In viewing the nature of the governments in the various states of Italy, it may not be uninteresting to discover in which of them the practice of duelling was most general. In the Roman states they were rare; at Naples much more frequent. In Piedmont and Savoy personal meetings were seldom heard of, more especially since the French occupation; previously to which, the professors and students at the universities were in the habit of wearing swords. Yet hostile meetings occasionally take place amongst the military, engendered by disputes at balls and by love matters. The same may be said of Sardinia, where duelling is confined to the troops, and an officer is placed in a situation somewhat similar to that of our own army. If he is insulted, and does not demand satisfaction, he is expelled by his corps; and, if he fights, he is sentenced to an imprisonment of three or six months in a fort called the _Fenestrellas_. In Corsica a bloody spirit of vengeance is generally prevalent, and gave rise to that system of murder called the _vendetta_, which is frequently resorted to amongst its savage mountaineers. In these desperate excesses whole families and clans indulged, and regular challenges were interchanged. These hostile declarations were followed by every kind of atrocious acts; and constant ambuscades, combats, burning of houses, destruction of property, and slaughter even of infants, were incessantly disturbing the public peace. These intestine broils were only terminated by treaties of peace between the parties, regularly drawn out, and registered in the archives of Ajaccio.
These excesses, at the present time, are less frequently committed; but private feuds are still decided by assassination, when the murderer generally escapes by taking to the woods and mountains, and there proscribed, he is called a _bandetto_. When taken and condemned, national prejudice absolves him from punishment as an _honorato_. In such a ferocious state of society duelling is a practice unknown; and the man who would assassinate his enemy without remorse, would scorn to commit a theft. It is in vain that courts of justice have endeavoured to check these barbarous deeds; in a late case of _vendetta_, the murderer having been acquitted, the son of the deceased, who was a magistrate, exclaimed, “The jury have acquitted thee, but I condemn thee to death.” It is needless to add, that the sentence was soon carried into execution.