Hey, everybody, chuck here with a little Saturday select for you. I challenge you to listen to this episode on Duels because the name is cool and the topic is school. It is Duels Colin A guide to throwing down the Gauntlet. Here's a little, uh spoiler for you. The gauntlet was a glove. It's for March two thousand twelve, and I hope you dig it. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me. It's Charles W. Chuff Bryant and uh, you've got Stuff you Should Know on guard. Yeah, to see it means a touch in French. 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 to read it. Should we just read it? Yeah? Ed Grabanowski never lets us down. No, 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. Your dueling pistols are loaded, One or both of you could be severely wounded or killed. Today doctors are standing by them in the damage if possible, while your friends eye each other warily. Why is this all happening because you made fun of his hat? It's so good. It's 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 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, surely, 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 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 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 draws shootouts? Like, let's say they were ten in the movie. Each one of them was different. He filmed them different and had a different feel Like. I just thought that was so creative, like 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 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. If he does that, then'll be the second time he's remade the Evil Dead, because The Evil Dead two is a remake of the Evil Dead. Yeah, pretty much. Okay, alright, 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 know that. I don't like some eleven year old kid called us out on that. I think he might have misartus because I definitely hear the difference between etomology and entomology. Etomology etomology of the word duel is um, I think Latin right, duello, I'm sorry, dwell hum, which is a contraction of a duo two and bellum war obviously antebellum pre war. Oh I never realized that. Huh, okay, but duo too. It's basically a war between two individuals as 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 bit about the history. Yeah, let's just throw down the gauntlet. So somebody does throw down the gauntlet, and a gauntlet is a glove, and when you threw down a gauntlet at the feet of somebody that was at the height of dueling, um enough to issue a challenge, say, you and I are going to try to kill one another for a little bit, or not necessarily. We'll get to that. UM. When you went to a duel, you had a second which basically was the guy who came along a friend to 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 basic we make sure you weren't ambushed. Um. 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 would actually fight the other second, and sometimes there was third and force that would fight the other third and 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. 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, saddest ending a river Penix's character. Let's say, since he really died, then that's we should point that out. He had to say it ending in real life as well. Um, so, Chuck. 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 to use 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. 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 Duello Toorium, which was in the fourteen hundreds. The ill Duello. In the Germans had their own dueling code which UM. It was set by the fact Schuln dueling schools. Imagine there's was just because they were German. It was probably a little more hardcore, although everything was pretty hardcore 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. It's to regain honor. Dueling is the result of an insult. When somebody insults you and you challenge them to a duel, you were 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 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 designed so that when you're using a clumsy seventeenth century firearm, 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 to get hurt. They didn't really like that because that sort of takes all the the hutzpah 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, we're not there yet. Okay, 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. Let's say there's an injury. You could kill him if you wanted. You could just humiliate him if you wanted. You could be a good guy and say, you know what, my honor has been a squashed. It's great, so, uh, let me give you a hand up, 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 cut the other person's head off after finishing him 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. 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 in 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 say. Women typically did not duel and when they did, uh, it says in the article here it 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 that right, except except if you were dumb enough to make, uh that kind of judgment about Lamo 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. And uh, however, I think she like the ladies as well, because later in her life, after performing in bars and 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, set that room on fire to fake her own death so she could escape the convent with her female lover, Llamo pen So 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 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. I mean not like a lot, like it was a rougher 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 than any guy fight I've ever seen, because girls fight dirty. Yeah, both of these girls were fighting very dirty. It was really horrible. One of the I think like the assistant principal jumped in and got like smacked around and ended up backing off. Yeah, it was a bad fight. So there was nothing funny about that one. No, not at all. I mean, really, is there anything funny about anybody fighting? No, I don't think so, unless it's, like, 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. Yeah, 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, 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 its 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 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 matter how bad the retort is from the first insult, Yes, whoever insults the other person first has to apologize first, right, then they shoot it 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 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 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 us had to shoot at each other three times, or I imagine maybe deal three blows with a sword. Right, But by this time seventeen 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 duel. It's uh, there's certain etiquette, right. 