What follows here is the story of the Imperial Russian Smith & Wesson Model #3. The development of this gun directly involved the likes of one George Armstrong Custer, Buffalo Bill Cody, a healthy amount of Buffalo hunting, and an enormous f*ck you from Russia at the end of it all that nearly killed the Smith & Wesson company.
The interesting part of this story is that there weren’t strong diplomatic ties between the Russian Empire and the United States in the 1860s. A relationship did exist; however, Russians didn’t comprise a significant majority of immigrants at the time, and there wasn’t much of an established community of Russian expats. However, it’s known that Czar Alexander II sent his son, Grand Duke Alexis, to America to create lasting ties, as was the custom of many royal families.
The exact details have been lost to time, but the young Duke was apparently a huge fan of the American frontier and requested to meet
