"YESTERDAY I SAW BONAPARTE... I ADMIRED HIM, I'M READY TO LO - Lot 251

Lot 251
Go to lot
Estimation :
600 - 800 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 2 080EUR
"YESTERDAY I SAW BONAPARTE... I ADMIRED HIM, I'M READY TO LO - Lot 251
"YESTERDAY I SAW BONAPARTE... I ADMIRED HIM, I'M READY TO LOVE HIM...". REGNAUD DE SAINT-JEAN-D'ANGÉLY (Michel-Louis-Étienne). Autograph letter signed with his initial to Marie-Barbe de La Tour. Milan, 16 floréal [May 5, 1796]. 2 pp. 3/4 in-4, address on back, vestige of red wax seal, postal mark of the Army of Italy; tear due to opening affecting 2 words. " ... I saw Bonaparte yesterday. He treated me wonderfully. I talked with him for nearly five quarters of an hour. He showed as much abandon as a man whose thoughts are his treasure can show to a stranger. His phisionomy is an assembly of expressive features, of loose muscles that seem accustomed to obeying him. They are ready to speak, yet they remain silent. He has taken and exerted a visible empire over them. He is pale, his health seems impaired, yet his eyes are keenly penetrating: his attitude is noble, his bearing dignified, but his back is a little bent... His conversation is easy: simple but energetic, his expression strong and natural. He expressed to me the desire to cease soon the exercise of too great a power. to rest from his long fatigues. And he seemed to mean what he said. I admired him, I'm ready to love him. He announced La Fayette's freedom from his 2 companions in misfortune... May the three unfortunates finally breathe the air of liberty that I believe was so well made for them, on a free and hospitable land...". General de La Fayette had been taken prisoner by the Austrians, who were holding him in the fortress of Olmütz along with Charles-César de Faÿ de La Tour-Maubourg and Jean-Xavier Bureaux de Pusy. He was to be freed on Bonaparte's intervention, strengthened by his successes in Italy. Michel-Louis-Étienne Regnaud de Saint-Jean d'Angély (1760-1819), Napoléon Bonaparte's confidant and minister, was a lawyer by training. A journalist for a time, he was elected deputy to the Estates-General. In 1796, he was appointed intendant general of hospitals for the Italian army, where he met Napoleon Bonaparte and became attached to his service. After leaving for Egypt with him, he was posted to Malta as commissary of the Republic (June-November 1799). He then joined the group of men who helped Napoleon Bonaparte succeed in his coup d'état of 18 Brumaire: he became a member of the Conseil d'État, where he headed the Interior section (1802), was Attorney General to the Imperial High Court (1804), and Secretary of State in charge of the Imperial Family (1807). Having accepted a ministerial portfolio during the Hundred Days, he was included in the proscription order of 1815, and lived for a time in exile in the United States. Pardoned in 1819, he died on the very day of his return to France. While Stendhal, in his Souvenirs d'égotisme, describes him as a "shameless charlatan" with "energetic coarseness", and the Duchesse d'Abrantès, in her Histoire des salons de Paris (1836-1837), presents him as often unkind or somewhat brutal, she does find him to be a gifted orator, underlining his great goodness and recalling his unwavering loyalty to Napoleon I. The second mother of Regnault de Saint-Jean-d'Angély's wife, Marie-Barbe Guesnon de Bonneuil, was in fact her cousin. She had married Louis-Marie Hutot de La Tour, a former interested party in the king's affairs, then administrator of military hospitals, who became one of the largest shareholders in the Banque de France. While Laure's mother was often absent, Madame de La Tour, twenty years her senior, played a truly maternal role. Regnault, who sometimes called her "maman", seems to have nurtured a kind of loving friendship with her.
My orders
Sale information
Sales conditions
Return to catalogue