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 duello 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 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, Yeah, I'm sure you are acutely interested in not killing and not dying at that moment. Yeah, I would have 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 funny, right, But they took it way more serious than So. There's this rule that says, man, if you're going to get 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 admisionable. In any case, the challenger ought not to have challenge without receiving offense, and the challenged ought, if he gave offense, to have made an apology before he came on the ground. Therefore, children's play must 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 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 ahead of time, like, hey, we're actually gonna do the duel but we'll both shoot into the air, um like you don't want to die, 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 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 to do 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. Yeah, yeah, which 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, well, it would. I guess it was for balance of power. I don't know if it would. 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 and Weehawken, New Jersey, and uh, there are 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 is debatable. Alexander Hamilton was a crack shot, had great timing, he had catlike reflexes. Aaron Burr shot Hamilton's Hamilton's fired into the air. 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 outs. 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 mean who's on the tin? Yeah, the ten dollar Bill Jackson's on the twenty. Alexander Hamilton's on the time. Stop emailing. You've got nothing but twenties O in your role so that I can't even tell you who's on the time. And did they even make dollar bills. Um, So, Chuck, let's get two seconds, which again I want to say that, um oh, before I got ahead of ourselves. I'm sorry. Um. Also, you 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 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 wake up in the middle of the night angry. Yeah, that's pretty bad when the rage of seething chucks sk So, Chuck, do you want 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 way and load in the presence of one another. I can't shake the feeling that we're both in trouble. I know, Um, they would have to uh, Like I said, load the guns together and in front of each other, and the gun 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 boar smooth, and we're doing it right here so everyone can see it. Their 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 kind of resolution and the seconds clearly are 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. 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? I think the authors had put in a full day by the time they got to this rule. Or maybe at right angles it 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, yeah, 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, especially when it doesn't necessarily result in the decapitation of what when you cut somebody's head off and posted on a pike in the town square? The duels over? But there's also um more nuanced endings possible right rule number five if schualj are used, m the parties engage until one is well bloodied, disabled, or disarmed, or until after receiving a wound and blood being drawn. The aggression begs Paul, done right unless the unless the person who's disabled insists that it's only a flash point. Right. He does have a did you notice his his money Python reference in here? No, that's not 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 work and they made money off of rent from their huge tracts of land. That's for money python. I don't remember that part. 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. I'm sure the grabstor he's always sneaking them in um. And also any wounds sufficient to agitate the nerves, yeah, 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 rule 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 U. S. Navy midship Men's Handbook. 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 European countries, Um, commoners weren't allowed to duel. It was out it was illegal. Yeah, and before guns 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 were plenty of dual like circumstances among commoners too. It was just the bar fight. You just can't let the local fuzz find out what you're doing. 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 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 um and you have honor, and it's fragile, extremely at all times. Uh, it's prone to be insulted at the drop of the hat, at the drop of a glove, especially very nice, 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 schmo of noble rank um. I imagine if a commoner came up and insulted your family, 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 in and soult 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, they don't really have a choice. 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 way, if you let it slide or you shirk a duel, you're a coward. And that was a big deal back then. It wasn't just like, 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. You know 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, Jerick Howard. It 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. 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 tracts of land. Well they couldn't work. No, they like you couldn't were 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 horts shoes. You're a nobleman, you have to make your money off of rent. So the end result of that is after a lot of sitting around in uh fox hunting and me drinking, you get a little bored, and so dueling kind of became a sport for board nobleman. Yeah, these young guys are like, well, got nothing better to do, so let me go down to the pub and uh throw down the gauntlet on someone, or just be really easily 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. Yeah, in a field where you know, there is a definite set hierarchy. Earls are equal to earls, and dukes equal to dukes, and viscounts equal to viscounts. Um vice roys equal device roys. That whole kind of thing. I could continue, please do 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 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 and twelve centuries. Um, you would have trial by combat. Sometimes it was like 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 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 appointed really professional duelists. That's awesome and I can't imagine beating that guy. Yeah, who would that? What was the uh well sky in the Max Mad Max three? Master Blaster? Yeah, Master Blaster. You would fight Master Blaster? Yeah you killed them. Boy, what a reveal that was when they took off his mask. Ye. Powerful stuff as watch sks. 