page_title: Bagatelle
section_title: UK and US
hierarchical_section_title: Bagatelle / History / UK and US
caption_attribution_description: Print; Prints
context_page_description: Bagatelle is a billiards-derived indoor table game, the object of which is to get a number of balls past wooden pins into holes that are guarded by wooden pegs; penalties are incurred if the pegs are knocked over. It probably developed from the table made with raised sides for trou madame, which was also played with ivory balls and continued to be popular into the later nineteenth century, after which it developed into bar billiards, with influences from the French/Belgian game billard russe. A bagatelle variant using fixed metal pins, billard japonais, eventually led to the development of pachinko and pinball. Bagatelle is also laterally related to miniature golf.
context_section_description: The name "bagatelle" was first used to describe such a game in 1819. Its dimensions soon standardised at 7 feet by 21 inches.  Some French soldiers carried their favorite bagatelle tables with them to America while helping to fight the British in the American Revolutionary War. Bagatelle spread and became so popular in America as well that a political cartoon from 1863 depicts US President Abraham Lincoln playing a small tabletop version of bagatelle against presidential rival George B. McClellan.
  The world's largest bagatelle board is believed to be one made by 5th Chislehurst Scout Group in 2016. It measures four by sixteen feet.
caption: A Little Game of Bagatelle, Between Old Abe the Rail Splitter & Little Mac the Gunboat General
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