La Garde Ecossaise Historical Fiction and Early Modern Studies Newsletter

Welcome

A warm welcome to the La Garde Ecossaise Historical Fiction newsletter – this is your fortnightly update on the novel series and early modern studies.

Latest Releases from La Garde Ecossaise

Podcast Season 2, Episode 2 Rules of Engagement and Codes of Conduct in Early Modern Warfare.

Podcast Season 2, Episode 3 The Swordsman in Early Modern Europe.

Quote

‘He sent me away with some reading, but I had the fire in my belly again and I was keen to revisit some of the theory behind the practise and techniques of the greatest sword-masters’.

La Garde Ecossaise 1 p.87.

Early Modern Digest

Tudor England’s unluckiest deaths https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15004105/Tudor-England-unluckiest-deaths-revealed.html

FBI return 16^th century conquistador manuscript https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/fbi-returns-stolen-16th-century-manuscript-signed-by-conquistador-cort%C3%A9s-to-mexico/ar-AA1Ky3P4?ocid=BingNewsVerp

The fascinating story of Thomas Stukeley, a 16^th century military mercenary solider https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-swashbuckling-tudor-mercenary-who-was-killed-in-a-battle-that-claimed-the-lives-of-three-16th-century-kings-180987082/

17^th century gardens at Longleat revealed during heatwave https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-62552851

A rare insight into girls education in the 17^th century found under floorboards of a Tudor house https://news.artnet.com/art-world/rare-17th-century-paper-cutouts-sutton-house-2518211

Did You Know?

The Cossacks were Ukrainian warriors who formed military alliances throughout the early modern period to retain Ukraine’s independence. However, during the seventeenth century the Cossacks changed their allegiance from Poland to Russia hoping to retain their autonomy within Russian military structures but it ultimately failed. Read more about it here: https://openpress.digital.conncoll.edu/beingukraine/chapter/chapter-2/  

Feature Article: Laws of Honor: Advice to Swordsmen travelling to Louis XIVs France

In the Alexandre Dumas novel The Three Musketeers, D’Artagnan, the young Gascón hoping to join the King’s musketeers challenges multiple musketeers to a duel to repay a personal slight or dispute.[1] However, you might not be aware that such duels and contests were illegal in France and could land you in big trouble, whether you were one of the king’s musketeers or not. Indeed, Louis XIV was especially keen build upon earlier French laws and further suppress duels throughout French society. He put forth a series of laws, statues and declarations to ensure that such duels were clearly illegal and that death in a duel was tantamount to the crime of murder under the law with the most serious penalty.[2] Therefore, when viewed within this context, the French duel is not a source of adventure and fun as depicted in films of the musketeers but a major criminal action that would end your life, whether you won the duel or not! 

In our novel La Garde Ecossaise our narrator Robert Meldrum travels to France and as we later discover in the chapter ‘Swordplay’ Meldrum is a talented swordsman. As we have already discussed in our podcast and in earlier newsletters, there were a wide variety of manuals written for the aspiring swordsman.[3] It could be suggested that these manuals were not just for practical instruction in swordsmanship but for legal instruction too, to ensure that you stayed on the right side of the law in a swordfight. Meldrum, an experienced swordsman travelling to France would have been aware of the ‘rules of engagement’ or the ‘laws of honor’ in a swordfight. 

Keen to ensure that this was the case for Anglophone contemporaries at the time the authors of The Laws of Honor published the book in 1685 which details all the edicts, laws, statues, declarations and military conventions that Louis XIV instituted to suppress duels in France. Not only was this was to prevent a many young hot-headed Englishman, Scotsman or Irishman falling on the wrong side of the law when staying in France but it was also written to show how successful Louis XIV had been in suppressing duels in France and suggests that the example ser in France could change anti-duelling laws in England.[4]

Why was duelling an issue in seventeenth-century France according to The Laws of Honor? 

