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e Ring, in Hyde Park, a favourite duelling-ground of the time. The intervening night hours Mohun and his satellite spent in debauchery in a low house of pleasure. In the cold, grey dawn of the following morning--the morning of 15th November 1712--the principals and seconds appeared almost simultaneously at the Ring--in the daytime the haunt of beauty and fashion, in the early morning hours a desolate part of the Park--and the preliminaries were quickly arranged. Turning to Macartney, the Duke said: "I am well assured, sir, that all this is by your contrivance, and therefore you shall have your share in the dance; my friend here, Colonel Hamilton, will entertain you." "I wish for no better partner," Macartney replied; "the Colonel may command me." A few moments later the double fight began with infinite fury. Swords flashed and clattered; lunge and parry, parry and lunge followed in lightning succession; the laboured breaths went up in gusts of steam on the morning air. There was murder in two pairs of eyes, a resolve as grim as death itself in the stern set faces of their opponents. Soon the blood began to spurt and ooze from a dozen wounds; the Duke was wounded in both legs; his adversary in the groin and arm. Faces, swords, the very ground, became crimson. Colonel Hamilton had at last disarmed his opponent, but the others fought on--gasping, reeling, lunging, feinting, the strength ebbing with each thrust. At last each made a desperate lunge at the other; the Duke's sword passed clean through his adversary up to the very hilt; Mohun, reeling forward, with a last effort shortened his sword and plunged it deep into the Duke's breast. Colonel Hamilton rushed to his friend and raised him in his arms, when Macartney, snatching up his fallen sword, drove it into the dying man's heart, then took to his heels and made his way as fast as horse and boat could carry him to Holland. Before the Duke could be raised from the ground to which he had fallen, he had drawn his last breath. A few moments later Mohun, too, succumbed to his wounds--the "Dog Mohun," as Swift called him, lying in death but a few yards from his victim. "I am infinitely concerned," Swift wrote the same day, "for the poor Duke, who was an honest, good-natured man. I loved him very well, and I think he loved me better." Thus, steeped in innocent blood, perished Charles Lord Mohun, who well earned his unenviable title, "The wicked Baro
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