As far as history knows, the last fatal duel fought in England, Wales or Ireland took place on this date near Englefield Green in Surrey. It wasn’t between two British aristocrats, seeking to settle a disagreement that had begun after too much port at a regimental dinner – but between two French revolutionaries, one of whom had previously been Karl Marx’s fencing tutor.
Emmanuel Barthélemy was born in humble circumstances on the outskirts of Paris in 1823. In his teens he became a metalworker, but the evidence suggests that he was a more-or-less full-time revolutionary from very early on.
He belonged to a political tendency known as Blanquism, which argued that the socialist transformation would come about by a small, clandestine group of disciplined comrades violently overthrowing the state and subsequently handing power to the masses. This contrasted with the Marxist view, that only a revolution led by the working-class itself could succeed.
As early as 1839, Emmanuel was sentenced to life as a galley slave for shooting a cop who had previously beaten him up. A change of government brought an amnesty and he was released in 1847, but not for long; during the European uprisings of 1848 he commanded a barricade in Paris (thus earning immortality as a character in Les Miserables). When that revolution failed to stick, Barthélemy – by now known throughout the French republican movement as a clever man of limitless courage, let down by a ferocious and uncontrollable temper – was soon back in prison.
By 1850, however, he’d escaped to London, which was where all the Continental dissidents made for once life at home became too dangerous for them. It was at an exiles’ club in Soho, where shooting and fencing were amongst the activities, that he met Marx and coached him in the art of the rapier. Even so, neither Karl nor his wife Jenny much took to the intense young man, not least because they considered his political analysis silly. This dislike became mutual, and there were rumours that Barthélemy planned to assassinate Marx (either before or after doing Napoleon III, who was also on his list), for being too conservative.
The famous duel probably came about because Barthélemy and Frederic Cournet, another revolutionary fighter prominent in the exile community, supported different left-wing factions; Cournet was for the pro-labour reformist Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin. The official pretext for the contest, though, was that Cournet had spread lies about Barthélemy and insulted his girlfriend.
Cournet had already survived fifteen duels, but his luck ran out this time. His shot missed Barthélemy; Barthélemy fired twice, but his gun jammed both times. Cournet hurled his own gun at his opponent, crying “Use mine!” Barthélemy did, and Cournet received a fatal wound. Emmanuel’s party fled the scene, but new technology in the form of the electric telegraph system undid them: the local police wired their colleagues in London, and Barthélemy and his seconds were arrested at Waterloo station. Found guilty of manslaughter, they served a few months in prison.
On his release Barthélemy took a job with a firm selling fizzy drinks. In December 1854 he visited his boss at his home in Warren Street and, for reasons which have never been fully explained, killed him. He also killed a neighbouring greengrocer who tried to apprehend him. The jury at his trial recommended mercy, but the court disagreed, and Emmanuel Barthélemy was hanged. He’d had no money to pay his defence barrister, so the lawyer took as his fee the murderer’s overcoat, which he sold to Madame Tussauds waxworks.
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Sources:
www.ox.ac.uk/news/arts-blog/last-duel-%E2%80%93-french-affair-irish-twist
www.greenleft.org.au/content/emmanuel-barth%C3%A9lemy-revolutionary-who-became-tawdry-tabloid-tale
www.islingtontribune.co.uk/article/french-revolutionary-who-killed-in-camden
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/flawed-fascinating