Regarding your question about duels, Ebbie...there were quite a lot of duels among officers in various of the armed forces here and there, and those were usually well supervised by superior officers, and yes, there were proper rules of engagement agreed upon beforehand, and usually adhered to. The price of not adhering was to have one's reputation and career ruined...if one survived, that is.

Some of those duels were with guns, others with edged weapons.

Duels among the nobility tended to sometimes be pretty well regulated too, I think. It all had to do with image, prestige, that sort of thing. Such matters were important to one's future career.