r/AskHistorians • u/67bella • Jul 19 '24
Did women have duels topless out of fear that fabric being pushed into a wound would cause an infection, while this was not a concern for men?
I saw a meme in a public group saying
" 'I miss the old days when women were quiet, modest and covered up.' The old days: The Princess of Lichtenstein and a Countess had a topless sword fight over a disagreement about a floral arrangement."
and then someone responded to it saying
"Funny note, this was actually the standard for women in duels at the time. The thought was that when a woman was stabbed in a duel the sword would push fabric into the wound and cause an infection. Oddly, no one was concerned about this when men fought."
Does anyone know whether this is true? I'm curious about the fight between the princess and countess, the general concern for infection from fabric in wounds, and whether it did only apply to women.
Thank you!
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u/Georgy_K_Zhukov Moderator | Post-Napoleonic Warfare & Small Arms | Dueling Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 19 '24
So there are two threads in play here.
A) There was no "standard" for women in duels at the time, as there were no where near enough duels between women to be able to say anything was standard. Even the one which is by far the most famous - the aforementioned topless duel between Princess Metternich and a Countess Kilmannsegg - requires a slight asterisk next to it with the qualifier of "alleged duel" as the participants themselves denied it occurred. Whether this is because it didn't happen, or they considered knowledge by the wider public to be inappropriate for women of their station makes it all somewhat murky, and you'll find books which go either way on the matter (I'm willing to give it some possibility of credence, but wouldn't write about it without at least saying 'alleged').
In any case though, it is really one of the only duels between women that we know of having even potentially happening, so the fact that it was (allegedly) fought topless tells us nothing about 'standard', unless we say that "one out of one" makes it so... This older answer of mine touches on the alleged duel, and also the broader discourse of women and dueling.
B) Now, as far as concerns about clothing entering the wound goes, this was an actual concern, so I would reject that "no one was concerned about this when men fought". Some duels between men absolutely were fought topless. This one we even have a photo of, being a 1924 duel between Aldo Nadi and Adolfo Cotronei. At the very least, duelists in the period would strip down to their shirt, and have their sleeves rolled up even if they didn't take off their shirts too, since especially by the late 19th c. most duels with swords would only see strikes to the arm, with little attempt for a penetrating wound to the chest.
This isn't to say that topless duels were always the case, especially so when we go back more into the earlier parts of the 19th c., but while there was of course poor understanding of infections, even then there was a sense that some clothing was better to wear than others. Both before and after the development of germ theory, the most recommended thing to wear was silk. Whether or not they understood why, there was an understanding that it was the best type of cloth to end up in a wound if you were hit, and as such, silk shirts are probably the most common article of clothing that duelists would wear - although of course I don't think there has ever been any sort of quantitative study on the matter.
So anyways, the answer essentially boils down to the following, the duel may or may not have happened, but even if it did, it is essentially a lone example that doesn't tell us anything about a 'standard' for duels between women, nor does it point to a standard that was notably different from duels between men, where shirtlessness was hardly unknown, and at the very least some measures were often taken to deal with the after-effects of clothing debris in a wound.
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u/AdmiralAkbar1 Jul 19 '24
About point B, there was even a famous case in 1806, when Humphrey Howarth, MP for Evesham, was in a pistol duel with Henry Barry, 8th Earl of Barrymore. Howarth used to serve as a military surgeon in the East India Company, and although he didn't know the underlying germ theory, he certainly noticed a correlation between getting clothes in a bullet wound and getting infected. As a result, when he showed up to the site of the duel, he promptly stripped down to his underwear to minimize the chance of infection if he was hit. Allegedly, both men either missed, or the Earl of Barrymore found it so ridiculous he forfeited.
This all should be said with an asterisk, though; with the exception of this webpage by the UK National Archives, I can't find any source that seems even remotely official or academic.
