King Louis XV's Magnificent Engraved Lorenzoni Rifle

hey guys thanks for tuning in to another video on Forgotten weapons comm I'm Ian McCallum and I'm here today at the James Giulia auction helps up in Maine taking a look at some of the guns that they're going to be selling in their upcoming spring of 2018 firearms auction now there are engraved guns and there are engraved guns and this is one of the latter this is actually a firearm from the royal collection of King Louis the 15th of France and it is tremendously magnificent so without any further ado I'm going to go straight to some close-ups of this so that you can see just the immaculate work on this gun because you can't see it from back there this isn't just any rifle either this is actually a Lorenz Oni pattern repeating firearm so normally you would see an opening here in the top and normally you would have an opening for the magazine here on the side if you're not familiar with the Lorenz Oni system definitely check out some of my other videos on those rifles there will be links to those at the end of this video but what we have here is a rotating breech lever that allows you to reload the action this is approximately a 38 caliber rifle and you can see from the muzzle that it is in fact rifled the magazine access is not in fact anywhere on the side of the action instead you get to that through the butt plate there is a trapdoor on the butt plate and a little button right here when I push that it opens up and that is where you would put the projectiles and that is a little tube for powder it would funnel into the action I believe there used to be a cover plate for the powder which has since broken and you can see there's a little tab there that prevents the round balls from falling back out the decoration on this I really can't overstate the stock has a bunch of silver inlay in it it's really rather impossible to overstate the the artistic effort put into this rifle on the back end of the stock we have primarily silver inlay as well as some really deep engraving in the wood self there's a little bit of a hidden surprise up here on the top of the stock we have crown here and if we push this button back underneath is a portrait of Louis the 15th more silver inlay on the opposite side what would be called a grotesque face inlaid into or carved into the stock here on the back of the wrist and just look at the detail of that engraving that is another portrait of Louis three fleur-de-lis of the House of Bourbon and royal crest this rifle was manufactured by a German gunsmith and presented by German nobility to King Louie and it's engraved here with the name of the manufacturer sebastian Hauschka of wolfenbüttel and the barrel itself is just this magnificent Damascus it's a silver front sight blade some additional decorative elements on the bottom of the stock as well not to mention oh just that on the bottom of the trigger guard now there was only one other marking on this rifle and it's that number four six four right there that was the inventory number of the French royal cabinet disarmed the the arms collection and there were three main inventories done of this firearms collection which began in the late 1600s this rifle was present in the 1775 inventory which took place just after Louis the 15th had died now in 1789 the French Revolution broke out and a lot of this collection was dispersed obviously there was quite a bit of chaos and a lot of looting of the Royal various royal collections so many of the wealth some of the rifles from this collection have turned up across Europe this particular one has a really fantastic backstory I think this actually came out of the estate of an American officer who had been stationed in Europe at the end of World War two and he actually recognized well he he noticed the elaborately decorated stock of this rifle in a pile of like a hundred and fifty captured guns or turned in guns that were to be destroyed and he pulled it out of the pile and took it home himself recognizing that it was not your average run-of-the-mill 22 or shotgun and so it actually stayed in his family until now so about seventy-five years when they decided to put it up for auction now when it came back from Europe it wasn't quite in this this nice of a condition it did need some restoring there was a crack in the stock some of the silver inlay had come loose and it was expertly restored in fact julia has pictures of it pre and post restoration but in its current guise as it has been restored to original it is an incredibly magnificent piece of work guns like this are rarely seen seen outside of museums and very rarely up for private sale so it's really been a a treat to get to look at something like this up close without having to see it through glass and if you're the sort of person who has the resources to add a royal firearm to your own personal collection well this sort of opportunity does not come up very often take a look at the description text below you'll find there a link to the Julia catalog page on this rifle that includes their pictures their provenance their value estimates everything else you would need to know to place a bid on the rifle although I would think if you are considering buying this you would probably come to the auction house in person to examinate yourself and participate live in the auction thanks for watching

Channel: Forgotten Weapons

Views: 297,149

Rating: 4.9842353 out of 5

Keywords: louis xv, 15th, louis, king louis, fleur de lis, king, france, french, lorenzoni, cabinet d'armes, royal collection, flintlock, repeater, repeating, engraved, engraving, inlay, gold, silver, carve, embellish, beautiful, magnificent, amazing, presentation, presented, house of bourbon, portrait, relief, damascus, collection, spectacular, history, development, mccollum, kasarda, inrange, forgotten weapons, inrangetv

Id: 5cNtduI3aRA

Length: 7min 23sec (443 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 25 2018

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