Lot n° 250
Estimation :
1500 - 2000
EUR
Result without fees
Result
: 2 800EUR
François-Antoine BOISSY D'ANGLAS (1756-1826)... - Lot 250 - Rossini
François-Antoine BOISSY D'ANGLAS (1756-1826) Conventional (Ardèche) and politician. MANUSCRITER (fragments); 47 pages in-4 (some marginal decipherments in pencil).
Notes for his memoirs on the trial of Louis XVI.
The decree that ordered the death of Louis "must be ranked among the greatest calamities that could have struck France, this death put between them all those who voted for it, and from that moment the majority was acquired by the Jacobin party, [...] the true republicans had to cover their heads with their coats or withdraw. Kersaint did it and he was right"... He recalls some critical moments: the shaking of the Convention in front of the vagueness of most of the charges, the haste of the Jacobins, violent debates, Marat, Duhem and Merlin recalling that "the blood of so many immolated patriots demanded vengeance, that Louis was convinced and that he should only leave the bar to go to the scaffold"... Remarks on the choice of a defender (Target, Tronchet, De Sèze, Malesherbes), on the stormy and intimidating sessions of the Convention, with Robespierre, Barbaroux, Danton, Barrère, Louvet, Brissot, Condorcet, Pétion... Various motives for wanting Louis dead, and the untenable character of the appeal to the people defended by the Girondins: "it was organized anarchy, it was the signal of the civil war, it was the revocation perhaps of the decree which had proclaimed the republic, the orators of the Mountain did not fail to make it feel, Barrère especially"... He speaks about the heterogeneous nature of the crimes and misdemeanors imputed to the King, some of which occurred while he was a captive and all of which were prior to the acceptance of the constitution and the amnesty; the exhibits were "insignificant for the most part or foreign to Louis, they lacked for the most part authenticity"... A strange detail: one debated the hearing of a petitioner in favour of the freedom of the theaters when "a voice rose above the tumult and dominated it by the vehemence it was that of DANTON, returned from Belgium the very morning expres to vote against Louis, it is well question of comedie s'ecria he, the people are impatient"... The roll call on the question of which sentence to inflict on Louis lasted 24 hours... De SÈZE defended him eloquently; one of his last words excited the Mountain, silent until then: He said "the people wanted liberty and Louis gave it to them"; it was found that the people had conquered it... As soon as Louis and his defenders left the bar, a thousand fierce voices exploded to demand his judgment and to oppose the publication of the defense plea. Only one man "dared to make the voice of justice heard with the courage and eloquence of virtue, it was LANJUINAIS, Lanjuinais who in all the circumstances where it was necessary to invoke them claimed the eternal principles of political equity and the rights of the nation, and in spite of the booing and the threats he wrote... &c. "... Boissy d'Anglas distinguishes in the tumult the voices of Vergniaud, Brissot, Robespierre, Lepelletier, Barras, Gensonné, and the painter Bozeappelé to the bar as witness; the next day, various incidents made suspend the deliberation, the Jacobins frightened the weak ones who made up the majority, one spoke about gatherings of assassins and brigands in Paris, and of the play The Friend of the Laws, "kind of political Tartuffe" against the false patriots and "the infamous followers of Marat"... Finally, at the time of the vote, "the abbot SIEYÈS who opined after the representans who had believed to have to motivate their indulgence by long declamations says with mood his only words death... without crying... D'Orleans also pronounced this terrible word, it was the only moment of this long session or one heard murmurs"... Contestation of the late vote "against death", of Duchâtel, brought "almost dying", "the head wrapped in cloths"... Request to suspend the judgment on behalf of the chargé d'affaires of Spain... Request to be heard on behalf of the defenders: they were heard, but only after the president had pronounced "the fatal result"... The next morning, Louis was picked up: "before leaving he wanted to give the munip. J. Roux a will, and this one said to him I did not come here to receive your will but to lead you to the suplice"... Boissy delivers in conclusion some reflections on LOUIS XVI "whose life without being free of blame, deserved another end, his virtues [...] belonged to his heart and his faults were the fault of those who surrounded him of the bad education which he had received, and of the rank for which he was destined". He had an upright soul, a just mind, the virtues of private individuals rather than kings, instruction based on memory (geography, history, foreign languages), "which becomes null for reason". Shy and embarrassed in the Council and with his ministers,
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