Trophime-Gérard, marquis de LALLY-TOLENDAL (1751-1830) deput - Lot 249

Trophime-Gérard, marquis de LALLY-TOLENDAL (1751-1830) deputy of the Paris nobility 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 the Indies. 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 and Rochambeau. He asks to intervene to obtain the release of his brother-in-law, John Halkett, detained at the Temple, who is an English national. - Richmond Monday [December 7]. "Maret leaves for France. [...] The Republic claims it wants official communications or nothing. Noël, his second-in-command, remains. He had written at the end of November that the insurrection would take place here." But it was not to be. "He's dying of fear of the suspension of habeas corpus, he's already put all his papers under cover". On the interrogation of Louis XVI: "The stupidity of the questions does not console the debasement of the answers"... Twickenham August 25, 1793. "You have to die without remorse, and to do that you have to tell yourself as you die that you have pleaded to extinction against the Maratism of the Sovereigns, which is no better than that of the Sans culottes, and against the crowned brigandage which stretches foolishly from Poland to France, without thinking that the brigandage with its pants down, which has a thousand times more arms and more springs than it, will end up devouring it and with it the whole of Europe"...He is bitter, and wonders "if this inconceivable chill" does not come from "the stupid aristocracy of Coblentz". France is being torn apart: "Counting the Queen's death for nothing, and perhaps calculating on this death the additional means she will give to annihilate France; counting for nothing five hundred thousand families that agrarian laws, bankruptcy and dismemberment will reduce to lacking bread. It is the most vile and odious Machiavellianism that has ever been thought of; it is a Brigandage more detestable than that of Attila"... Lally quotes at length from Mallet du Pan's letter accompanying his work analyzing the Revolution [Considérations sur la nature de la Révolution de France]... - September 10. "But don't I feel English? Whatever my disapproval of the Siege of Dunkirk, now that it is undertaken, I could not suffer British arms to fail. So make this useless conquest quickly, and when you have given this little amusement to the Badauds of the Cité, go and chain up the monsters of the Convention. [...] You summon me, my dear Lord, to tell you what right France has to Alsace, Flanders and Lorraine? A right that you will find incontestable; the right that a certain Albion has to Bengal, Gibraltar and Canada"... He is deeply concerned about the fate of Queen Marie-Antoinette; Mounier has offered his services to the Princes, who have turned him down, finding him "too conspicuous"; the fighting is murderous everywhere, at Dunkirk and Manheim; it is said "that Sémonville, when he was arrested, was carrying the diamonds from the furniture depository"... - London September 27, 1793. He has learned of the disaster at Dunkirk, but hopes for Toulon: "I believe that France will be saved by Toulon, which means that Europe will be saved by England". He went to Court, where "the King listened with prodigious interest to some details 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 has 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 about it in a paper written in white ink that arrived the day before yesterday from Paris: 'You were all torn apart by the separation of mother and child. Everyone has tried to make conjectures, none of which seem solid; they are not ill. The Child is well treated, spoiled even by those in charge of him; he has not uttered his mother's name, he does not want to walk when she walks; he was sad at first, childhood saved him. But that unfortunate mother! what heartbreak we are in! Enclosed is a L.A.S. from Pauline de Pully, this 23rd, to Lady Sheffield: she is stuck in Boulogne with her aunt, and they don't know when or how they will be able to return to England...