Honoré Gabriel Victor de Riqueti, Marquis de Mirabeau
French revolutionary, 1749-1791
Mirabeau was a leader of the early stages of the French revolution. A noble, he was involved before 1789 in numerous scandals that left his reputation in ruins. However, during the early years (1789–91) of the French Revolution he rose to the top and became a voice of the people. A successful orator, he was the leader of the moderate position, favoring a constitutional monarchy built on the model of Great Britain. When he died (of natural causes) he was a great national hero, even though support for his moderate position was slipping away. The later discovery that starting in 1790 he was in the pay of the king and the Austrian enemies of France caused his disgrace.
Source: Wikipedia
French revolutionary (1749-1791). Autograph letter signed. N. p. 4to. 3 pp. With autograph address and black seal.
$ 8,576 / 8.000 €
(46933)
Historically important letter to a Mr Raspaud, lawyer at the Parlement d'Aix, attesting to the deep conflict between Mirabeau and his father Victor de Riqueti due to Mirabeau's debt and his marriage to Émilie de Covet-Marignane. Mirabeau reacted to his father's attempts to separate him from his wife and their son on the assumption that he cannot financially provide for them and particularly his father's intervention with his father-in-law, the marquis de Margnane. Raspaud, who might have been a fellow law student of Mirabeau at the University of Aix, seems to have acted as an intermediary and the furious letter at hand was apparently sent along with an official response to be forwarded either to his father-in-law in nearby Marignane.
While asserting that he could have "kept quiet about a father's harshness, when it only affected" himself, now that his wife is implicated, he promises to "show his teeth." For the moment, he needed to find out, if his father-in-law "seriously insists" on his daughter leaving him, which he doubts, especially since it is his father who "oppresses" them "to the point of taking away" their "livelihood". In an interesting comparison, he mentions that no one dared to separate the Marquis de Sade from his wife, even though he was "stained with all crimes". This was only 2 years after de Sade's trial in absentia and conviction to death in Marseilles. Although Mirabeau finally asserts that he will obtain justice "at all cost", he was ultimately dependent on his powerful father, whom he at one point in the letter ironically refers to by his nickname " l'ami des hommes" and the conflict culminated in his imprisonment at the infamous Château d'If later that year. Some excerpts fromt he letter in the original: "Ceci passe la plaisanterie […] et dès qu'on devient féroce, je montrerai les dents; car j'ai bien pû me taire sur la dureté d'un père, quand elle n'a touché que moi, mais j'atteste Dieu et les hommes que je dois plus à mon fils et à ma femme qu'à mon pere; j'atteste Dieu et les hommes qu'une femme qui n'a rien à se reprocher, qui nourrit son fils, qui a apporté plus de cent mille écus de dot, mille écus de rente, et qui a épousé son égal, ne sçauroit etre privé, je ne dis pas du nécéssaire, qu'aucun être vivant ne peut perdre, je dis d'un entretien honnête et decent […] Tous ces gens là me croyent donc bien bête ou bien lache, s'ils ne me supposent pas capable de réclamer pour ma femme, de plaider sa cause avec toute l'éloquence de l'indignation et de la fureur. Elle n'est nullement ma complice; quand elle le seroit, imagine-t-on de bonne foi que les véhémentes diatribes de mon pere m'ont persuadé que j'étois coupable de leze majésté divine et humaine, et qu'il falloit m'interdire le feu et l'eau. […] Je ne veux, ni ne puis croire que M. le Marquis de Marignane, souffre que mon pere nous opprime jusqu'à nous ravir la subsistance, qu'il insiste serieusement pour que sa fille me quitte; on n'a pas ôté, ni pu ôter sa femme à M. de Sades souillé de tous les crimes. Envoyez lui donc ma lettre; il aura la bonté sans doute de nous dicter mes démarches, auxquelles je me conformerai très éxactement, pourvû qu'elles nous fassent rendre justice que j'aurai à quelque prix que ce soit […]"..