Jacques MALLET DU PAN (Céligny, Switzerland 1749-1800), inte - Lot 302

Lot 302
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1200 - 1500 EUR
Jacques MALLET DU PAN (Céligny, Switzerland 1749-1800), inte - Lot 302
Jacques MALLET DU PAN (Céligny, Switzerland 1749-1800), intellectual from Geneva, Calvinist thinker, he embodied the reforming counter-revolution; charged with a mission by Louis XVI to incite foreign sovereigns to moderation, he was the initiator of the Brunswick Manifesto; he took refuge in Brussels, but was soon expelled. 5 L.A.S. to Champion de Cicé, 14 pp. in-4. Brussels, July-October 1793. Addresses on the back. Long, rich and very interesting correspondence on his role, his analysis and his action on the revolutionary events. "I have no other goal in transporting myself to these regions than to judge events as closely as possible, to study people and things, and to counterbalance, if I can, ideas and plans that would be our misfortunes by preparing those of Europe. I have been given some confidence; the correctness of some of my observations has been recognized; but the smallest step requires so many cogs and causes so much friction that the circumstance of an operation is always lost when one decides to operate []. I was told from Geneva that Mr. Necker, treated as an emigrant, had just had all his property confiscated in France. As a foreigner like him, I had suffered the same fate since last September: but he was far from believing that he was made to share with me the honors of war []. I am far from thinking of any periodical work. Forced to say some derogatory truths, and in conscience not being able to say others, I would soon be ashamed and suffocated []. Most of the Emigrés are suffering from another kind of madness, from which no event will cure them []. They make absolute plans, they despotically decide on difficulties, as if they had any influence left in the Kingdom. They are ungovernable spirits. Here are three or four factions launched in the interior and colliding in opposite directions. Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux and the departments that follow them are rallied only against the purse-cutters, the head-cutters, and the convention that serves as a grand committee for these scoundrels. Certainly if these coalitions acquire forces they will re-establish the King and the Royalty; but to achieve some consistency, these different parties will be obliged to come together; they will merge into one which will have for object to exterminate the anarchists and to remake a constitution. This one will result from a treaty between these diverse interests; it will be a rotten pot that will drag us through ten years of troubles and factions; but the Revolution will cease to be plundering and massacring []. You already know, no doubt, that by a decree of the Committee of Public Safety, the Queen has been transferred to the Conciergerie, and that this unfortunate princess is being handed over to the Revolutionary Tribunal; that Mde Elisabeth is to be deported after the Queen's trial, and the children held prisoner. The whole decree composed of 18 or 20 articles would have made Nero shudder [] ". He also evokes the revolutionary events in Switzerland, the siege of Valenciennes, the siege of Toulon, the fanaticism of the Jacobins, the operations of foreign armies, etc.
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