MIRABEAU (Honoré Gabriel Riquetti de). largely... - Lot 31 - Osenat

MIRABEAU (Honoré Gabriel Riquetti de). largely autograph manuscript entitled "Sur la déclaration que la Russie a fait faire à la Curlande, et qui se trouve dans des gazettes de Leyde du 20 may au 3 juin". 4 pp. in-folio, that is 2 pp. 1/2 in-folio in Mirabeau's hand, with erasures and corrections, and 1 p. 1/2 in-folio of another hand, presenting particularities of the Germanic spelling, probably that of his secretary Karl von Nolde; incomplete of the last 3 paragraphs. IMPORTANT DIPLOMATIC MEMOIR FOR THE MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS. In those years, Mirabeau was looking for a destiny, and he made a first trip to Germany from November 1785 to April 1786, with a simple letter of recommendation from Vergennes. Thanks to his friend, the future Prince of Talleyrand, who was close to Calonne, he then received from the same Vergennes an unofficial intelligence mission on behalf of France, when the King of Prussia was about to die - at the same time, Mirabeau had to secretly collect all kinds of financial information for Talleyrand's personal affairs. In Paris he hired a German-speaking secretary, Baron Karl von Nolde, nephew of the Chamberlain of Courland, Otto Christopher von der Howen, and left with him for Prussia, where he stayed from July 1786 to January 1787. A BROUILLON WITH MANY IMPORTANT VARIANTS TO THE VERSION PUBLISHED in 1789 by Mirabeau himself in his Histoire secrète de la Cour de Berlin, under the title "Mémoire remis à la Cour de France, sur la déclaration [...]". "THE CURLANDE HAS JUST BEEN THREATENED OFFICIALLY TO INCUR THE INDIGNATION OF THE SOVEREIGN OF THE RUSSIAS IN THE CASE OR WILL BE FOUNDED THE RUMOUR WHICH WAS SPREAD ABOUT THE ABDICATION OF THE CURRENT DUKE IN FAVOUR OF THE DUKE OF WIRTENBERG, PRUSSIAN GENERAL. It is known that this ferocious man, abhorred in his country to the point of not being able to stay there, when he is not afraid of all the violence of the cabinet of St. Petersburg, is the son of the famous Biren named duke in 1760 by the influence or rather by the terror of Russia which drove out with the help of 40,000 men Charles of Saxony, uncle of the elector and legitimate duke, in order to install the favorite of Elizabeth, Czarina; it is known that the current duke has more than once felt the full weight of the resentments of Catherine II; that he has been relegated to his home for years in Siberia; that his influence is nil and his abdication desired. WHAT IS NOT ALSO KNOWN, OR RATHER WHAT IS VERY SECRET, IS THAT SIX YEARS AGO A UKASE OF THE IMPERATRIX ENJOINED HIM TO HAVE TO HAND OVER HIS DUCHY TO PRINCE POTEMKIM; and that by the council of the chancellor Taubé [Ernst Johann von Taube] and the chamberlain Howen, he conjured up the storm by making pass to prince Potemkim then and always very disturbed, 200 thousand ducats... The crisis starts again today, because one feels how much the duke became by his savings and his avarice, tired of his precarious existence and one of the richest private princes of Europe aspires to put himself under the shelter of the events, and that one fears that the cabinet of Berlin does not form some speculation on Curlande with the assistance of a new duke completely at its disposal. The conditions which gave to Poland a right of protectorate over Curonian Spit ceasing to have force of law at the moment when this annihilated Republic is unable to fulfill it, one undoubtedly apprehends that Prussia will subrogate itself in its place... [Mirabeau makes here a geographical and economic picture of the duchy of Courland]. It is perfectly useless to establish here that CURLAND BEING A FREE AND REPUBLICAN STATE whose sovereign is purely elective, so that he can abdicate but not give up his rights, RUSSIA HAS NO RIGHT TO MELT IN ITS AFFAIRS. RIGHT IS A MEANINGLESS WORD WHEN CONTRASTED WITH FORCE. Russia has long been able to vex Curland, to dictate its choices, to force its votes, to extort or snatch its goods, and its men; it has had its minister kidnapped in Warsovie, and relegated to Siberia; and its party has long been taken to familiarize the Courts of Europe with the idea that Curland occupies a rank in the world only as much as Russia wants to dispose of it...". Mirabeau then proposes that France renews its trade agreement with the Curonian Spit, for economic reasons, but also geopolitical: France would gain in particular the access of its military navy to two ports in the Baltic, and Russian-Prussian relations would be less strained by maintaining an intermediate zone.