The story
The shot that started a war
On 28 June 1914, Gavrilo Princip stepped up to an open car in Sarajevo and fired two shots from an FN Model 1910 in .380 at a range of roughly five feet, killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Duchess Sophie. Four of these pistols had been supplied to the conspirators in Belgrade. Six weeks later Europe was at war.
Few objects sit that close to the hinge of a century and can still be owned. The Sarajevo pistol itself is in a museum. Its model, in its calibre, is not.
Why this one is scarce
.380 is the harder of the two chamberings to find. FN built the great majority of 1910s in .32 ACP; the .380 guns hold six rounds instead of seven, turn up far less often — and the .380 is the chambering that carries the Sarajevo association, because that is what was used.
This example wears its original blue. The slide legend reads Fabrique Nationale d’Armes de Guerre Herstal-Belgique over Browning’s Patent Déposé, with its proof marks beneath, and the serial is crisp. On an untouched pistol the slide and frame agree in colour and texture; a refinished gun usually gives itself away where they don’t. These agree.
What it is
A pocket automatic — six rounds of .380, all steel, built at Herstal to John Browning’s design. Colt passed on it, so Browning patented and produced it in Europe instead.
The design tell is the recoil spring, wrapped concentrically around the barrel rather than hung below it, which let the slide become a clean steel tube. Walther’s PP and PPK took that layout, the Makarov took it, and most of the pocket guns of the next fifty years took it from them. FN built the 1910 at Herstal for seventy-three years, the last in 1983.
