he confronted
the Duke de Guise in mortal duel, whilst the latter, like most heroes of
the parade-ground, possessed rare cunning at carte and tierce. With
regard to the seconds chosen, they are in every respect worthy of
notice. In those days, seconds were witnesses of the duel in which they
themselves fought. Coligny selected as his second, and to give the
challenge, as was then the custom, Godefroi, Count d'Estrades, a man of
cool and tried courage. The Duke de Guise's second was his equerry, the
Marquis de Bridieu, a Limousin gentleman and brave officer, faithfully
attached to the house of Lorraine, who, in 1650, admirably defended
Guise against the Spanish army and against Turenne, and for that brave
defence, during which there were twenty-four days of open trenches, he
was made lieutenant-general.

It was arranged that the affair should come off at the Place Royale--the
usual arena for those sort of encounters, and which had been a hundred
times stained with the best blood of France. The mansions around the
Place Royale were then tenanted by ladies of the highest rank and
fashion, amongst the rest, Marguerite, Duchess de Rohan, Madame de
Guemene, Madame de Chaulnes, Madame de St. Geran, Madame de Sable, the
Countess de St. Maure, and many others, under the influence of whose
bright eyes those volatile and valiant French gentlemen delighted to
cross swords. And there many a noble form had been struck down never to
rise again, and many a noble heart had throbbed its last. During the
first quarter of the seventeenth century, the duel was a custom at once
useful and disastrous, inasmuch as it kept up the warlike spirit of the
nobles, but which mowed them down as fast as war itself, and but too
frequently for frivolous causes. To draw swords for trifles had become
the obligatory accompaniment of good manners; and as gallantry had its
finished fops, so the duel had its refined rufflers. In the
comparatively short period of a few years, nine hundred gentlemen
perished in these combats. To stop this scourge, Richelieu issued a
royal edict, which punished death by death, and sent the offenders from
the Place Royale to the Place de Greve. On this head Richelieu showed
himself inflexible, and the examples of Montmorency-Bouteville, beheaded
with his second, the Count Deschappelles, for having challenged Beuvron
and fought with him on the Place Royale at mid-day, impressed a
salutary terror, and rendered infraction of the edic