MASSACRES OF SEPTEMBER. Autograph manuscript... - Lot 201 - Rossini

Lot 201
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MASSACRES OF SEPTEMBER. Autograph manuscript... - Lot 201 - Rossini
MASSACRES OF SEPTEMBER. Autograph manuscript by a priest, Sunday, September 2 [1792]; 6 pages in-4 (note in English: "Relation of the Massacre of the Carmes by a Priest who escaped over the garden wall"). Poignant account of the massacre at the Carmelite convent, by an eyewitness, one of the few priests to have escaped, by jumping over the garden wall. In this peaceful late afternoon, at the hour of the walk, one heard suddenly shouts, gunshots, and "a swarm of National Guards of Section Commissioners, of Marseillois, unleashed from all sides and rushed in the garden"... Armed with pikes, axes and daggers, the furious men screamed for the Archbishop of Arles [Jean-Marie du Lau], whom the priests were trying to protect; the prelate offered to save the others; after a dramatic hesitation, the murderers threw themselves on him... Terrible details about the last moments of the martyrs: "They were taken out two by two. They passed in front of a commissioner who did not ask them a question, did not say a word to them, counted the victims and enjoyed the torments. They advanced on the trail of the blood of their immolated companions, saw from afar the mounds of the dead, to which they were going to be added, called to their aid the God for whom they were walking to the torture, and invoked his clemency for their executioners. Thus perished 120 ministers of the altars"; as well as a layman who was among them, "a Count of Valfond [Valfons], an officer in the old army, of great bravery and deep piety, whom I knew in our youth during the time of my studies, and whom our common masters proposed to us then as a model of application and virtue [...]. The Section had found it pleasant to order its henchmen to take the Count de Valfond to the Carmes, so that he would not be separated from his confessor"...Attached is a brief handwritten note (by Dumouriez?) concerning Denis Chaumont, a priest, missionary for 7 years in China, since 1785 director of the seminary of the Foreign Missions in Paris, and since October 1792, a refugee in England, with no resources; perhaps he is the author of the account to which this note is attached.
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