NOTED AMERICAN DUELS AND HOSTILE ENCOUNTERS

ueling from the days of the Roman gladiators, through its great centuries in Europe, with its most insane peak in Ireland's Code Duello when a young and ambitious lawyer needed only a case of dueling pistols and set of law books, and through ts bloodstained history in the United States, is definitively recorded in this sensational but scholarly work. Mr. Cochran brings deep interest to his sanguinary subject. Duels fought by Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, Commodore Stephen Decatur, ld Hickory and Henry Clay are examined extensively and grimly. The great breakthrough into popularity came for dueling when Charles V of Spain and Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire accused Francis I of France of breaking the treaty between them. The uol was postponed and finally cancelled, but the spectacle of the two greatest monarchs of the age even about to duel gave this form of combat the one touch of glory it needed to become more popular than--well, name the sport. Queen Elizabeth herself, piqued at Charles of France for jilting her, screamed in rage, ""If I were a man, I would have defied him into single combat!"". And encounters between women and women are not as rare as you might think--with some heavy artillery! Good reading for an evening.