AnarchyChess

My friend just told me about passar battaglia [from Italian, "to dodge the fight"]. The former rule that a pawn could evade capture by an opposing pawn by its initial two-square advance, in contrast to the en passant rule. Passar battaglia remained the practice in several parts of Europe long after en passant was introduced, and it was not completely abandoned until 1880 when Italy adopted the en passant rule.

What sort of backwards ass rule is this?