I dug out an interesting pistol from the recesses of the collection I inherited from my father. It’s French, by the well known Paris gunmaker Le Page and is a large bore percussion pistol firing superimposed charges – it has two cocks and a single bore into which two loads are placed, one after the other. The right hand nipple leads to the front charge, and the left hand nipple leads directly to the rear charge. It has a single trigger that releases one cock at a time – if both cocks are at full cock, the first pull fires the front charge, and the second pull the rear charge, but if only the left cock is at full cock it fires that one (corresponding to the rear charge, so it would be a bit unfortunate if it was double loaded and you accidentally cocked the left cock and didn’t cock the right! Maybe I will take the locks out and have a look at the mechanism that achieves this and put it on the site- I’d like to see how it shoots one day, its a big bore (a 20 bore cartridge just fits into the muzzle) for a relatively light pistol and must have used a pretty small charge. Obviously you need to get the loading dead right to make sure the flame channels line up with the charges – I can feel a dummy loading coming on………
Typical French etched decoration – almost never seen on English guns or pistols.