Was it common when dueling with pistols to just shoot the other guy before he was ready?
Georgy_K_Zhukov
Moderator | Post-Napoleonic Warfare & Small Arms | Dueling
Absolutely not. That would be murder! To a modern audience the distinction perhaps seems to be a slight one, but the underlying purpose of a duel revolved around honor, and shooting your opponent outside of the rules of the duel would be a very dishonorable thing to do. That isn't to say that plenty of duelists wouldn't have loved to drill one into the back of their opponent, but while even going into the 19th century (or 20th in some places such as Wilhelmine Germany) a jury would usually be willing to not convict a duelist, or at most give a lesser conviction of manslaughter instead of murder, a killing that didn't follow the 'code' would not give you the same protections. One of the reasons for seconds was to act as witnesses to the encounter and also to ensure proper conduct, and even intercede if this was not the case. As long as things went by the book, they would of course refuse to testify to incriminate the participants, but you can be sure they would publicize the ill-conduct of one party were they to not follow the code.
In the Anglo-American tradition, I would add, aiming at all, or even practicing at dueling style shooting, was quite frowned upon. The style of snapping to and immediately shooting was de rigueur, and failure to comply could result in great condemnation - such as with Andrew Jackson, who killed Charles Dickinson with a carefully aimed shot after letting Dickinson take his (quick, snap-)shot first - which, it should be noted, hit Jackson. This wasn't explicitly against "the rules", but very frowned upon. Jackson did most likely violate the code however, as he had a misfire, recocked, and fired again successfully. Dickinson's second rightfully could have interceded, as Jackson's misfire counted a shot. He was never charged for the duel, but many people considered him a murder for it - not for the duel itself, but how he had gone about it.
Another thing to note is the practice of deloping, which was an intentional discharge of the weapon with no intent to hit, often either into the ground, or directly into the air. Most codes considered this to be very improper. As noted in the Irish Code Duello, perhaps the most famous of duelling codes:
No dumb shooting or firing in the air is admissible in any case. The challenger ought not to have challenged without receiving offense; and the challenged ought, if he gave offense, to have made an apology before he came on the ground; therefore, children's play must be dishonorable on one side or the other, and is accordingly prohibited.
It still happened though. Again to illustrate with a famous incident, in the Hamilton-Burr duel, whether or not Hamilton deloped his fire is still a matter of contention. He certainly fired early and high, but whether it was intentional or a slip of the finger we will never know for certain, as Burr didn't care one way or the other and shot him dead, demonstrating, perhaps, why if you intend to delope you should maybe just apologize.
So anyways, the point of these digressions is that while to shoot your opponent before the duel has commenced would be a big "no-no", there were still ways in which one duelist would essentially be cutting down a defenseless opponent.
