SINGULAR DUELS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5716, 7 November 1896, Page 1

SINGULAR DUELS.

(Gentleman's Magazine.) It is strange nowadays to read of the trivial matters about which men would fight in the old duelling days. In 1827 Major Nash was playing a game of whist with Barton, a son-in-law of Edward Livingstone, when one of the other players asked the question, " What's trumps ?" The Major answered " Hearts," while Barton replied " Diamonds." Angry words followed ; a meeting was arranged ; and the next morning, on the duelhnggreeh at Hoboken, the Major was coolly killed by Barton. During the trial trip of a steamer in 1847, a Captain Smith, of the 114 th Foot, challenged General Barty because the latter refused to honour a toast in wine. In , vain the General pleaded that he was under doctor's orders nob to take stimulants ; the excuse was not held valid. The two men met, and, although neither lost his life, the General was so severely wounded that for many weeks he was not expected to recover. Sterne's father lost his life in consequence of a dispute about the weight of a goose ; and Golonel Eamsay, of the Scots Guards, was challenged, fought, and was killed, in consequence of a misunderstanding about an order given to- a servant ! M. Thiers, the President of the Frenoh Eepublic, Once fought a duel over a woman, a girl of Aix, whose father had come to the conclusion that young Thiers, then a student, ought to marry her. The irate parent followed the future Senator to Paris, and gave him the option of an immediate marriage or an immediate mcct 1 ing. Thiers's account of tiie affair is amusing enough. " I deemed it wiser," he says, "to spend a few minutes with a weapon, about which I knew nothing thari to spend a lifetime with a woman about whom I knew a great deal too much." And so the meeting came off, the opponents standing at twenty paces. Thiers's bullet ■ went nobody knew where; that of the irate

parent passed through his hat, an inch above his head. Eeferring to the circumstance, " Cham," in the Petite Presse, afterward- remarked — "If Thiers had not been so little, he would never have become so ] • great." Duels between women have been by no means scarce. Chasse, one of the singers of the old French Academy, was greatly admired by the ladies ; and among other triumphs of the kind, he had the distinction of causing a duel between a Polish and a French lady, who fought with pistols in the Bois de Boulogne. The French lady was wounded rather seriously, and on her recovery was confined in a convent, while her adversary was ordered to quit the country. Among other instances of duels among women may be cited a combat with daggers which took place between the abbess of a convent at Venice and a lady who claimed the admiration of a certain abbe; a combat with swords between Marotte Beaupre and Catherine d'Urlis, actresses at the Hotel de Bourgogne, where the duel took place on the stage ; and a combat on horseback, with pistols, about a greyhound, between two ladies named Melinte and Prelanie — in which Melinte was wounded. Another extraordinary duel, which at the time created immense sensation, was one in £hich the decision was arrived at not by sSvords or pistols, but by means of a deadly poison. The men — who, it is hardly necessary to say, had fallen out over a lady — had left the arrangement of details to their seconds, and until they faced each other they did not know by what method they were to settle their differences. One pf the seconds was a doctor, and he had made up for the occa- j sion four black pellets, all identical in size and shape. "In one of these," he said, "1 1 have placed a sufficient quantity of prussic acid to cause the almost instantaneous death of anyone who swallows it. We will decide by the toss of a coin which of you is to have first choice, and you will alternately draw and swallow a pill until the poison shows its effects." Two of the pellets were then taken as the. toss had decided, but without effect in either case. "This time," said the doctor, speaking of the tWo pellets remaining, " you must both swallow the pill at the same instant." The choice was again made, and in a few seconds one of the men lay dead on the grass.