrust in the buttocks …. [I] call’d for his Commerads that same Night, who agreed to give me a Brace of Whoors, and Two Petty Couns a Week. With this and my School I lived very well for that Winter.

Next he participated in the War of Spanish Succession, the first real pan-Euro war. More misadventures and brawls following. At the Battlen of Blenheim on August 13, 1704 McBane was show 4 times, received 5 bayonet wounds and was left for dead on the fiel. At night plundering Dutch (allied) troops clubbed him for his clothes and left him “expecting Death every minute, not only by reason of Wounds, but by reason of the old and the great Thirst that I had, I drank several handfuls of the Dead Mens Blood I lay beside, the more I Drank the worse I was.”

He recovered.
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Harper’s Weekley, 1863

“There are parts of the United States where a politician must necessarily be prepared to fight duels … a politician who will not fight must stand aside, and cannot command the popular suffrage … Man is a carnivorous and bloody-minded creature. Civilization, even of the purest kind, only half tames him. Many of the best of men have a secret relish for blood, and slaughter, and horrors.
“Political duellists are the prize-fighters of their part of the country … Jones and Smith, of Arkansas, may not like being shot at; but the people of Arkansas – like the rest of us _ relish the excitement of a duel, and this is the price they set on their suffrages … Candidates among them they require to be fighting men.”

Good examples of this spirit are evidenced in the Burr-Hamilton duel where the much maligned Aaron Burr finished off Alexander Hamilton (who is the seed of the AmeriCorporatEmpire), Senator John Randolph and Speaker of the House Henry Clay, and Andrew Jackson’s duel with Charles Dickinson. Jackson may have been in 5 to 100 duels according to historians (a fav trick of Old Hickory to to show up wearing a massive clock, wherein his slender frame was hard to aim at).

Jackson and Dickinson were rival horse breeders and southern plantation owners with a long-standing hatred of each other. Dickinson accused Jackson of reneging on a horse bet, calling Jackson a “coward and an equivocator.” Dickinson also called Rachel Jackson a “bigamist.” (Rachel had married Jackson not knowing her first husband had failed to finalize their divorce.) After the insult to Rachel and a statement published in the National Review in which Dickinson called Jackson “a worthless scoundrel” and, again, a “coward,” Jackson challenged Dickinson to a duel.

On May 30, 1806, Jackson and Dickinson met at Harrison’s Mills on the Red River in Logan, Kentucky. At the first signal from their seconds, Dickinson fired. Jackson received Dickinson’s first bullet in the chest next to his heart. Jackson put his hand over the wound to staunch the flow of blood and stayed standing long enough to fire his gun. Dickinson’s seconds claimed Jackson’s first shot misfired, which would have meant the duel was over, but, in a breach of etiquette, Jackson re-cocked the gun and shot again, this time killing his opponent. Although Jackson recovered, he suffered chronic pain from the wound for the remainder of his life.

OLD
Sir Palomides and Sir Goneyeres entered the field, jousted, and broke their spears. Then they both drew their swords; with his first stroke Sir Palomides knocked his opponent to the ground, and with his second stroke beheaded him. Then Sir Palomides went to supper.

NEW
The challenge gave Alexander K. McClung the right to set terms, and they were odd: From eighty paces apart, each with four pistols and two bowie knives, they would walk toward each other shooting at will. If the last bullet was spent and both were still standing, the bowie knives would finish the matter.

They met in a bushy tract along the Pearl River. At the signal, they started forward, and Allen cried, “Now we’ll see who’s the coward!” and raised his first gun, “Yes, we will,” said McClung, but he kept his own gun down. They were still over a hundred feet apart. Allen, nervous, fired and missed.

“Are you content?” called McClung.
“No!” cried Allen and pulled out his second pistol.
McClung replied, “Then I’ll hit you in the teeth.”

He fired almost casually, they say, but it was an amazing shot, considered an American distance record for a dueling pistol, and exactly in the teeth as he’d promised. The ball imbedded itself in the back of Allen’s neck, and he died as he fell.

Mark Twain once almost had to fight a duel with a man who would have probably killed him dead. Fortunately he had a tutor named Gilles and when Twain’s opponent came by Gilles promptly shot the head off a small bird and told the man that Twain had done it and he was next. Everybody made up and walked away, but Twain later opined on dueling:

“I have never had anything do with duels since, I consider them unwise and I know they are dangerous. Also, sinful. If a man should challenge me now I would go to that man and take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet spot and kill him, Still, I have always taken a great interest in other people’s duels, One always feels an abiding interest in any heroic thing which has entered into his own experience.”

A London journal conducted a study of Italian duels in the ten years between 1879 and 1889 and found records and statistics for only a paltry 2,759, though it admitted that many others weren’t on the records.

Originators of swordplay, Italians clung to their rapiers; ninety-three percent of the time they fought with blades. Nearly four thousand wounds resulted, 1,066 listed as serious and fifty as fatal. Of the causes of combat, thirty percent were political, nineteen percent cards and other games, ten percent religious discussions, and only eight percent insults. Five times as many happened in summer as in winter, either because of the inflammatory nature of warm sunshine or because nobody wanted to go outdoors and fight in the cold rains of January. Almost none were fought during Lent; perhaps dueling was a popular indulgence to renounce for the season. Of a hundred principals singled out for inspection, thirty were military and twenty-nine were journalists, along with twelve lawyers, four students, three professors, three engineers, and three members of parliament.

Most damning of all in some eyes, only two percent of the combatants died, making the Italian duel not much more dangerous than football. Since facing possible death was central to the whole mystique why bother to fight at all with odds like that?

- From Gentlemen’s Blood by Barbara Holland