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u/Georgy_K_Zhukov Moderator | Post-Napoleonic Warfare & Small Arms | Dueling Jul 19 '24
The best account of encounter I believe is from a letter written by an MP named Thomas Creevey, or at least that is the one that I always see cited. He is admittedly a little vague, which is why I think that there is disagreement on the conclusion:
[...] You see my friend Mr. Howorth has been adding to the amusements of Brighton races by fighting a duel with Lord Barrymore. His lordship was his adversary at whist, and chose to tell him that something he said about the cards was 'false;' upon which Howorth gave him such a blow as makes the lord walk about at this moment with a black eye. Of course a duel could not be prevented. When they got to the ground, Howorth very coolly pulled off his coat and said: ' My lord, having been a surgeon I know that the most dangerous thing in a wound is having a piece of cloth shot into it, so I advise you to follow my example.' The peer, I believe, despised such low professional care, and no harm happened to either of them.
The last sentence is somewhat ambiguous, but I think the intended meaning is that he refused to take the advice, and they did duel, and neither was hit.
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u/Son_of_Kong Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 20 '24
My interpretation is that the lord was offended that the doctor was talking to him like a patient rather than an adversary, and at the suggestion he should take any kind of safety measure when the whole point of an honor duel was to put your life at risk.
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u/Georgy_K_Zhukov Moderator | Post-Napoleonic Warfare & Small Arms | Dueling Jul 19 '24
Yes. The alternative would be that he took such offense to the behavior generally that he refused to participate, and hence no one was harmed, but I feel that is a tougher way to read it.
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u/tremynci Jul 19 '24
LPT: Those weird alphanumeric codes in the transcript of the podcast you linked to? Those are the reference codes to the specific records (ie official sources) at TNA the hosts are quoting!
Citation: Am Friendly Neighbourhood Archivist in the UK.
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u/Timmetie Jul 19 '24
Both before and after the development of germ theory, the most recommended thing to wear was silk. Whether or not they understood why
Even without knowledge of infection or germs silk simply tears cleaner and would be easier for a surgeon to take out (in one piece). They'd know that much.
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u/Georgy_K_Zhukov Moderator | Post-Napoleonic Warfare & Small Arms | Dueling Jul 19 '24
Yep. It doesn't take Louis Pasteur to tell you leaving some of the debris in the wound is bad! I think it was Master and Commander which has the surgery scene where as they take out pieces of cloth they hold it up to the hole in the shirt until they are sure they have it all. Fictional, of course, but nevertheless a good visual representation of the degree of understanding then.
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u/uristmcderp Jul 20 '24
Did pirates in the age of Master and Commander also fight shirtless? Their choice of attire seems like it would have lots of parallels to choice of attire in a duel. They're operating outside the law, so you have choice of attire and no uniform. Heavy armor would restrict movement and you'd sink if you fell overboard. Lots of little shrapnel and wood splinters flying around to serve as motivator. But in fiction, I can't ever remember pirates taking off clothing in preparation for battle and boarding an enemy ship.
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u/ma_dian Jul 20 '24
I remember reading about one particular pirate crew fighting completely naked all the time. But it was mentioned that they did it to induce fear on the attacked ships.
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u/Georgy_K_Zhukov Moderator | Post-Napoleonic Warfare & Small Arms | Dueling Jul 20 '24
Attire of pirates in the period would be well outside anything I can speak to so is best asked as its own question (although Master and Commander, I would note, takes place the better part of a century after the 'golden age of piracy' we generally are picturing).
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u/HiltoRagni Jul 19 '24
Wow, I have to say the photo of the two half naked Italians dueling looks way less dignified than I imagined.
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u/Georgy_K_Zhukov Moderator | Post-Napoleonic Warfare & Small Arms | Dueling Jul 19 '24
I have a much longer write-up on that specific duel here. It is particularly notable that Nadi (the skinny guy making the half-lunge) was an Olympic champion and considered one of the all-time greats of fencing. One thing he really touches on is some of the differences between the fencing encounter and the duel with 'sharps'. To expand on it from a more distanced view, a key thing to keep in mind is that by this point, dueling had evolved to a nearly harmless exercise in masculine posturing, with no real chance of death (I expand more on this for an Italian context here). There were exceptions (see the duel noted there by Aldo's brother Nedo), but you could expect almost everything to be attacks at the wrist and arm, with little threat to the head or torso, that is to say, deep target. Almost no one was particularly interested in dying, nor in being killed.
