Historians-Pushkin scholars, examining the details of the duel between Georges Dantes and Alexander Pushkin, find at once several at least strange details that contradict the dueling code and quite possibly led to just such a tragic outcome.
Could Pushkin avoid this duel
The well-known Pushkin writer, candidate of philological sciences Vladimir Orlov, who studied the letters of Alexander Pushkin during the conflict between the poet and Baron Louis Heckern and his "adopted son" Georges Dantes, comes to the conclusion that Pushkin had no other choice but to resolve the tense situation with the help of a duel. Moreover, according to the Russian poet, literary historian and Pushkinist Vladislav Khodasevich, the poet had at least 20 duels in his entire life (4 of them took place), most of which were initiated by Alexander Pushkin himself. Over a dozen duels ended in reconciliation of the parties.
Vladimir Orlov believes that Pushkin, offended by Dantes' behavior towards the poet's wife Natalya, had evidence that would allow him in time to expose the dirty intentions and gossip of Gekkern-Dantes, so they in every possible way provoked the "slave of honor" to a duel.
How was the preparation for the fight
Poet Vasily Zhukovsky, a friend of Alexander Pushkin, as you know, who acted as an intermediary between the poet and Baron Gekkern (but remained at the same time on the side of Natalia Pushkina), wrote in his memoirs that he tried not to bring the matter to a duel, asked Pushkin to abandon the duel, but he was not going to do it. Later, Zhukovsky spoke to the poet's eldest son, Alexander, about the dishonor of the shooting Dantes, about his failure to comply with the rules of the duel that took place on January 27, 1837 on the Black River (outskirts of St. Petersburg).
2 days before the duel, Alexander Pushkin sent a letter to Baron Gekkern with a demand to leave Natalia Pushkin alone. Gekkern responded by immediately challenging the poet to a duel. Moreover, according to the Pushkinist Vladimir Orlov, the Gekkern-Dantes pair did everything possible to make the duel as safe as possible for Dantes.
Firstly, the preparation of the duel took place in a hurry, and the man chosen by Pushkin as a second, the poet's lyceum friend Konstantin Danzas, was little knowledge of the dueling rules. This was an important circumstance, since it was the seconds on both sides who had to monitor the strictest observance of the rules of the duel. Secondly, it is known that the conditions of the duel, according to Georges Dantes, allegedly fixed by the parties in writing, were subsequently not provided to the military court held in February of the same year. They were published much later, and from them it followed that Gekkern insisted on 10 steps distance of the fighters and on the resumption of the duel in case of misses on the part of both duelists. Thirdly, the pistols for the duel were chosen by each side independently, which was contrary to the dueling code - the seconds had to make sure thatthat the weapon is absolutely identical and serviceable.
Pushkin scholars believe that all these details were subsequently not taken into account by the investigation and the court and were not blamed on Heckern and Dantes, because the Russian emperor Nicholas I wanted to hush up this story as soon as possible.
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Was Dantes' pistol prepared?
Historians are inclined to believe that Gekkern and Dantes could hypothetically prepare dueling pistols and shoot them before the fight (which was strictly prohibited by the dueling code). Pushkin got his weapon just before the duel, right from the store. To create a level playing field for the duelists, the pistols were played directly on the battlefield - initially they did not know which weapon they would fire from. In the case of the duel on the Black River, this was not done. Moreover, according to the recollections of Konstantin Danzas, everything happened in a hurry, Pushkin hurried his second, wanted everything to end as quickly as possible. The poet did not even look at the terms of the duel, although Danzas had to insist on it.
It is known that Dantes fired first, and he also began to aim before Pushkin, even when the duelists began to converge, and fired at the ninth meter, without approaching the barrier of one step - as soon as Pushkin raised his pistol. The ramming dueling pistols of that time had a rather low accuracy - the shooter had to aim taking into account a certain degree of displacement of the sight in order to get into the area of the opponent's vital organs. Pushkinist Vladimir Orlov points out such a detail - Dantes, being an excellent shooter, aimed at the leg (Pushkin, as you know, was fatally wounded in the stomach). This circumstance indicates that Dantes' dueling pistols could still be pre-targeted.
This fact is indirectly confirmed by the nephew of Alexander Pushkin, Leonid Pavlishchev, who recalled a conversation with Denis Davydov's son Vadim - that in 1880 the aged Georges Dantes allegedly talked about the shot down sight of his dueling pistol - from the words of Pushkin's killer it followed that Dantes knew leg hits higher.
In addition, Vladimir Orlov is convinced that Konstantin Danzas should not have allowed two more chances in the duel - to allow Georges Dantes to change position (he turned sideways before Pushkin's response shot and covered himself with a pistol) and to give the wounded poet a second pistol - it was enough to reload the already shot one.
Nikolay Syromyatnikov