The dress sword carried by Napoleon Bonaparte when he staged the coup that brought him to power in 1799 has been sold with five of his pistols for more than $2.87 million.
A collector who has not been named won the bidding for the sword, its scabbard and five ornamented pistols via telephone at a sale held by the Rock Island Auction Company in Illinois.
After crowning himself emperor in 1804, Napoleon is believed to have presented the sword, made by the state arms factory in Versailles, to General Jean-Andoche Junot. The general’s widow was later forced to sell it to pay debts. A London museum owned it for a time and a US collector who died recently was its last owner, according to the auction house.
“The buyer of the Napoleon Garniture is taking home a very rare piece of history,” said Kevin Hogan, the company president. “We are pleased to have provided the opportunity for them to acquire such a historic object.”
Bonaparte staged the bloodless “Coup of 18 Brumaire”, as it is known from the French revolutionary calendar, in October 1799 after he returned from victorious campaigns in Egypt and Syria and was greeted as a saviour at a time of political turmoil. The take-over, which put the country under a consulate with Bonaparte as first consul, is seen as marking the end of the revolutionary period that began in 1789.
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A craze for Napoleonic memorabilia started more than a decade ago and was given a boost by the bicentenary this year of his death. In 2007, the sabre that Bonaparte took to the Battle of Marengo in June 1800 was sold at auction for $6.5 million. In 2010, a lock of the emperor’s hair sold for $13,000 to an anonymous collector in Britain. In September this year a bicorne hat that Bonaparte is said to have worn to an 1807 meeting with Tsar Alexander I of Russia sold for €1.2 million at Sotheby’s in Paris.
On Tuesday a pair of “highly rare” tiaras believed to have belonged to Napoleon’s wife, Josephine, sold at auction in London for more than £564,000.
The two tiaras — offered from a private British collection — are thought to have been given to Napoleon’s wife by his sister Caroline early in the 19th century.
