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432 - François-Antoine BOISSY D’ANGLAS (1756–1826), member of the …
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Estimate €1,000 - €1,500
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François-Antoine BOISSY D’ANGLAS (1756–1826), member of the Convention (Ardèche) and politician. Autograph manuscript, *Pensées diverses sur les mœurs, la politique et la révolution française* [January 1800]; 52-page notebook, small 8vo plus cover, paperback (water-stained). A very interesting notebook by the former President of the Convention, containing reflections on the Revolution, anecdotes about his contemporaries and notes on history; it is numbered ‘20’. It opens with an amusing anecdote about Sieyès, who, when he was due to receive a national honour, managed to take Roger Ducos’s place in drafting the message, and ‘never was a man praised as Sieyès was in that piece (I still hold this account from Carnot, who in turn had it from Bonaparte)’... He speaks with humour of Sieyès’s financial affairs: the 100,000 francs he ‘saved’ in Prussia, his pensions as a senator, his request for a pay rise – ‘but Bonaparte refused: he often told me, whilst on the Committee of Public Safety, that his entire fortune consisted of 3,600 francs in life annuities, and that he never wanted a single sou more’... A note dated 1 Pluviose VIII (21 January 1800) refers to the allegations of embezzlement against Ouvrard, a supplier to the armies, and Ouvrard’s statements concerning bribes paid to Barras. Boissy d’Anglas offers some general reflections: ‘The successive revolutions that are shaking the world [...] are nothing other than the result of the struggle that will always exist between the majority, which does not wish to be oppressed, and the minority, which wishes to oppress it. [...] The chains that bind men in slavery are auxiliary to those that bind them within the legal order’... He comments on this paradox: Louis XIV, the most powerful and absolute of kings, ‘did more to bring about the French Revolution than Louis XVI ’... He speaks of constitutions, which result from compromises between the existing powers: that of Year VIII was ‘a compromise between the ambition of Sieyès and that of Bonaparte, between the genius of intrigue and brute force’... He quotes remarks by Mallet du Pan, and recalls a speech by Sieyès before the Constituent Assembly on liberty, equality and property... He recounts how he was struck off the prefectural lists, Talleyrand having slandered him to Bonaparte: ‘he does not forgive me for the good I did him and the harm I have already suffered as a result’... He gives his assessment of Vergniaud and the Girondins, who did not want a Republic, and who ‘could clearly see that by dethroning the king, they would end up in the camp of Orléans’... He reports on Carnot’s remarks concerning 18 Fructidor, and quotes Montesquieu on the authority of the prince and the power of the people... ‘Bonaparte must endeavour to give the French nation a character, institutions and customs; to create for it principles of government in keeping with its mores; and to direct its industry, its people and the strength of its armies towards a goal of prosperity that is unique to it. Without this, he will merely pass through the theatres where he has taken to the stage’... He explains how the Constitution of Year VIII, by declaring the inviolability of the consuls, formally contradicted the Convention, which had refused to recognise the inviolability of the king... He quotes at length from Saint-Lambert on the history of Europe, the various forms of government, and so on. He also discusses the Renaissance of the arts, the power of the popes, the poisoning of Mirabeau by the Jacobins and the Orléanists, Santerre and the 20 June movement, the Romans, the Republic of Genoa, etc.
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About the sale Letters and Autograph Manuscripts – Part II
Auction location
Auction time 10/14/2026 at 2:00 PM
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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