Nouvelles observations sur les États-Généraux de France
Very rare first edition of this remarkable text by J.-J. Mounier, who played an important role during the French Revolution.
A precious copy bound in contemporary calf with the armorial devices of Louis-Joseph-Charles Amable d’Albert (1748-1807), 6th Duke of Luynes.
Rare in contemporary armorial binding.
8vo, 282 pp., 1 leaf of table.
Marbled Havana calf, smooth spine decorated with five armorial devices, gilt tooling on edges, red edges. Armorial binding of the period.
195 x 124 mm.
Mounier, J.-J. (1758-1806). New Observations on the Estates-General of France.
S.l., 1789.
Original edition of this remarkable text which paved the way for Mounier's decisive influence during the meeting of the Estates-General.
Mounier played a major role at the beginning of the Revolution. This text earned him great prestige at the Assembly, and he was in fact the one who presented the first three articles of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. (Martin Walter, 25392).
This original is rare and of absolute rarity in period armorial binding.
Mounier played a major role at the beginning of the French Revolution (Tennis Court Oath, Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789) before his departure from Paris in 1790.
After the Day of the Tiles on June 7, 1788, he was, along with Antoine Barnave, one of the main deputies of the assembly that met at Vizille on July 21, 1788.
On January 2, 1789, they proceeded to elect the province's deputies, and Mounier was elected the first deputy of the Third Estate to the Estates-General.
In February 1789, he published his New Observations on the Estates-General of France, in which he called for the abolition of provincial privileges and the adoption of a constitution inspired by English institutions.
In Versailles, faced with royal resistance and the reluctance of the privileged orders, he proposed, on June 20, to the deputies present in the tennis court room that they take an oath, drafted by Jean-Baptiste Pierre Bevière and read by Jean Sylvain Bailly—the famous Tennis Court Oath.
On July 6, he joined the Constitutional Committee.
On August 20, 1789, he presented to the Constituent Assembly the first three articles of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789. These were adopted without discussion. Along with André Boniface Louis Riquetti de Mirabeau, he remains the only known author of the preamble.
Precious copy bound in period calf with the armorial devices of Louis-Joseph Charles Amable d'Albert, VIth Duke of Luynes.
At the end of the reign of King Louis XVI, Louis-Joseph-Charles Amable d’Albert (1748-1807), VIth Duke of Luynes, was among the members of the high nobility who, like the Duke of La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt and the Duke of Aiguillon, were open to Enlightenment ideas, close to the Society of the Friends of the Blacks, against slavery, and inspired by the American Revolution.
In June 1789, he sided with the Third Estate; this did not prevent him from being imprisoned during the Terror, along with his wife Guyonne de Montmorency-Laval. After their release, he retired to the Château de Dampierre, did not emigrate, and devoted himself to his library, continuing to expand the important collection of manuscript maps of the campaigns of the kings of France. The Duchess of Luynes devoted herself to publishing, using the press she had installed at the Château de Dampierre.
