Cognac that accompanied Napoleon to be auctioned

London - A bottle of Cognac that accompanied Napoleon Bonaparte on his conquests of Europe is among 5,000 unopened bottles worth over five million pounds that will be shortly auctioned, a media report said Monday.

Dutch collector Bay Van der Bunt is selling the bottles of which one is a 1795 Cognac made in Brugerolle. The hand-blown six-litre Jeroboam bottle is worth 114,500 pounds and is "the last of its kind in the world", The Telegraph quoted van der Bunt as saying.

"It travelled with Napoleon's army. You can just see it there lying with the others in the hay cart. After the battle - and probably before - the officers would drink from it," he told the Observer.

Van der Bunt bought the bottle from a Chicago collector in 1990 for 20,000 pounds, an investment that has increased five-fold in value as wealthy Chinese and Russian buyers move into the market.

Also in the collection is a Courvoisier & Curlier worth 39,000 pounds, that was distilled from grapes plucked 223 years ago in 1789, the year of the French revolution.

Buyers solely interested in the Cognacs of revolutionary and Napoleonic France will be disappointed. Van der Bunt is aiming to sell the entire collection, which was started by his great grandfather in 1880, to a single buyer by the end of this year.

He is also haunted by the idea that a buyer might open and drink his historic brandies.

"I fear people will drink them. This will be more than a pity. It will be barbaric. Just barbaric."