A diamond brooch that Napoleon lost to Prussian troops at the Battle of Waterloo will be auctioned in Geneva next month.
With a $150,000 to $250,000 estimate it is the headline item at Sotheby’s Royal & Noble Jewels Sale on November 12.
The brooch was looted after the Battle of Waterloo along with other items from Napoleon’s abandoned carriage train.
The circular piece went back to Prussia with a Lieutenant von Pless, who then gave it to King Friedrich Wilhelm, whose Hohenzollern line was to take the German Imperial throne. When the German monarchy was dissolved at the end of World War I, the jewels became private property, and have passed through several private collections.
Napoleon at Waterloo, about to finally lose his crown, his liberty, and a lot of precious personal possessions.
The brooch is extremely lavish, with a central 13.04-carat oval diamond surrounded by almost 100 mine-cut diamonds.
It is not the most valuable item in the sale.
A pearl and diamond hair ornament from the 18th-century collection of a Princess of Saxony carries a $420,000 to $630,000 estimate.
A pink diamond ring, expected to sell for $300,000 to $500,000, belonged to one of the last Ottoman princesses.
And a Cartier emerald and diamond pendant with a $375,000 to $625,000 estimate links American “dollar aristocracy” to the Old World through its owner, Albertina Winthrop, daughter of a New York banker who married into a Dutch political dynasty.
Napoleon looms over the collecting world as he once dominated Europe. One of his swords sold for $6.5 million in 2007 and earlier this year, a major sale of artefacts from the great French general’s life brought in nearly $10 million.
