These are two French firing rifles, made around 1850, with a total length of 29 cm, a barrel length of 15 cm, a caliber of 13 mm, using a smoothbore barrel.
These two guns are dueling guns that allow the "gentlemen" to better defend their honor, convictions, or political ideals.
Pistols in ready-to-fire state
A pistol in firing state
In Europe, duels have a long history, the most crazy of which was in medieval Europe, when not only nobles could duel, but even ordinary people could participate in duels. When the other party insults or falsely accuses himself or one of his friends, then the person can ask for a duel and ask God to judge right and wrong.
Sometimes, when the parties on trial disagree with the judge's decision, they will also propose a duel to the judge, and determine their own judgment by winning or losing, because Europeans believe that God will not let the righteous side be defeated! Although this seems extremely absurd, in the Middle Ages, when judicial interrogation technology was not developed and false accusations were common, judicial duels could make people more in control of their own destiny! Because at that time, "hot iron evidence collection" and "boiling water evidence collection" were also popular in Europe, that is, the divine judgment that the parties put their hands on hot iron or boiling water and proved their innocence if they were not burned.
In a country like France, where duels are rife, men can draw their swords against each other for any trivial reason, and it is recorded that in the 20 years from 1588 to 1608, more than 8,000 people died in paris alone.
Although the church and rulers hated duels, they were not forbidden because of their admiration and support, and even the literary scholars we are familiar with— Dumas, Pushkin, Turgenev, and Tolstoy— participated in duels.
This ancient custom of dueling in the West has been maintained until modern times, and then it has changed, and modern duels have gradually abandoned religious and judicial factors and highlighted personal honor and political ideas.
The nearest duel in history took place between a British officer and a Frenchman, accompanied by a referee to the designated place, the French proposed that the duel distance should be 15 steps (about 12 meters) apart according to tradition, but the British officer disagreed with this distance, he said that only the timid would choose such a distance, so he insisted on a distance of 4 steps (about 3 meters).
In the end, the French agreed to this distance, but demanded that they must shoot first, and the British officer did not agree that it was fair to shoot together, but the referee believed that since the British officer had chosen a distance of 3 meters, he must agree to the other side to shoot first. Later, because of the proximity and the fact that the French opened fire first, the British officers fell into a pool of blood.
There have been many celebrities who have dueled, such as Andrew Jackson, the 7th president of the United States (more than 100 duels in his lifetime), the 16th president Abraham Lincoln (unsuccessful), the Prime Minister of the French Third Republic, Georges Clemenceau, and the prime minister of the German Empire, von Bismarck (who dueled with others 27 times during college).
During the French Revolution, people shifted the cause of dueling from honor and women to politics, and political duels replaced judicial duels and became the mainstream of society, and people began to duel for their own political views and political ideas, especially when the tongue could not convince each other, people chose to use pistols to silence each other.
From the 19th century onwards, duels gradually fell lonely, because firearms have developed more maturely, and their accuracy can ensure that anyone can be killed at a distance of more than ten meters, resulting in a increase in the fatality rate of duels, and the law also judges duels as illegal, and it is necessary to bear great responsibility for winning and losing.
The handle of the gun is mahogany from South America
The hilts of these two pistols are mahogany
Gunpowder box, filled with gunpowder inside, made of bronze that is not easy to produce Mars.
Gunpowder bottles can be metered at the mouth of the bottle to prevent too much or too little gunpowder.
The two dueling pistols are kept in wooden boxes on weekdays.
The size of this wooden box is 39x25.5x7 cm and the total weight is about 4 kg