During 1819, efforts to legislate on freedom of the press on the one hand, and on dueling on the other, proceeded in parallel, without any real premeditation having guided this parallelism. The aim was to remedy a legal vacuum, since no law under either the Republic or the Empire had replaced the Ancien Régime edicts prohibiting dueling. Deputy Clausel de Coussergues proposed a law to restore the authority of the State: in dueling, the monopoly of legitimate violence was challenged; judges, confined to their power to enforce laws, were forced to use the only laws available, which thought in terms of intentional homicide and injury, leading to penalties that were too high for dueling. Until 1832, they also lacked the notion of extenuating circumstances. It was important to restore to the sovereign the power to dispense justice, against all private justice.
In an 1846 book, Eugène Cauchy, brother of the mathematician and archivist of the Chambre des pairs, brought the two legislative efforts together: not only because, in the case of the duel as in that of freedom of the press, judicial power is entrusted to juries of assizes likely to play the role of moderating powers, but also because the very effort to judge and punish press offences seems the best possible legislation to prevent dueling. By re-establishing an equivalent to the courts of marshals of the Ancien Régime, the need to resort to dueling is regulated, and the exercise of justice is brought back under the control of public power. Gabriel Tarde, in his 1892 text on dueling, made the same judgment: it was the excessive power of the press, the "long-range weapon of slander", that needed to be curbed.
No legislation on dueling would see the light of day until the First World War: in 1819 and 1829, brief liberal moments were followed by a return to authoritarianism and prior control of the press, making any legislation on dueling unnecessary. The number of duels increased sharply again after 1830, in a period of political turmoil when the power of the state seemed insufficient to ensure justice. Even representatives of the State resorted to dueling, as witnessed by the famous duel between Benjamin Constant and the Marquis Forbin des Issarts, both members of Parliament - the duel took place sitting down, due to Constant's infirmity, and spared both duelists. The other famous duel was between Count Philippe-Paul de Ségur and Baron Gaspard Gourgaud, both former generals of the Empire, over an account of the Russian campaign published by Count Philippe-Paul de Ségur, the authenticity of which was disputed by Baron Gourgaud, on the grounds that Ségur had only been an antechamber general. Since a libel suit was out of the question in both cases, they resorted to a duel, in which both were wounded.
