The form of this parade trumpet was inspired by the ceremonial trumpets of ancient Greece and Rome. Sax initially devised the instrument in 1852 for use in L'Escadron des Cent Gardes of Emperor Napoleon III.
This instrument was part of a set of parade trumpets supplied to Wynendaele Castel in Tourhout, Belgium that probably consisted of at least 15 instruments. Four other instruments from this set survive in the Musical Instruments Museum in Brussels. All of these instruments bear a bas-relief copper badge on the bell depicting Wynendale Castle and have been engraved with a large initial M. This refers to the Belgian banker Josse-Pierre Matthieu, who purchased Wynendaele Castle in 1833 and restored it after its destruction by the French Revolutionary Army, or to his son Joseph Louis Matthieu, who remodeled the castle in 1877. The parade trumpet at the Metropolitan Museum is the only one of these instruments to bear the AIS mark.
The date of the surviving parade trumpets from the Wynendaele set has been the focus of much research. The serial numbers establish the year of manufacture as 1856. The trumpets were part of a batch of unsold instruments that remained in Sax’s stock. Each has been subsequently stamped SEUL/GRAND PRIX/ 1867 to note Sax’s success at the Universal Exhibition in Paris. The depiction of Wynendaele Castle on the bells of these instruments shows the façade of the castle after it was remodeled in a romanticized, neo-gothic form by Joseph Louis Matthieu in 1877. This suggests that the set of trumpets was purchased to commemorate the reopening of the castle. The four instruments in the Musical Instruments Museum in Brussels were subsequently acquired by Caesar Snoeck and are described in his 1903 Catalogue de la collection d’instruments de musique Flamands et Néerlandais formée par C.C. Snoeck. Little is known of the provenance of the parade trumpet given to the Metropolitan Museum. Early records indicate that the case of this instrument, which no longer survives, was marked "Ghent", perhaps suggesting a link with Snoeck.