Contrary to contemporary expectations, the duel, as a quintessential aristocratic practice, survived the epochal break of the French Revolution. Stephan Geifes analyzes the persistence of the duel in practice and discourse during the Revolution, the Napoleonic Empire, and the Restoration in the context of the changes from the estates-based society of the ancien régime to the formally egalitarian society of the modern age.

Stephan Geifes, Bonn