Duels had at one time become so frequent in France as to require particular enactments for their prevention; as, for example, when the debt about which any dispute occurred did not amount to five-pence.  The regulation of the mode in which the barbarous custom might be maintained had engaged the attention of several of the French kings.  In 1205, Philip Augustus restricted the length of the club, with which single combat was then pursued, to three feet; and in 1260, Saint Louis abolished the practice of deciding civil matters by duelling.  With the revival of literature and of the arts, national manners became ameliorated, and duels necessarily declined.  It was still, however, not unusual for the French to promote or to behold those single combats over which the pages of romance have thrown a delusive charm, and which were, in early times, hallowed, in the opinion of the vulgar, by their accompanying superstitious ceremonies.  When any quarrel had been referred to this mode of decision, the parties met on the appointed day, and frequently in an open space, overshadowed by the walls of a convent, which thus lent its sanction to the bloody scene.  From day-break the people were generally employed in erecting scaffolds and stages, and in placing themselves upon the towers and ramparts of the adjacent buildings.  About noon, the cavalcade was usually seen to arrive at the door of the lists; then the herald cried, “Let the appellant appear,” and his summons was answered by the entrance of the challenger, armed cap-a-pie, the escutcheon suspended from his neck, his visor lowered, and an image of some national saint in his hand.  He was allowed to pass within the lists, and conducted to his tent.  The accused person likewise appeared, and was led in the same manner to his tent.  Then the herald, in his robe embroidered with fleur-de-lis, advanced to the centre of the lists, and exclaimed, “Oyez, oyez! lords, knights, squires, people of all condition, our sovereign lord, by the grace of God, King of France, forbids you, on pain of death or confiscation of goods, either to cry out, to speak, to cough, to spit, or to make signs.”  During a profound silence, in which nothing but the murmurs of the unconscious streamlet, or the chirping of birds might be heard, the combatants quitted their tents, to take individually the two first oaths.  When the third oath was to be administered, it was customary for them to meet, and for the marshal to take the right hand of each and to place it on the cross.  Then the functions of the priest began, and the usual address, endeavouring to conciliate the angry passions of the champions, and to remind them of their common dependence on the Supreme Being, may have tended to benefit the bystanders, although it generally failed of its effect with the combatants.