Original Item: Only One Available. Well these things just never happen! Imagine an English country house auction sale where everything is “on the block”; massive oak furniture, old leather chairs, velvet curtains, even wheel barrows and then we get to the bric-a-brac, billiard cues, shooting sticks, stuffed animal heads and a neatly framed flintlock pistol in absolutely relic condition. Written up as a “French Flintlock Pistol Circa 1750, owned by a Mr, Hougoumont, used.”
Framed in a nice red velvet backed board set inside a carved gilt frame is the remains, we mean remains, of just what they described. However it did not belong to any Mr. Hougoumont. On a blackened silver plaque on the back of the wrist was engraved:
WATERLOO 1815, found at HOUGOUMONT 1861
It is still a dreadful relic which perhaps does date from 1750 but the barrel has been shortened, the side plate is missing, the top jaw and screw are gone and an ugly iron band put around the front to hold it together. The silver plaque is clearly old, but the story?
Was this really some French officer’s pocket pistol carried at Waterloo that lay down in the dirt for 46 years? Who can be sure? Somebody prized it to spend the money on the plaque and frame.
At the Auction nobody seemed interested in buying “Mr.Hougoumont’s Pistol” so we got it with our opening bid! Now offered to you, just as found at an English county house auction, Mr. Hougoumont’s Pistol with plaque and gilt frame. The story is the best part!