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Wikipedia
Pistole is the French name given to a Spanish gold coin in use in 1537; it was a double escudo, the gold unit. The name was also given to the Louis d'Or of Louis XIII of France, and to other European gold coins of about the value of the Spanish coin. One pistole was worth approximately ten livres.
In Dumas' The Three Musketeers, set in the 1620s, we learn that one hundred pistoles were worth a thousand livres tournois when Athos bargains for the horse he takes to the battle of La Rochelle. (GF Flammarion edition, p. 396) Since six livres were worth a French ecu, one hundred pistoles is worth 166.7 ecus. (One livre was also worth one franc when the latter were issued about 1641. The franc was in turn replaced by the louis d'or.)
A coin with this name was minted in Scotland in 1701, under William II, with a weight of 106 grains (6.84g ca.) and a value of 12 scottish pounds.[1]
The coin gave its name to the town of Trois-Pistoles, Quebec, where according to local legend, an explorer lost a goblet worth three pistoles in the river.[2]
[edit] Notes
- ^ I. Stewart: Scottish Coinage
- ^ Commission de toponymie du Québec
[edit] References
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
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Annotations
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pistole
SYLLABICATION: pis·tole
PRONUNCIATION: p-stol
NOUN: 1. A gold coin equal to two escudos, formerly used in Spain. 2. Any of several gold coins used in various European countries until the late 19th century.
ETYMOLOGY: French, back-formation from pistolet, diminutive of pistole, pistol. See pistol.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. http://www.bartleby.com/61/18/P0331800.html -
OED:
A name formerly applied to certain foreign gold coins; … spec., from c1600, given to a Spanish gold coin worth from 16s. 6d. to 18s.; also applied (after French) to the louis d’or of Louis XIII, issued in 1640… -
OED etymology:
from French pistole the coin, app. shortened from pistolet. The coin was not known by any corresponding name in Spain or Italy.