A two-pointed hat worn by Napoleon Bonaparte during the Battle of Marengo has fetched EUR 1.9 million (US $2.38 million) at auction.
The skirmish in 1800 saw Napoleon’s French forces overcome their Austrian counterparts - before the hat was subsequently offered as a gift to the Emperor’s veterinarian.
This week, 214 and a half years later, Monaco’s royal family placed the hat on sale alongside hundreds of other pieces of memorabilia at an auction in Fontainebleau.
A South Korean buyer paid well over the estimated EUR 400,000 value of the artefact, offering the winning bid of almost $2.4 million. The hat is one of only 19 of Napoleon’s iconic headpieces believed to still exist.
The buyer, 57-year-old Kim Hong-Kuk, has been descirbed by local French media as a "chicken mogul", given he is the founder and chairman of the poultry giant Harim Group.
The collection at auction was put together by Prince Louis II of Monaco who is the great-grandfather of current monarch Prince Albert. The family is using the sale to help finance a palace restoration, the BBC has reported.
Coincidentally, a letter from Napoleon's nemesis is also going under the hammer this week. The letter, sent from Lord Horatio Nelson to his mistress Lady Emma Hamilton just weeks before birth of their secret love child, is expected to fetch up to GBP 15,000 ($23,485) at a Christie's auction in London.
The child, Horatia, was born January 29, 1801, while Nelson was still married to Frances 'Fanny' Nisbet. It would be just over four and a half years later that Nelson would face off against the combined fleets of the French and Spanish Navies at the Battle of Trafalgar.