O'Connell · 1815
The duel with D'Esterre
On the late afternoon of the first of February 1815, in a snowy field at Bishop's Court near Naas in County Kildare, Daniel O'Connell, then thirty-nine years old, the rising Catholic barrister of the Munster Bar and the principal organiser of the Catholic Association, met John D'Esterre, a Protestant member of the Dublin Corporation, in a formal duel with pistols. D'Esterre had taken offence at O'Connell's description of the Corporation, in a public meeting two weeks earlier, as *a beggarly corporation*. O'Connell, by his second the surgeon Sir Edward O'Connell of Lyons, refused to retract. The two men met at Bishop's Court at four in the afternoon. O'Connell hit D'Esterre at the first exchange in the right hip; the ball lodged in the bladder. D'Esterre died two days later, on the third of February 1815, at his Dublin lodgings. O'Connell never challenged or accepted another duel for the rest of his life. He wore a black silk glove on his right hand at every public function in Ireland for the next thirty-two years, in mourning for the man he had killed.
It is twenty past three on the afternoon of the first of February 1815, in a field on the boundary of the Bishop's Court estate, two miles east of Naas in County Kildare, in heavy snow. He is thirty-nine years old. He is Daniel O'Connell, born at Carhen, Cahersiveen, on the sixth of August 1775, schooled at Saint-Omer in French Flanders, called to the Irish bar at the King's Inns in 1798, member of the Catholic Association from 1804, increasingly the Catholic Association's leader in fact since 1810. He is in a long black overcoat over a grey suit, with a tall hat, and the duelling-pistols of his second Sir Edward O'Connell of Lyons in a wooden case at his feet.
On the field, twelve paces away, John D'Esterre is in a similar coat over a brown suit. D'Esterre is a forty-five-year-old Protestant member of the Common Council of the Dublin Corporation, formerly a captain in the Royal Marines, with a reputation as a duellist (six previous duels, no fatalities). His second is the Honourable Captain Hewlett of the Forty-Second.
He thinks: D'Esterre has been pressed into this by the Corporation. The Corporation wants me silenced and the Corporation believes that D'Esterre will do it for them.
He thinks: I have been on the bar in this country for seventeen years. I have been in two hundred and ten cases. I have never fired a pistol at a man.
He thinks: the Catholic Association is at a tipping moment. Emancipation is in the long war but Emancipation is in sight on a fifteen-year horizon. If I am killed today the Catholic interest is leaderless for ten years.
He thinks: I am the bigger target by twenty pounds. D'Esterre is the better shot.
He thinks: I will fire low.
The seconds load the pistols, hand them across, take the ground at twelve paces. The form is fire on the count of three. The count is given by Captain Hewlett. One. Two. Three. The pistols fire almost simultaneously. D'Esterre's ball goes wide of O'Connell's shoulder by, by the seconds' deposition, perhaps four inches. O'Connell's ball strikes D'Esterre in the right hip, fragments the iliac crest, lodges in the bladder.
D'Esterre is on the snow. The blood, by Sir Edward O'Connell's deposition the next morning, is heavy. Sir Edward goes to him with the surgical kit. Captain Hewlett goes to O'Connell to ask if the matter is settled. O'Connell, by Hewlett's deposition, says: for my part, with all my heart. I shall always regret that the gentleman has been wounded.
John D'Esterre was carried by carriage back to Dublin, attended by his own surgeon and Sir Edward, and laid at his lodgings on Bachelors Walk. The wound mortified rapidly. He died on the morning of the third of February 1815, two days after the duel. He left a widow and three young children. O'Connell, on hearing of the death, sent five hundred pounds to the widow within the day; she refused the money. He insisted; she accepted, on the condition that the family also receive an annual pension of two hundred pounds from him for life. He paid the pension faithfully for the next thirty-two years. The pension was the largest single private debt of his lifetime, and was paid in person at his Dublin office on the first of February of every year, the anniversary of the duel.
O'Connell never challenged or accepted another duel. He wore a black silk glove on his right hand (the hand that had fired the shot) at every public meeting and every parliamentary session for the rest of his life, until his death at Genoa in May 1847. The glove is, by his own statement to his Catholic confessor in 1825, the penance for the man. The duelling-pistols of his second Sir Edward O'Connell of Lyons (one of the last pairs of formal Irish duelling-pistols still in private hands) are in the Derrynane House museum in County Kerry today. The Catholic Emancipation Act passed both Houses on the thirteenth of April 1829. O'Connell took his seat in the Commons on the fourth of February 1830. The first speech he gave in the Commons was on the abolition of duelling between gentlemen of his country.