[jessriedel]

Note that, according to a YouTube comment translation of the footage linked by another comment here, the duel was agreed upon from the start to be limited to first blood, not death. So arguably not a true duel in the normal sense of the word. Still interesting though.

[ggm]

Does "The Haynes manual of duelling" really say they have to be to the death? You mean all those duels where nobody died were not "real" duels?

[Ichthypresbyter]

No surviving Code Duello that I'm aware of (there are several, though the authenticity of most of them is disputed) says that duels have to be to the death.

There is a French one [0] which says that in a duel with swords, the seconds decide among themselves whether the duel will be to first blood or to the death, and do not inform the principals of their decision.

[0]https://www.geriwalton.com/french-dueling-codes-for-swords-p...

[jessriedel]

Thanks. In common usage of the term, duels don't have to be to the death, but they have to be with deadly weapons. Otherwise every disagreement settled by a boxing match or fencing match is duel. It's of course true that there is a continuum on how deadly a weapon can be, which depends on usage and has no sharp cutoff, but if the chance of death has been carefully eliminated, then the reader should be alerted to the fact that this does not really live up to the traditional understanding of a duel.

[jessriedel]

Duels have to be with deadly weapons. (See the dictionary.) If you are purposely using them in a manner that cannot result in death, they aren't deadly, so it's not a duel. Otherwise every boxing or fencing match would be a duel.

That is different than using deadly weapons but where one party is incapacitated or surrenders before they are killed. The realistic threat of death is still present.

The whole point of the top-level comment was that it seems shocking that dueling was still happening mid-20th century, so it is useful to point out that this was not the normal definition of dueling.