French silver virgule à tact watch with gold elements Circa 1812

An absolute rarity half hunter watch
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An absolute rarity this half hunting cased à tact pocket watch made by Le Roy in Paris, France, circa 1812. The watch features a silver case with gold details and is engine turned on both sides. The rotatable back cover features a gold arrow to indicate the hours, while the central section is set with gold buttons that allow the wearer to tell the time by touch. The decentralized white enamel dial has Arabic hour numerals, an outer minute track and a single hand. The early Lépine movement features a rare virgule escapement.
The cuvette is signed.
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Diameter: 46 mm
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Weight: 53 g
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Signed: Le Roy au Palais Royal
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Breguet was the first watchmaker to design this kind of watch. He sold the first one in early 1799 to Madame Betancourt, the wife of his best friend.
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He made the watches in different variations, some with quite large touch pieces, like the present watch, and some with small ones.
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Breguet made these pieces for his wealthiest customers, and priced them between 10,000 and 15,000 francs. This was an 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 it was considered quite unseemly to read the time in public. These pieces made it possible to tell the time without taking the watch out of one’s pocket.
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Breguet remained almost the only one to create montre à tact watches, only Le Roy in Paris and very few others followed in his footsteps. Le Roy made a number of such watches, his most exquisite one was created for the Prince of Hesse around 1810, it bears the number 3191 and has diamond touch pieces. It is now in the collection of the Patek Philippe Museum in Geneva, Switzerland.