Although duelling was a popular activity amongst young men across Europe in the early modern period and had originated in Italy, the reasons for the issue in France in the later seventeenth century are far more reflective of Louis XIVs own perspective on the problems within France as well as the nature and culture of the French aristocracy at the time. On the second page of the preface to The Laws of Honor the authors’ state:

This passage reaffirms that French society took on Italian ways of the sword in the sixteenth century and this included duelling. However, the French Wars of Religion did much to accelerate this trend for duelling amongst a divided Catholic and Huguenot (Protestant) aristocracy as they fought for supremacy within the French state and over the French crown. We will be covering the French Wars of Religion in a future podcast, but it was an exceptionally bloody conflict which left deep scars within French society. The authors are suggesting that duelling is a ‘hangover’ or ‘legacy’ from a bitter conflict and that does not deserve a place in a civilised society. This is argued further when they state that duelling is nothing but ‘murdering one another in cold Blood.’[6]

However, as The Laws of Honor confesses that duelling is a stubborn practice within the French aristocracy which has been difficult to root out:

In this context we can view Louis XIVs efforts to clamp down on duels throughout France as part of his wider plans to bring the nobility to obedience after the rebellious Fronde in the 1650s, as well as his knowledge of the French Wars of Religion in the sixteenth century. Louis XIV was aware of the fragility of monarchical authority; his grandfather Henri IV was assassinated in 1610.[8]

The legal arguments against duelling were rooted in a belief that the current laws and legal system adequately provided remedy against personal slights and insults therefore seeking reparations or honour through the practice of duelling lay outside of what was legally permissible in personal combat. There were moral arguments too that argued it was unchristian and against the wishes of God himself:

‘nothing can be more dangerous in a reasonable Man, the visible Image of his Maker, and Prince of sublunary Creatures, than in a beastly manner to gore, kill and destroy his fellow Creature’[9]

Laws against duelling in Early Modern France

French monarchs throughout the early modern period tried to quell this destructive habit within the French aristocracy and did so with varying success. Before the reign of Louis XIV various statues, edicts and declarations were issued in France against duelling including:

An order for the suppression of duels issued by the Parliament of Paris, 26 June 1599.

A royal edict issued by Henri IV at Blois in April 1602.

A royal edict issued by Henri IV at Fontainebleau in June 1609.

Louis XIII declaration at Paris in July 1611.

A motion of Louis XIII’s Attorney General January 1614. 

A declaration by Louis XIII in October 1614.

An edict by the Parliament of Paris March 1621.

An edict published in the Parliament April 1624.

An edict in Paris February 1626. 

Decree of the Parliament of Paris June 1627.

Declaration of Louis XIII May 1634.[10]

Clearly there was a great effort to suppress duels by all branches of government and by various legal means before the reign of Louis XIV but why did these efforts fail? The Laws of Honor states that the aristocrats think they are above the law and can do what they wish. Indeed, to get around the law on duels in the reign of Louis XIII aristocrats began to call duels ‘rencounters’ so the laws on ‘duels’ failed to apply. By classing them as ‘accidental meetings’ allowed them to deny any premeditated organisation or any justification for the meeting taking place. In addition, on special occasions, the monarch would grant those convicted of duelling a pardon, undermining the legal penalties in the edicts, declarations, laws and decrees.[11]

Louis XIV built upon these earlier laws, but his approach was different as not only did he reaffirm the laws on duelling, but he fully explained to his subjects why they had to stop duelling. Instead of just issuing decrees in the King’s name, Louis XIV ensured that various experts and qualified individuals issued opinions on duelling to persuade his subjects to reject duelling altogether. The experts invited to give their opinion on the subject were the clergy and doctors of divinity, (for moral and religious reasons) and the hospital governors of Paris (the social consequences of duels, especially the creation of widows and orphans). A lengthy edict by Louis XIV himself explaining in immense detail the consequences of duelling mirroring some of the opinions held by the clergy and the governors of the hospital. Lastly, a declaration of the Marshals of France who are honour bound to maintain codes of conduct within their own ranks as well as to prosecute any transgressors of the law. Effectively by doing so, Louis XIV ensured a comprehensive explanation as to why his subjects should obey the law on duelling. There were no excuses. In addition, by including a Marshals declaration it was a sign of determination that the king wished to enforce the law amongst the aristocracy, both inside and outside the French military.[12]

Louis XIV may have been absolute, but he was no tyrant and would seek and listen to advice especially if it improved the law and helped to preserve the lives of his subjects. 