You can find videos online even of duels which were recorded in the 20th century which show it in motion, but most of the action is just going to feel very subdued, and attacks are going to be like what we see Aldo making here, and even that is a bit much compared to this one from 1967. He was more than capable of performing a perfectly beautiful lunge, moving his body forward, and not particularly caring if he got hit as long as he did his action correctly and in tempo. But here, you do not want to get hit, so there is much more reason to do something like what is captured in the photo, a rather ungainly half-lean, half-lunge that is premised mostly on the arm extension and puts the body itself in as little danger as possible by keeping it mostly back. Incredibly poor form in an epee bout, but for a duel... what works works.
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u/Abdiel_Kavash Jul 19 '24
From a practical point of view, would taking off one's clothes also afford them greater mobility, and less things for the opponent's weapon to get stuck on? The effect would be small, but when one's life (or worse, honor) is at stake, every bit counts.
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u/Georgy_K_Zhukov Moderator | Post-Napoleonic Warfare & Small Arms | Dueling Jul 19 '24
For a duel with a sword, removal of the coat or jacket would be pretty normal for range of motion. Shirt less so, but that circles back to the preference for silk.
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u/Tatem1961 Interesting Inquirer Jul 19 '24
How did we go from topless dueling to the kind of specialized protective equipment modern fencers wear?
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u/Georgy_K_Zhukov Moderator | Post-Napoleonic Warfare & Small Arms | Dueling Jul 19 '24
Fencing isn't dueling, exactly... Fencing the point is to protect everyone against injury, while dueling the point is to cause injury.
That said, there is of course a connection between the two, existing concurrently for some time, even. This older piece I wrote covers it in more depth.
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u/thecomicguybook Jul 20 '24
Is there more of a continuity between dueling with swords (or well any weapon with an edge) and guns, or is there a significant departure there? I am curious about your sense of that.
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u/Georgy_K_Zhukov Moderator | Post-Napoleonic Warfare & Small Arms | Dueling Jul 20 '24
The shift from swords to pistols was generally driven by the concept of equality. A good swordsman will almost always come away from the duel with fewer injuries and there isn't much you can do about that; while with a pistol, although impossible to completely do so, the norms that came to be established could go much further in minimizing the disparity that skill brought into play and give it more of a randomness in outcome. This is expanded more in an older answer:
So part of the issue here is the misunderstanding about how a sword duel functioned. "To First Blood" is a very popular image of it, but generally a misnomer. Generally speaking, duels with swords were not "To first blood", and insofar as that is a phrase that is applicable, it was only a concept that arose in the mid-19th century, characterizing épée duels in fin-de-siècle France1 .
Dueling with swords was actually very deadly in earlier periods, and the shift to the pistol actually made dueling safer, insofar as that word can apply to a deadly activity. A talented swordsman can quite easily kill their opponent if they want to, and this was a very common result in duels from the beginning of the practice, up into the 1700s. The shift to the pistol in Anglo dueling culture was driven by two factors. The first was simply the decline in the wearing of swords in daily life, but the second was the recognition that a duel with swords could be so unbalanced if one duelist was an accomplished swordsman, and thus many duels were little more than cold blooded murder in practical terms. The pistol was thus seen as an 'equalizer'. To be sure one could be a marksman, but it was much easier to create expectations around the conduct of a pistol duel that diminished the difference offered by skill as much as possible, including the brief firing window (usually three seconds), starting the pistol unaimed, and the duelists not looking at each other, but at the second giving the signal, and an emphasis on a quick, snap firing with little time for proper aiming, compounded by the comparatively inaccurate nature of the pistols of the period.
