Manufacture de Versailles double shotgun. Round, table-top b - Lot 252

Manufacture de Versailles double shotgun. Round, table-top barrels, with thunderbolt flats, blued, decorated in gold and marked "Canon tordu" on the band. Cut-out breech tail with palmette decoration. Lock plates signed "Manufacture" on one and "De Versailles" on the other, and round-bodied swan-neck hammers. Silver-coated troughs. Roller battery spring. Cut, chased and hallmarked silver fittings. Silver hallmark, 1797-1809, title: department .800, medium department guarantee, master J.C. spangled. Grotesque-headed ramrod entrance. Losange under the shaft. Front of trigger guard and trigger guard decorated with an eagle, surmounting the nudes, with suppressed heads. Cut-out buttplate with animal and rocaille motifs. Walnut stock, partly finely squared, carved with foliage, grotesque-headed neck, with metal wire inlays. 1st Empire period (oxidation, small cracks and chips to the wood at the front of the shaft, mechanical accident to the right right turntable, missing rod) Provenance : - General Jacques Nicolas Bellavène (1770 - 1826), Baron d'Empire - Then by descent to its current owner Note : BELLAVENE Jacques Nicolas (1770 - 1826) Private in 1791, 2nd Cavalry Regiment, Second-Lieutenant in 1792, Officer of Ordinance on the Staff of the Army of the Rhine, then Aide-de-Camp in 1793, he distinguished himself in charges, capturing the town of Haguenau and taking many prisoners. Battalion Chief in 1794, then Colonel the same year. Brigadier General in 1796, he was wounded and lost a leg at the battle of Rastatt. He was employed in the government's topographical cabinet, then appointed Inspector of Reviews in 1800. In 1803, he organized the command and direction of studies at the Ecole de Saint-Cyr, and was made Commander of the Legion of Honor in 1804. In 1807, thanks to the Emperor, he became Major General, and in 1813, Baron de l'Empire. During the Restoration, he was awarded the Croix de Saint-Louis, and placed on half-pay. During the Hundred Days, he was reinstated. Under the Second Restoration, he was retired. His name is inscribed on the seventeenth column of the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile in Paris.