On Sunday, in Fontainebleau, France, a pair of dueling pistols were sold, with which the French general and emperor Napoleon I was said to have shot himself in 1814. The total price at the auction reached 42 million crowns, while the identity of the buyer is unknown. The weapons are designated as a national treasure by the French Ministry of Culture and are therefore subject to a number of restrictions.
First of all, the French government now has 30 days to offer the buyer an amount for which they would be willing to buy the pistol, but which the buyer does not have to accept. Even so, arms, as a national treasure, are subject to an export ban. The French do not want to lose their cultural monuments, so the pistol is not allowed to leave the territory of the state or at most for a pre-agreed short time.
The fact that the pistols are kept as a national treasure increases their value even more. However, with this particular pair of weapons, there is no need to speculate about their historical significance. Napoleon Bonaparte wanted to shoot himself with them on April 13. After the disastrous defeat at the Battle of Leipzig, he was still trying to assemble the remnants of the army in the castle of Fontainebleau and was going to use the long siege of Paris to attempt some kind of military miracle.
Although he gathered 70,000 men, who, of course, would have no chance of standing against the combined armies of Austria, Russia, Prussia and possibly Great Britain from the west, his attempt to use Paris as a buffer failed when, after the initial clash, Marshal Marmont issued by the army. Although it was a completely rational and humane step, when he saved Paris and its citizens from the fury of war, he still carries the label of a traitor.
source: Profimedia
On the other hand, it is not carried by the marshals and generals who came to Napoleon on April 12 with a prepared abdication, which ended Napoleon’s dreams of a turn in the war. Marshals Ney, MacDonald and General Caulaincourt negotiated a treaty with the Allies, later known as the Treaty of Fontainebleau, which stipulated that Napoleon, after signing it himself, would be deprived of his government and go into exile on the island of Elba. The key moment came when a clearly distraught Ney shouted at Napoleon that the army would not follow him and the regent knew it was too late.
When Napoleon delivered his last letter to Empress Marie Louise on the morning of April 13, he decided, according to some, to commit suicide. If the suicide attempt with pistols was to happen, Napoleon’s personal servant Hubert prevented it. According to some testimonies, he talked Napoleon into committing suicide, according to his own memories, he took the gunpowder out of the cartridge from the pistols to be sure, so that a drunken Napoleon would not use them against himself in a fit of emotion.
It is a question whether Napoleon really wanted to use the pistol, because he confided to Caulaincourt that he hated the idea of a bloody exit, when there would be a lot of blood everywhere and the dignified death mask would probably not be left from the head either. Napoleon preferred poison, which he had worn around his neck for many years in case he was captured on a campaign. The poison was prepared for him by his personal physician, Alexandre Yvan, already in 1812. Apparently, he ingested the poison on the night of April 12-13, and further events are a matter of speculation.
What is certain is that Napoleon poisoned himself unsuccessfully. Either the poison was too weak due to his age, or it was Dr. Yvan who was summoned and made Napoleon take an emetic, or Napoleon himself changed his mind and started vomiting. Anyway, after several hours of vomiting and convulsions, the apparently physically exhausted Napoleon was out of danger and facing exile. He returned from Elba to gather an army and after a hundred-day campaign succumbed to the combined armies of the British Duke of Wellington and the Prussian Marshal Blücher in the Battle of Waterloo.
It is therefore possible that Napoleon did not even want to kill himself with the auctioned pistols, but this does not diminish their historical significance in any way.
Source: zpravy.tiscali.cz
