A saber of Napoleon Bonaparte fetched 4.66 million euros at an auction in Paris. The French emperor had the saber made in 1802 and also used it. The sellers thought the weapon would fetch 700,000 euros.
Napoleon had the saber made by the forge of Versailles. He was not yet emperor at that time, but he was the head of the French government. He retained the weapon until the end of his power, in 1815. After that it went to his confidant Emmanuel de Grouchy, the last marshal of Napoleon’s empire.
The De Grouchy family has owned the weapon since 1815. The buyer has not been disclosed. A copy of the sword, which Napoleon also had made, can be seen in the Russian State Hermitage Museum.
Not often did an object of the famous former emperor yield so much money. In 2007, a record amount was paid for a saber that Napoleon used at the Battle of Marengo, a place in present-day Italy. That sword fetched 4.8 million euros.
Napoleon became the first emperor of France in 1804. In 1813 he was defeated and exiled to Elba, an island that is now part of Italy. After a brief return, he was definitively defeated in 1815 during the Battle of Waterloo. Six years later he died in exile on Saint Helena, a remote island in the Atlantic Ocean.