Lot n° 56
Estimation :
900 - 1200
EUR
Trophime-Gérard, marquis de LALLY-TOLENDAL (1751-1830) deput - Lot 56
Trophime-Gérard, marquis de LALLY-TOLENDAL (1751-1830) deputy of the nobility of Paris to the Estates-General; arrested after August 10, he managed to leave France for England and offered to defend Louis XVI at his trial; he had fought to rehabilitate his father, the former governor of India. 5 L.A. (2 signed "L"), EnglandMay 1792-September 1793, to Lord Sheffield; 26 pages in-4, one address (one letter with frayed edge).
Interesting emigration correspondence.
May 4, 1792. Lally relates the assassination of the unfortunate Théobald de Dillon, general of the Armée du Nord, massacred by his soldiers on April 29, 1792, and reports on the military situation of Generals Biron, Lafayette, Rochambeau. He asks to intervene to obtain the release of his brother-in-law, John Halkett, detained in the Temple, who is of English nationality. - Richmond Monday [December 7]. "Maret leaves for France. [...] The Republic claims that it wants official communications or not. Noël, his second in command, is still staying. He had written at the end of November that the insurrection was going to take place here." But it is not so. "He is dying of fear of the suspension of habeas corpus, he has already put all his papers under cover". About the interrogation of Louis XVI: "The stupidity of the questions does not console the debasement of the answers"...
Twickenham August 25, 1793. "It is necessary to die without remorse and for that to say to oneself while dying that one pleaded until extinction against the Maratism of the Sovereigns which is not worth better than that of the Sans culottes, and against the crowned brigandage which extends foolishly from Poland to France, without thinking that the deculotized brigandage which has a thousand times more arms and more springs than him will end up devouring him and with him the whole of Europe "...He is bitter and wonders "if this inconceivable cooling" does not come from "the stupid aristocracy of Coblentz". France is torn apart: "To count for nothing the death of the Queen and perhaps to calculate on this death, the means of more that it will give to annihilate France; to count for nothing five hundred thousand families that the agrarian laws, the bankruptcy and the dismemberment will reduce to lack of bread. It is the most vile and odious Machiavellianism of which one has yet had the idea; it is a Brigandage more detestable than that of Attila "... Lally quotes at length the letter of Mallet du Pan accompanying his work analyzing the Revolution [Considérations sur la nature de la Révolution de France]... - September 10. "But isn't it true that I feel English? Whatever my disapproval of the Siege of Dunkirk, as it is currently undertaken, I could not suffer the British arms to be defeated there. So make this useless conquest very quickly, and when you have given this little amusement to the Badauds of the City, go and chain up the monsters of the Convention. [...] You ask me, my dear Lord, to tell you what right France has to Alsace, to Flanders and to Lorraine? A right that you will find incontestable; the right that a certain Albion has to Bengal, to Gibraltar and to Canada"... He is deeply worried about the fate of Queen Marie-Antoinette; Mounier offered his services to the Princes who rejected him, finding him "too conspicuous"; the fights are murderous everywhere, at Dunkirk as well as at Manheim; it seems "that Sémonville, when he was arrested, had the diamonds of the furniture store on him"... - London September 27, 1793. He learned about the disaster of Dunkirk, but hopes in Toulon: "I believe that France will be saved by Toulon, that is to say that Europe will be saved by England". He went to the Court where "the King listened with prodigious interest to some details that I had received the day before on the state of the poor little King of France [Louis XVII] and repeated them with sensitivity in his Circle." He offered his services to the King, in great secrecy, and hopes to be employed. He returns to the fate of "poor little Joas," and transcribes "what I was told in a paper written in white ink that arrived the day before yesterday from Paris: 'You were all torn apart by the separation of the mother and child. Everyone has tried to make conjectures, none of which seem solid; they are not sick. The Child is well treated, spoiled even by those who are in charge of him; he did not pronounce his mother's name, he only wants to walk where she used to walk; he was sad at first, childhood saved him. But this unfortunate mother! to what tears we are delivered! ". He specifies that this bill arrived to him "around a shoe of Pauline's".Attached is a L.A.S. from Pauline de Pully, this 23rd, to Lady Sheffield: she is stuck in Boulogne with her aunt and they do not know when and how they will be able to return to England...
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