Gruesome punishments for survivors   

Duelling was an activity that remained outside the law in early modern France. If caught, the punishments were severe. In The Laws of Honor it is noticeable that the variety and the severity of the punishments evolves mirroring a desperate attempt to curtail duelling in French society. Also, those who had the potential to be prosecuted widened over time, not just direct participants such as the duellers themselves, but organisers, audiences and even passers-by who had knowledge of such bouts taking place but who failed to inform the authorities. Even harbouring fugitives who had fled to other countries was still prosecutable under French law, the fugitives themselves would be tried in their exiled country as they would be within France.[13] Fighting in a duel was an act of high treason against the monarch and there was no escape from the arm of the law.  Your landed estate could be confiscated by order of the crown, and with your property literally destroyed, houses demolished, and gardens uprooted. In the words of the judgement against Chantail and Salles ‘all their houses raised and demolished, never again to be rebuilt’ and ‘the Trees growing about them lopt off by the middle, to remain as a perpetual Monument of their Crime; a pillar of Free Stone, with an Inscription in a Copper Plate to be erected in the places, containing the causes of that demolition’.[14] You could be tried and hung for your actions (in person if caught, in effigy if not). Other punishments included fines, suspension from office and imprisonment. French monarchs routinely refused pardons for duelling offences, unless there was a special occasion.[15]

The next time you watch the three musketeers you will be viewing their duels in a completely new light. 

I hope you have enjoyed the latest edition of the newsletter. If you are reading this newsletter on the web and have any questions please leave a comment below or you can email me at [email protected] 

[1] Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers (London, 2006) 42-61.

[2] John A. Lynn, Giant of the Grand Siecle: The French Army 1610-1715 (Cambridge, 1997) 255-259. For a good overview of the subject during the whole period under discussion in this article.

[3] Kirsteen M MacKenzie, La Garde Ecossaise : the life of John Hamilton c.1620-1689 Part 1 (Aberdeen, 2022) 84-88; Podcast, La Garde Ecossaise Historical Fiction YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cx3v1PQN0DI accessed 20/08/2025; Kirsteen M MacKenzie, ‘Sir William Hope and the Scottish Fencing-Master’ La Garde Ecossaise Historical Fiction and Early Modern Studies Newsletter No. 12. https://la-garde-ecossaise-historical-fiction.beehiiv.com/p/la-garde-ecossaise-historical-fiction-and-early-modern-studies-newsletter-8cb9

[4] Anon [T. Flesher], The Laws of Honor: Or, An Account of the Suppression of Duels in France (London, 1685) Preface, unnumbered [5], [25].

[5] Anon, The Laws of Honor Preface, unnumbered [2].

[6] The best introductory broad overview of this conflict is to be found in Richard Bonney, The European Dynastic States 1494-1660 (Oxford, 1991) 163-179; See also R.J. Knecht, The French Wars of Religion 1559-1598 (London, 1996); Mack P. Holt, The French Wars of Religion, 1562-1629 (London, 2005) for excellent introductory books to the conflict.

[7] Anon, The Laws of Honor Preface, unnumbered [3].

[8] William Beik, Louis XIV and Absolutism: A Brief Study with Documents (Boston MA, 2000) 19-20, 80.

[9] Anon, The Laws of Honor Preface, unnumbered [1]-[2].

[10] Anon, The Laws of Honor Preface, unnumbered [5]-[24]

[11] Anon, The Laws of Honor Preface, unnumbered [10] [24].

[12] Anon, The Laws of Honor 11-198.

[13] Anon, The Laws of Honor Preface, Unnumbered [5]-[26].

[14] Anon, The Laws of Honor Preface, unnumbered [16].

[15] Anon, The Laws of Honor Preface, unnumbered [8].