Legall de Kermeur

François Antoine de Legall de Kermeur
Full name	Legall de Kermeur
Country	France
Born	4 September 1702 Versailles
Died	1792 (aged c. 90) Paris
Title	best player of France

François Antoine de Legall de Kermeur (1702–92) was a French chess player. His name is variously written Kermur, Sire de Legalle, by Twiss, and Kermur and Kermuy, Sire de Legal, by others. In the List of Subscribers to Philidor's second edition it stands as in Twiss, but the spelling was, probably, in both cases Philidor's own.

Along with other famous players, he played in Paris's Café de la Régence, and is considered to have been possibly the strongest player in the world around the 1730s. He taught chess to François-André Philidor.

The following portray of Legall is given in the London Magazine, May 1825 in an article titled "Chess and Chess Players by an ancient Amateur":

I am probably, without any exception, the oldest chess-player in Europe. I have not only had the honour of contending "on the checquer'd field" with M. Philidor, but I have frequently played at the Cafe de la Regence with M. de Legalle, the master of that distinguished Professor, who, in my younger days, was a better player than his celebrated pupil. There is no man of whose person and deportment I retain a more vivid recollection than M. de Legalle; he was a thin, pale old gentleman, who had sat in the same seat at the Cafe, and worn the same green coat for a great number of years when I first visited Paris. While he played at chess, he took snuffs in such profusion that his chitterling frill was literally saturated with stray particles of the powder, and he was, moreover, in the habit of enlivening the company during the progress of the game, by a variety of remarks, which every body admired for their brilliancy, and which struck me perhaps the more forcibly, as I was at that time but indifferently acquainted with the French tongue.

In the book The life of Philidor, the following considerations, which can give us an idea about de Legall's strength at the chessboard are reported:

M. de Kermur, Sire de Legal, at that time about forty years old, reigned supreme in that famous Cafe, and was undoubtedly a player of extraordinary strength; for Philidor alone was ever able to beat him, and that, too, not until he had developed his entire force by playing with Sir Abraham Janssen and the Syrian Stamma(*). The "first player of the band" found it necessary to accept the Rook from M. de Legal; and it took full three years to work his way up, through the various degrees of odds, to the honour of confronting his master, on even terms, as a "first-rate".

(*) Fetis says that old Chess-players at the Cafe de la Regence had repeated to him Philidor's own statement, that he did not attain his full strength until he had made his campaigns in Holland and in England.

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