human
The history of France and Germany shows how reluctantly this mode of trial yielded to the forms of reason and order. France, earlier than Germany, ordained
gpt
Trial by Proofs, and eliminated the duel from judicial proceedings, this important step being followed by the gradual amalgamation of discordant provinces in the powerful unity of the Nation,----so that Brittany and Normandy, Franche-Comte and Burgundy, Provence and Dauphiny, Gascony and Languedoc, with the rest, became the United States of France, or, if you please, France. In Germany the change was slower; and here the duel exhibits its most curious instances. Not only feudal chiefs, but associations of tradesmen and of domestics sent defiance to each other, and sometimes to whole cities, on pretences trivial as those which have been the occasion of defiance from nation to nation. There still remain to us Declarations of War by a Lord of Frauenstein against the free city of Frankfort, because a young lady of the city refused to dance with his uncle,--by the baker and domestics of the Margrave of Baden against Esslingen, Reutlingen, and other imperial cities,--by the baker of the Count Palatine Louis against the cities of Augsburg, Ulm, and Rottweil,--by the shoe-blacks of the University of Leipsic against the provost and other members,--and by the cook of Eppstein, with his scullions, dairy-maids, and dish-washers, against Otho, Count of Solms. [Footnote: Coxe, History of the House of Austria. (London, 1820) Ch. XIX., Vol. I. p. 378.] This prevalence of the duel aroused the Emperor Maximilian, who at the Diet of Worms put forth an ordinance abolishing the right or liberty of Private War, and instituting a Supreme Tribunal for the determination of controversies without appeal to the duel, and the whole long list of duellists, whether corporate or individual, including nobles, bakers, shoe-blacks, and cooks, was brought under its pacific rule. Unhappily the beneficent reform stopped half-way, and here Germany was less fortunate than France. The great provinces were left in the enjoyment of a barbarous independence, with the