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'll settle it. And I know I'm really good with the sword, 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, 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 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. So in Missouri even just killed the dude before like and day and you're all set. Yeah. Can you imagine like New Gingrich 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 classes, to the elimination of political rivals. Um. And it comes from even further back than that though. Like the the duel, the idea of one person battling another person in some sort of combat in a formal rule driven way Grabser goes back to jostin competitions in the Middle Ages, I think go back to glatiutorial 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 horse back. Then you had the chivalric code, which sort 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, I'm not descending 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 was all right. Uh, So they would reveal their identities, and that Josh, as you know, was evolved into the military salute. Years later, had the lift of the visor evolved into the hand I guess yeah, 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 musket. The smooth board must get with terrible aim and accuracy, which cover it'll kill you. Yeah. In our night's podcast, it was kind 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. 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, especially after the Italian said, I don't want to die. Let's put a little put a little rubber tip on the end. That my sister was in defencing really college, you interesting, my oldest 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 the whole get up in in the 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 did just end up having a closet full of gear really gets used. I didn't know you're in the hockey. I was at one point, uh, mid twenties. Yeah, 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, 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 actually cheaper than swords and cheaper than get trained and fencing. You could 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 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 duels well, 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 for 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 a legal system because you're taking into your own hands. And the church didn't like it. They're 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, like the Civil War and the First World War. Really we're 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. Yeah, like 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 is I guess. Also one of the other reasons dueling declined was because when it was exposed to the middle classes, it wasn't just super rich people killing each other anymore, which was the original purpose, which is why the lower classes are 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 I got. I think that that is an excellent way to end this podcast. Dude, you got you can't. I'm not even gonna ask if you have 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. 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 Stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email of the Stuff podcast to how stuff worce dot com and has always joined us at our home on the web. Stuff you Should No dot Com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. 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Hey, everybody, chuck here with a little Saturday select for you. I challenge you to listen to this episode on Duels because the name is cool and the topic is school. It is Duels Colin A guide to throwing down the Gauntlet. Here's a little, uh spoiler for you. The gauntlet was a glove. It's for March two thousand twelve, and I hope you dig it. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me. It's Charles W. Chuff Bryant and uh, you've got Stuff you Should Know on guard. Yeah, to see it means a touch in French. 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 to read it. Should we just read it? Yeah? Ed Grabanowski never lets us down. No, 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. Your dueling pistols are loaded, One or both of you could be severely wounded or killed. Today doctors are standing by them in the damage if possible, while your friends eye each other warily. Why is this all happening because you made fun of his hat? It's so good. It's 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 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, surely, 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 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 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 draws shootouts? Like, let's say they were ten in the movie. Each one of them was different. He filmed them different and had a different feel Like. I just thought that was so creative, like 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 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. If he does that, then'll be the second time he's remade the Evil Dead, because The Evil Dead two is a remake of the Evil Dead. Yeah, pretty much. Okay, alright, 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 know that. I don't like some eleven year old kid called us out on that. I think he might have misartus because I definitely hear the difference between etomology and entomology. Etomology etomology of the word duel is um, I think Latin right, duello, I'm sorry, dwell hum, which is a contraction of a duo two and bellum war obviously antebellum pre war. Oh I never realized that. Huh, okay, but duo too. It's basically a war between two individuals as 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 bit about the history. Yeah, let's just throw down the gauntlet. So somebody does throw down the gauntlet, and a gauntlet is a glove, and when you threw down a gauntlet at the feet of somebody that was at the height of dueling, um enough to issue a challenge, say, you and I are going to try to kill one another for a little bit, or not necessarily. We'll get to that. UM. When you went to a duel, you had a second which basically was the guy who came along a friend to 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 basic we make sure you weren't ambushed. Um. 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 would actually fight the other second, and sometimes there was third and force that would fight the other third and 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. 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, saddest ending a river Penix's character. Let's say, since he really died, then that's we should point that out. He had to say it ending in real life as well. Um, so, Chuck. 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 to use 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. 