Comments on: What killed the duel?

By: Gaikokumaniakku

Gaikokumaniakku — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 23:33:30 +0000

The history is interesting, but the pressing problem is, how can flabby, obese moderns be motivated to revive their individual capacities for fighting?

With no dueling culture and very little martial arts practice, moderns are degenerating into post-mammalian blobs of flab.

By: Scipio Americanus

Scipio Americanus — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 21:19:47 +0000

Reliable and also accurate, something that comes as a surprise to some.

Smoothbore black-powder weapons firing ball could be quite accurate, something true of the arquebuses common in the pike-and-shot era, and dueling pistols for the entire time they were in common use. Military muskets grew less accurate as time went on because under conditions of combat stress rate of fire tended to win out over theoretical accuracy. That is, the accuracy of the muskets was far greater than that of the men firing them in battle. from the 1700s on, windage was progressively increased to make them faster and easier to load.

By: Phil B.

Phil B. — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 18:55:33 +0000

No, flintlock pistols, if properly adjusted, are very reliable. The top quality flintlock duelling pistols were extremely reliable, and as they had little use would have been in fine order.

Here is me thinking that the reason people carried swords and pistols was because pistols (regardless if flint or percussion lock) were slow and impractical to reload in the middle of a battle.

You live and learn …

By: Wilbur Hassenfus

Wilbur Hassenfus — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 14:41:37 +0000

I’ve always heard it as a truism that dueling began its decline around the early 19th century as pistols began to displace swords as the fashionable weapon. With swords, you could often satisfy honor with first blood. Pistols were much more binary.

I don’t have a source for this; I probably first heard it decades ago. Couldn’t say where. I believe Patrick O’Brian may mention it. That doesn’t mean it’s true; O’Brian was pretty creative sometimes. But he said it long before Raymond congratulated himself for saying it first.