A duel in the Thirty Years‘ War

[Roland_M]

It is a story from the authentic book “Simplicius Simplicissimus”, in which a duel between two mercenaries/ soldiers is described very detailed.

I try now to translate the duel from German to English and I hope, that not too much information get lost because of my incompetence.

First things first, the duel area was an enclosed area of at least 50*50 yards or more. Both duelists enter the area and the duel begins. The duel will end, if one or both of the combatants is/are dead or unable to fight. Duels were strictly forbidden in that period and often the winner lost his head or at least his job as a punishment.

The duels itself were not as clean as we see it in many movies. They were brutal, tricky, malicious and dirty.

The duel: One duelist was very clever, he loaded his Matchlok-Musket very carefully including the primer powder in the pan. Than he closed the pan and (this is very important) he put grease around the pan cover to close the pan hermetically!
Now we come to the tricky and pretty smart part. He put a little bit of primer powder on the closed pan cover!
Minutes later the duel starts and he pulled his trigger to burn down the useless primer powder on the pan cover, not the primer powder inside the pan!
The opponent was thinking, that he has a dead-load and started to run to the man with the “useless” Musket to kill him with his pistol. As soon he was close enough, the other one opened the sealed pan and released the shot.
Boom, bang and fall was one and the same and the duel was over.

But the comrades of the dead duelist caught the winner and brought him to the officials which gave him a heavy sentence.

So in the end both sides were losers but one was a surviving loser.


Roland

p.s. the reason for the duel was a truly orgy of insults. And still today this would lead to a massive brawl, really hardcore and astonishing eloquent for that period. This orgy of verbal hate would be worth his own translation, it is incredible for people, which has seen nothing but war.