From 1820 to 1830 pistol shooting was not much practised. One evening,
in the Salon des Etrangers, I was introduced to General F--, a very
great duellist, and the terror of every regiment he commanded; he was
considered by Napoleon to be one of his best cavalry officers, but was
never in favour, in consequence of his duelling propensities. It was
currently reported that F--, in a duel with a very young officer lost
his toss, and his antagonist fired first at him; when, finding he had
not been touched, he deliberately walked close up to the young man,
saying, "Je plains ta mere," and shot him dead. But there were some
doubts of the truth of this story; and I trust, for the honour of
humanity, that it was either an invention or a gross exaggeration.
The night I was introduced to F--, I was told to be on my guard, as he
was a dangerous character. He was very fond of practising with
pistols, and I frequently met him at Lapage's, the only place at that
time where gentlemen used to shoot. F--, in the year 1822, was very
corpulent, and wore an enormous cravat, in order, it was said, to hide
two scars received in battle. He was a very slow shot.
The famous Junot, Governor-General of Paris, whom I never saw, was
considered to be the best shot in France. My quick shooting surprised
the habitues at Lapage's, where we fired at a spot chalked on the
figure of a Cossack painted on a board, and by word of command,
"One--two--three." F--, upon my firing and hitting the mark forty
times in succession, at the distance of twenty paces, shrieked out,
"Tonnerre de Dieu, c'est magnifique!" We were ever afterwards on good
terms, and supped frequently together at the Salon. At Manton's, on
one occasion, I hit the wafer nineteen times out of twenty. When my
battalion was on duty at the Tower in 1819, it happened to be very
cold, and much snow covered the parade and trees. For our amusement it
was proposed to shoot at the sparrows in the trees from Lady Jane
Grey's room; and it fell to my lot to bag eleven, without missing one:
this, I may say, without flattering myself, was considered the best
pistol-shooting ever heard of.
Manton assigned as the reason why pistols had become the usual arms for
duels, the story (now universally laughed at) of Sheridan and Captain
Matthews fighting with swords on the ground, and mangling each other in
a frightful way. These combatants narrated their own story; but its
enormous exaggeration has been proved even on Sheridan's own evidence,
and the blood that poured from him seems merely to have been the
excellent claret of the previous night's debauch. The number of wounds
said to have been inflicted on each other was something so incredible
that nothing but the solemn asseverations of the parties could have
gained belief; and in those days Sheridan had not obtained that
reputation for rodomontade which he afterwards enjoyed by universal
consent.