This article is about a coin. For other meanings, and similar words, see Pistol (disambiguation).

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.

References

In Dumas’ The Three Musketeers, set in the 1620s, we learn that thirty-five pistoles and twenty crowns make 465 livres. (Penguin classics edition p.368)