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 Duello Toorium, which was in the fourteen hundreds. The ill Duello. In the Germans had their own dueling code which UM. It was set by the fact Schuln dueling schools. Imagine there's was just because they were German. It was probably a little more hardcore, although everything was pretty hardcore 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. It's to regain honor. Dueling is the result of an insult. When somebody insults you and you challenge them to a duel, you were 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 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 designed so that when you're using a clumsy seventeenth century firearm, 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 to get hurt. They didn't really like that because that sort of takes all the the hutzpah 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, we're not there yet. Okay, 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. Let's say there's an injury. You could kill him if you wanted. You could just humiliate him if you wanted. You could be a good guy and say, you know what, my honor has been a squashed. It's great, so, uh, let me give you a hand up, 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 cut the other person's head off after finishing him 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. 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 in 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 say. Women typically did not duel and when they did, uh, it says in the article here it 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 that right, except except if you were dumb enough to make, uh that kind of judgment about Lamo 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. And uh, however, I think she like the ladies as well, because later in her life, after performing in bars and 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, set that room on fire to fake her own death so she could escape the convent with her female lover, Llamo pen So 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 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. I mean not like a lot, like it was a rougher 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 than any guy fight I've ever seen, because girls fight dirty. Yeah, both of these girls were fighting very dirty. It was really horrible. One of the I think like the assistant principal jumped in and got like smacked around and ended up backing off. Yeah, it was a bad fight. So there was nothing funny about that one. No, not at all. I mean, really, is there anything funny about anybody fighting? No, I don't think so, unless it's, like, 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. Yeah, 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, 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 its 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 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 matter how bad the retort is from the first insult, Yes, whoever insults the other person first has to apologize first, right, then they shoot it 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 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 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 us had to shoot at each other three times, or I imagine maybe deal three blows with a sword. Right, But by this time seventeen 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 duel. It's uh, there's certain etiquette, right. 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 duello 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 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, Yeah, I'm sure you are acutely interested in not killing and not dying at that moment. Yeah, I would have 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 funny, right, But they took it way more serious than So. There's this rule that says, man, if you're going to get 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 admisionable. In any case, the challenger ought not to have challenge without receiving offense, and the challenged ought, if he gave offense, to have made an apology before he came on the ground. Therefore, children's play must 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 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 ahead of time, like, hey, we're actually gonna do the duel but we'll both shoot into the air, um like you don't want to die, 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 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 to do 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. Yeah, yeah, which 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, well, it would. I guess it was for balance of power. I don't know if it would. 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 and Weehawken, New Jersey, and uh, there are 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 is debatable. Alexander Hamilton was a crack shot, had great timing, he had catlike reflexes. Aaron Burr shot Hamilton's Hamilton's fired into the air. 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 outs. 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 mean who's on the tin? Yeah, the ten dollar Bill Jackson's on the twenty. Alexander Hamilton's on the time. Stop emailing. You've got nothing but twenties O in your role so that I can't even tell you who's on the time. And did they even make dollar bills. Um, So, Chuck, let's get two seconds, which again I want to say that, um oh, before I got ahead of ourselves. I'm sorry. Um. Also, you 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 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 wake up in the middle of the night angry. Yeah, that's pretty bad when the rage of seething chucks sk So, Chuck, do you want 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 way and load in the presence of one another. I can't shake the feeling that we're both in trouble. I know, Um, they would have to uh, Like I said, load the guns together and in front of each other, and the gun 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 boar smooth, and we're doing it right here so everyone can see it. Their 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 kind of resolution and the seconds clearly are 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. 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? I think the authors had put in a full day by the time they got to this rule. Or maybe at right angles it 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, yeah, 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, especially when it doesn't necessarily result in the decapitation of what when you cut somebody's head off and posted on a pike in the town square? The duels over? But there's also um more nuanced endings possible right rule number five if schualj are used, m the parties engage until one is well bloodied, disabled, or disarmed, or until after receiving a wound and blood being drawn. The aggression begs Paul, done right unless the unless the person who's disabled insists that it's only a flash point. Right. He does have a did you notice his his money Python reference in here? No, that's not 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 work and they made money off of rent from their huge tracts of land. That's for money python. I don't remember that part. 