Gentlemen prefer sabers at dawn with proper seconds to ensure the duel is fair.
In “The Great French Duel”, as a second, Mark Twain suggested Gatling guns, failing that, axes, to his French counterpart.
They settled on pistols, which the French second conveniently carried clipped to his watch chain.
Twain concluded the greatest danger to a French duel was the posibility one might catch a cold in the morning air.