Details
LAFAYETTE, GILBERT DU MOTIER, Marquis de. Autograph letter signed ("Lafayette") to M. André Paccard, representing the citizens of Chalons-sur-Saône, La Tour du Pin, 4 September 1829. 2 pages, 4to, integral address leaf, remains of wax seal, a few tiny perforations at folds, a small marginal tear, in French.
Lafayette, who had reentered French politics during the Restoration, expresses his heartfelt regrets to the people of Chalons that he is prevented by family and political obligations from accepting their invitation to visit the town on his way home. He praises the patriotism of the town's inhabitants, who had bravely resisted a division of the Austrian army in 1814, and alludes at the end to the current political situation: "Union and patriotic concord were never more necessary than in the [present] circumstances, when political liberty would be more particularly threatened if the good citizens were to forget for a minute that it depends on them to foil miserable conspiracies and to reduce them to ridiculous impotence". The conspiracy Lafayette refers to was the attempted coup d'état of the ultra-royalist Prince de Polignac, one of the immediate causes of the movement that was to culminate in the July Revolution of 1830, in which Lafayette was one of the principal actors.
Lafayette, who had reentered French politics during the Restoration, expresses his heartfelt regrets to the people of Chalons that he is prevented by family and political obligations from accepting their invitation to visit the town on his way home. He praises the patriotism of the town's inhabitants, who had bravely resisted a division of the Austrian army in 1814, and alludes at the end to the current political situation: "Union and patriotic concord were never more necessary than in the [present] circumstances, when political liberty would be more particularly threatened if the good citizens were to forget for a minute that it depends on them to foil miserable conspiracies and to reduce them to ridiculous impotence". The conspiracy Lafayette refers to was the attempted coup d'état of the ultra-royalist Prince de Polignac, one of the immediate causes of the movement that was to culminate in the July Revolution of 1830, in which Lafayette was one of the principal actors.