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. I'm sure the grabstor he's always sneaking them in um. And also any wounds sufficient to agitate the nerves, yeah, 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 rule 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 U. S. Navy midship Men's Handbook. 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 European countries, Um, commoners weren't allowed to duel. It was out it was illegal. Yeah, and before guns 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 were plenty of dual like circumstances among commoners too. It was just the bar fight. You just can't let the local fuzz find out what you're doing. 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 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 um and you have honor, and it's fragile, extremely at all times. Uh, it's prone to be insulted at the drop of the hat, at the drop of a glove, especially very nice, 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 schmo of noble rank um. I imagine if a commoner came up and insulted your family, 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 in and soult 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, they don't really have a choice. 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 way, if you let it slide or you shirk a duel, you're a coward. And that was a big deal back then. It wasn't just like, 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. You know 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, Jerick Howard. It 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. 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 tracts of land. Well they couldn't work. No, they like you couldn't were 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 horts shoes. You're a nobleman, you have to make your money off of rent. So the end result of that is after a lot of sitting around in uh fox hunting and me drinking, you get a little bored, and so dueling kind of became a sport for board nobleman. Yeah, these young guys are like, well, got nothing better to do, so let me go down to the pub and uh throw down the gauntlet on someone, or just be really easily 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. Yeah, in a field where you know, there is a definite set hierarchy. Earls are equal to earls, and dukes equal to dukes, and viscounts equal to viscounts. Um vice roys equal device roys. That whole kind of thing. I could continue, please do 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 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 and twelve centuries. Um, you would have trial by combat. Sometimes it was like 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 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 appointed really professional duelists. That's awesome and I can't imagine beating that guy. Yeah, who would that? What was the uh well sky in the Max Mad Max three? Master Blaster? Yeah, Master Blaster. You would fight Master Blaster? Yeah you killed them. Boy, what a reveal that was when they took off his mask. Ye. Powerful stuff as watch sks. 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'll settle it. And I know I'm really good with the sword, 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, 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 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. So in Missouri even just killed the dude before like and day and you're all set. Yeah. Can you imagine like New Gingrich 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 classes, to the elimination of political rivals. Um. And it comes from even further back than that though. Like the the duel, the idea of one person battling another person in some sort of combat in a formal rule driven way Grabser goes back to jostin competitions in the Middle Ages, I think go back to glatiutorial 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 horse back. Then you had the chivalric code, which sort 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, I'm not descending 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 was all right. Uh, So they would reveal their identities, and that Josh, as you know, was evolved into the military salute. Years later, had the lift of the visor evolved into the hand I guess yeah, 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 musket. The smooth board must get with terrible aim and accuracy, which cover it'll kill you. Yeah. In our night's podcast, it was kind 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. 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, especially after the Italian said, I don't want to die. Let's put a little put a little rubber tip on the end. That my sister was in defencing really college, you interesting, my oldest 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 the whole get up in in the 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 did just end up having a closet full of gear really gets used. I didn't know you're in the hockey. I was at one point, uh, mid twenties. Yeah, 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, 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 actually cheaper than swords and cheaper than get trained and fencing. You could 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 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 duels well, 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 for 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 a legal system because you're taking into your own hands. And the church didn't like it. They're 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, like the Civil War and the First World War. Really we're 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. Yeah, like 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 is I guess. Also one of the other reasons dueling declined was because when it was exposed to the middle classes, it wasn't just super rich people killing each other anymore, which was the original purpose, which is why the lower classes are 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 I got. I think that that is an excellent way to end this podcast. Dude, you got you can't. I'm not even gonna ask if you have 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. 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 Stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email of the Stuff podcast to how stuff worce dot com and has always joined us at our home on the web. Stuff you Should No dot Com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. 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