Those crazy French

The hot air balloon duel of 1808,

In 1808 two Parisian men named Monsieur Granpree and Monsieur LePique fell into a dispute over the love of Madamoselle Tirvete, a famous French Opera dancer.  Like many men at the time the two decided to settle the question once and for all by personal combat; a duel.  So how did they conduct their duel? Pistols at dawn, twenty paces, or perhaps swords?  No, Granpree and LePique would fight one of the oddest duels in the history of gentlemanly combat.

Both Granpree and LePique believed themselves to be more intelligent than most others, “men of elevated minds” as they called each other.  To show how much more elevated they were than the rest of Paris, they chose to duel in hot air balloons, a French invention first flown in 1783.  On the 9th of May, 1808, the two men boarded their own separate hot air balloons with their seconds, and were untethered for flight.  When the two were approximately 2,000 feet in the air and 80 yards apart, they produced flintlock blunderbusses (an early type of shotgun) and began firing on each other. LePique fired first and missed.  Granpree returned fire immediately, scoring a direct hit on his adversary’s balloon, causing it to plummet to the ground, killing LaPique and his second instantly.