The Wallace Collection's Arms and Armour Curator, Tobias Capwell introduces these two elegant and sumptuously decorated flint-lock pistols made for King Louis XIV of France. Their precise provenance is unknown, it has been suggested that the pistols might have been made in celebration of the capture of Dunkirk in 1658. Alternatively, they might have formed part of a gift from the city of Lille to mark and celebrate the annexation of that city by French forces in the 1667-8 Spanish Netherlands ca