It is a changed France that Abraham-Louis Breguet discovers when he returns to Paris after the French Revolution. He develops his foreign clientele and it is in Russia where he is the most successful. He opens an establishment in Saint Petersburg in 1808 which he is forced to close three years later when the Tsar Alexander I forbids the entry of French products on Russian ground, as a response to the politics of Napoleon.
"Breguet makes a watch which for twenty years never goes wrong, while the pitiful machine by which we live runs amiss and produces pain at least once a week."StendhalRome, Naples and Florence, 1817
Stendhal (1783-1842), best known for his novels Le Rouge et le Noir and La Chartreuse de Parme, made this flattering allusion to Breguet in his travel piece Rome, Naples et Florence, published in 1817, incidentally providing the best possible publicity for the firm.
