Ladies Duelling (Emancipated Duels)

I'm writing a stage play about the duel between Pauline von Metternich and Anastasia Kielmansegg (brief description of it here if you're curious: https://historycollection.co/10-historical-female-duelists-and-their-duels/6/) There are lots of popular interest articles on it, but I'm having a hell of a time finding primary sources, academic articles, or any citations for where the details of the fight actually came from.

Before you say it, I know that at least one historian believes this fight didn't happen. For my purposes as a storyteller, it doesn't really stop me. Though, if it turned out it wasn't true, I would be SO DISAPPOINTED.

But tracking down primary sources and contemporary articles has been a challenge, not least because I don't speak German, Polish, or Hungarian.

Some things I want to track down:

- There are references to Pauline Metternich smoking cigars and advocating other women learn to smoke cigars. I can't find where this claim comes from, and it might make an interesting detail.
- Who was Baronness Lubinska? She was a Polish doctor who oversaw the duel, but I can't find any reference to who she was, what family she came from, or even what her first name was.
- I've found basically nothing about Anastasia Kielmansegg, except that her husband was probably Count Erich von Kielmansegg. There's some information on him and his career, but little on her besides this duel.
- Pauline von Metternich was a pretty respected and interesting figure, there's quite a bit about her arts advocacy and so on. But I'd love to see a family tree (her maiden name was Pauline Sandor de Szlavnicza) and more about the family she came from. In fact, any kind of family tree for the Kielmanseggs, the Metternichs, or the Lubinskas would be awesome.
- One of the reasons this story caught people's fascination so much is that the fighters were topless, supposedly because it helped keep dirty cloth from getting the wounds infected. But was this a common practice? Did men often fight topless too? Or was this detail maybe added later by reporters looking to come up with salacious gossip? Or maybe it wasn't about the germs, they just were having a hard time fighting in corsets. I saw one person claim that "topless" just meant corsetless in the lingo, but that's not how all the painters and re-enactors in those and later decades interpreted it.

Basically, if you have any idea where I could start hunting down these details, any resources (particularly in english) that might get me started, this would be extremely helpful. I have a friend who's a historian, but not of this particular era or region, and he's agreed to help me research but it would be great if I could have some solid starting points to bring to him.

"This http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/201...-princess.html gives Viel Castel, Horace de. Mémoires du comte Horace de Viel Castel sur le règne de Napoléon III. Vol. VI. Paris, 1884 as the source for the smoking story and other sources."

Thanks for this! I think I've come across Horace de Viel Castel in other places... he was NOT a fan of Pauline, if I remember right.

D. E. Wyatt said:

Considering this was hardly the first recorded instance of women dueling in the west (even back into the Middle Ages there were rules and regulations for womens' duels) yet the one most sensationalized by claims of them fighting topless, (again, that I can recall) unless someone has access to a first hand "I was there" accountit or an actual photograph of the event itself confirming otherwise, rather than the secondary sources that this claim is based on, I'm inclined to believe the whole idea of it is a fabrication to titillate the public.

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Yes, I'm unfortunately leaning in this direction myself. The newspaper articles quote witnesses, but those could easily have been invented. Pauline von Metternich was quite a famous public figure at the time, known for risque behaviour, so it would make sense to pick her to tell a salacious story about to sell papers. (She was quite an interesting woman, actually, I'm having fun reading about her.)

Nevertheless, even if the story isn't true, or at least, inaccurately reported, it's still a culturally significant story judging by how far it spread, how much it fascinated people, and how many paintings, re-enactments, and other artworks it inspired. So I still think I can write about it provided I put some more accurate history in the programme notes. And I have all kinds of interesting ideas and spin I can put on it, so it won't stop me.

What a bummer, though. I really wanted it to be true.

Nevertheless, I still want as much accuracy as I can in the story, so these sources are hugely useful. Thanks SO MUCH everyone! I was NOT expecting this level of help. I thought, at most, I was going to be pointed in the direction of one or two resources I hadn't thought of, not this much work and thought! You are all wonderful!

CWatts said:

Just a thought, but with all that publicity could some other women have fought like this after hearing about it? I'm sure the Moulin Rouge, etc. had a burlesque of the duel.

Also, I know we have some theater folks here - would fighting topless with blunt stage swords still be dangerous for the actors?

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Toplessness wouldn't make it any more or less dangerous. That's actually where this whole journey started. I'm a certified stage combattant and fight choreographer, and I got fed up with there being so little in the theatrical cannon for myself and my female colleagues to do. In terms of stage plays,it's pretty much The Roaring Girl, and the occasional cross-cast Shakespeare play, where a female actor might get a chance to pick up a sword. Besides that, it's usually victim scenes - women getting beaten and raped - or they never get to use their training at all. So I went looking for other stories and plays to produce, came across this one, it really captured my imagination and here we are.

You're quite right, you don't want to take a direct hit to the skin, clothed or otherwise. We do quite a lot with perspective trickery - you would be surprised how easily the eye is fooled, especially at full show speed. You can stab 6-8 inches upstage of the target, and provided your audience is in the right place and the sell is right, it looks pretty good. The victim is the one that pulls the blade in close to their body. If they do it fast enough it's hard to tell the difference. I've taken stabs to the throat this way, it's quite safe.

I suppose you'd have to avoid drawn cuts. Even on a stage blade, you can sometimes get burrs - bits of raised metal that come from damage to the blade over time. You can file the blade to reduce them, but you never know. I'm planning on using smallswords though, which are primarily stabbing weapons anyway.

The particulars of the combat itself is actually my area of expertise - it's the history I'm struggling a bit with.

D. E. Wyatt said:

When you see sword fights in movies where one or more of the characters is completely shirtless, there's a LOT of camera trickery and stuntwork involved. Any sort of live stage fight would be very impractical to do shirtless if you want to make it the LEAST bit convincing.

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Actually, in terms of angles and perspective trickery, the techniques are very similar. There are of course some things they can do in film that we can't do - body doubles, special effects, speeding up the footage in post, editing different takes together - but the techniques you're talking about, (masking a hit) it's pretty similar. The main difference is, you can move a camera, but you can't move an audience.

So how do you line up the perspective to mask the hit? You move the actors instead. You could do that with a choreography solution - using a charge or a throw or a grapple, etc. to move the actor where you want them to be so that the hit is hidden. You could simply alter the hit - make it a thrust to the left instead of the right, so that it lands upstage. Or you could use acting motivations to move the actors around. For example, character A loses his nerve, tries to run to the door, but the door is locked! The audience sees this as a storytelling moment, and it is, but it's also an excuse to get the actor standing where you want him to stand for the kill.

Pretty much everything that's not a hit, you can watch from any angle and it still looks good. A slash that is evaded, any kind of bladework like yielding parries, degages, etc that don't hit, grapples, throws, disarms... And there are some unarmed hits that can make contact without hurting the target if you use the right techniques, and those don't need to be masked. So like 98% of the fight is the same, it's just the actual injuries that you often need to tweak the angles on.