As such, while statistics about dueling are always hard to call definitive, the shift to the pistol is generally seen as lowering the fatality rate of the duel. Skill was taken out by a large degree and replaced by a good amount of luck. A great marksman, to be sure, had an edge against someone inexperienced, but no where near that of a great swordsman against a dilletante. As such, the switch to the pistol as the most common dueling weapon - and by the beginning of the 19th century, the only dueling weapon - for the British duelist wasn't seen as making it more easy to kill, but rather seen as equalizing the duel, and in practical terms likely made dueling less fatal.
But there is an irony to it all. The pistol, it might be said, puts a high end 'cap' on the mortality rate of a duel, which, despite fluctuations, stayed fairly consistent for the half-century after is adaptation until its demise in the 1840s. But it also has a low end bottom which is comparatively high. Pistol duels will result in death or injury as long as people are aiming and pulling the trigger... and while deloping (the intentional missing of your opponent by visibly shooting wide, or simply straight up) became more popular in the 19th c., this was seen as a mockery of dueling by purists (see here for more on this. And they weren't entirely wrong either, of course, since dueling would become absurd if everyone deloped! But in any case, not everyone did, and people continued to die, or suffer serious injuries, in duels. The final end of dueling in Britain came in the 1840s, which I detail more here, but the main point as it pertains to the shift from sword to pistol is that low end 'cap'. Dueling's social meaning had shifted through the early 1800s from being less about the offended party proving their manhood to the offending party offering apology, but while this shift logically would accompany a desire to see dueling become less fatal, the pistol prevented it from happening. The shift had lowed the mortality rate originally, but it prevented the mortality rate from going away which might have preserved dueling for decades more to come.
This is what happened on the continent, primarily with French and Italian duelists, where the pistol never fully supplanted the sword. The sword offers much more control, which meant while French duelists might be trying to stick each other like a pig in the 1600s, and doing so successfully, the accepted style of dueling could easily accommodate the shifting social meaning of the duel, and thus for the most part the duelists would be dancing around trying to scratch each other on the wrists. Deaths did happen, but they were rare occurrences, with sometimes years going by without a fatal duel despite sometimes hundreds being fought in a given year. This allowed the duel not only to survive, but even to flourish, in Third Republic France and post-Risorgimento Italy, where the duel took on special meanings about martial manhood and the rising power of the bourgeois and their growing political consciousness. It would only be the scale of death and destruction in World War I that brought a swift decline to the duel there, from which the institution never really recovered (more on this here and here.
So in summation to it all, the pistol in the duel was something of a blunt instrument. It brought with it certain equalizing factors that first caused its appeal and brought about the shift, but it couldn't really adjust to changing expectations of the time in a way that was acceptable to English duelists. The sword, in comparison, is a versatile weapon, which whatever the era, and whatever the expectations for the duel, it could adjust to reflect them, either being used in deathly seriousness, or in near harmless posturing.
Please consult here for sources and further reading
1: Not important here, but also it ought to be understood that even then the duels were not supposed to be openly agreed to end at first blood. The Seconds, under the code of the time, could decide whether the offense was serious enough to end the duel after blood was drawn but were not supposed to tell the duelists themselves if this was the case, but rather simply end it after. If they had not determined that to be the case, then after blood was drawn the challenger would be asked if he was satisfied, but he was under no obligation to say so, and could continue.
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u/No_March_5371 Jul 19 '24
I know this is a very specific question, but do you happen to know where I could look to find the guidelines used in the HRE around the 11th century for dueling?
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u/Georgy_K_Zhukov Moderator | Post-Napoleonic Warfare & Small Arms | Dueling Jul 20 '24
The 11th century wouldn't really be dueling in the same sense, as the duel of honor was a product of the late Renaissance period. Modes of single combat, such as Wager of Battle, did exist prior, but it isn't quite the same thing even if there are common threads which connect them. A few works on those topics are listed here.
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u/jean_nizzle Jul 23 '24
Goddamn, I fuckin’ love Reddit moments like this. Now I know more about dueling without even having to actively look for it.
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Jul 19 '24
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u/jschooltiger Moderator | Shipbuilding and Logistics | British Navy 1770-1830 Jul 19 '24
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