French gold Montre Médaillon à Tact watch Circa 1809

Gold, Montre Médaillon à Tact, watch by Abraham Louis Breguet
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An important, extremely rare French gold enamel Médaillon à Tact studded with half pearls, with Breguet extract from the archives, circa 1809. Sold on January 3, 1809 to Madame Savari (Félicité de Faudoas-Barbazan) for 2025 Francs. Gold enamel case with engine-turned case decoration on both covers, translucent powder-blue enamelled, revolving front cover with an applied gold arrow-shaped pointer sous émail indicating the hours, engraved monogram F on the back cover, case band with half pearl touch studs, gold dome, and case maker’s punch mark PBT (Pierre- Benjamin Tavernier). Gold plate dial, with radial Roman numerals on a small eccentric engine-turned dial, blued Breguet hands, and signed: Breguet 2378. The keywind movement has a small Souscription (subscription) calibre with ruby cylinder escapement, three-arm gold ring balance, and shock protection-parachute.
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Diameter: 36 mm
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Weight: 47 g
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Signed: Abraham Louis Breguet, Paris

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Montre Médaillon à Tact
Breguet was the first maker to come up with the design for this kind of watch – he sold the first one early in 1799 to Madame Betancourt, the wife of his best friend. He continued producing the watches in different variations, some with quite large touch pieces (like this watch) and some with small ones. The price for these watches that Breguet created for the wealthiest of his customers was between 1,500 and 3,000 francs. This was a truly enormous sum of money in the early 19th century, nevertheless, the watches were highly sought after at the time. One of the reasons for their popularity was that at the time it was considered quite unseemly to read the time in public; these expensive pieces made it possible to tell the time without taking the watch out of one’s pocket. Breguet remained almost the only one to create this kind of watch; only Le Roy Horloger de S.A.I et R. Madame à Paris and very few others followed in his footsteps. Le Roy produced a number of such watches, his most exquisite one, which was created for the Prince of Hesse and had diamond touch pieces.
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Madame Savari (née Félicité de Faudoas-Barbazan) was a distant relative of Joséphine de Beauharnais and a classmate of her daughter Hortense; in 1802 she married 1802 René Savary, later Duc de Rovigo, a follower of Napoleon Bonaparte. Savary entered the army as an adjutant but under Napoleon he rose quickly from aide-de-camp to commander of the special body of gendarmes in charge of guarding the First Consul (1801). He became part of the circle of close friends of Napoleon and met 17 year old Félicité de Faudoas-Barbazan during a festivity at Malmaison, Joséphine de Beauharnais’ country residence. The couple had seven children.