Alliance des Jacobins de France avec le ministère anglais ...

True first edition, including on the verso of the title page the announcement of the work The Memoirs of Montgaillard on the Conspiracy of Pichegru, which would become, by order of the newly crowned Emperor: Memoirs Concerning the Treason of Pichegru. The publisher would be forced to withdraw the announcement of these works and thus to reprint the title page of Méhée de la Touche.
Original pamphlet, in gray paper wrappers. Unlettered spine. Lack at head and upper joint open for 5 cm. Corners and edges folded. Tear with small damage to text on leaf N¹. Uncut copy, with conjugate leaves (except the first 15 pages).

Méhée de la Touche (1760-1826), spy in the service of Bonaparte, mounted in 1803 an infiltration operation of the royalists in exile in London, in order to thwart a conspiracy against the First Consul. He passed himself off as a counter-revolutionary pursued by the French police and mystified one of the best English agents of the time, Francis Drake, diplomat in Munich and supporter of the royalists. England, of course ignoring his true intentions, provided Méhée with a sum of 192,000 pounds for his contribution to the overthrow of Bonaparte.
 

These memoirs, to say the least curious, constitute a fascinating spy novel "fort piquant" ["quite spicy"] (Biography of Contemporaries, Paris, 1824, p. 167), the author recounting in detail how he introduced himself into official circles, from Berlin to Hamburg, passing through Strasbourg: "Il me semble, explique-t-il, que mon aventure offre des leçons qui peuvent n'être perdues. On y voit à nu les ressorts méprisables de cette politique qui semble se nourrir des larmes et du sang dont elle inonde le globe, depuis que nos voisins l'ont adoptée. [...] La voix de la justice ne peut manquer de se faire entendre plutôt ou plus tard en faveur de l'homme dont les circonstances seules aient pu rendre les opinions dangereuses ; mais l'infamie, pire que l'échafaud, menace quiconque ose méconnaître la loi sacrée qui attache l'homme au sol qui l'a nourri." ["It seems to me, he explains, that my adventure offers lessons that may not be lost. One sees there naked the despicable mechanisms of this politics which seems to feed on the tears and blood with which it floods the globe, since our neighbors adopted it. [...] The voice of justice cannot fail to make itself heard sooner or later in favor of the man whose circumstances alone could have made his opinions dangerous; but infamy, worse than the scaffold, threatens whoever dares to ignore the sacred law that attaches man to the soil that nourished him."]
 
This work also forms a rare description of the life of a spy in these times of incessant plots. It contains, besides Drake's compromising correspondence, caustic portraits of the exiles. Thus, about the Duke of Berry, Méhée writes: "Le duc de Berri est un jeune homme d'une figure assez désagréable : il n'est guère aimé que de ceux qui ont servi dans le corps qu'il commandait pendant la guerre. Il est très libertin ; manque souvent d'argent : le général Villot vient quelquefois à son secours. Il déteste l'évêque d'Arras, et lui reproché, en présence de plusieurs personnes, de n'avoir jamais donné que de mauvais conseils à son père." ["The Duke of Berry is a young man with a rather unpleasant appearance: he is hardly loved except by those who served in the corps he commanded during the war. He is very libertine; often lacks money: General Villot sometimes comes to his aid. He detests the Bishop of Arras, and reproached him, in the presence of several people, for never having given anything but bad advice to his father."] About a former deputy, he notes, not without acid humor: "Henri Larivière, arrivé sans un sou, avec une femme et un enfant, n'ayant pour toute fortune qu'une douzaine de mille francs de dettes, un orgueil difficile à justifier, et un caractère imployable, n'a rien trouvé à Londres qui répondît à son attente. [...] Henri se console des petites tracasseries qu'il éprouve en buvant beaucoup de rum [sic] et d'eau-de-vie : il est souvent dans un état qui a fait calomnier sa tempérance. Il m'a invité vingt fois à entrer avec lui dans des public-houses, espèce de cabarets où ce qu'on appelle les honnêtes gens n'entrent guère ; mais je n'ai pas cru qu'un républicain dût être plus difficile à cet égard qu'un président du conseil des Cinq-cents, et j'y suis entré souvent avec lui. Le mal est qu'il est très difficile de l'en faire sortir." ["Henri Larivière, arrived penniless, with a wife and child, having for his entire fortune only a dozen thousand francs of debt, a pride difficult to justify, and an implacable character, found nothing in London that answered his expectation. [...] Henri consoles himself for the small annoyances he experiences by drinking a lot of rum and brandy: he is often in a state that has slandered his temperance. He invited me twenty times to enter with him into public-houses, a kind of tavern where what are called honest people hardly enter; but I did not believe that a republican should be more difficult in this regard than a president of the Council of Five Hundred, and I often entered there with him. The problem is that it is very difficult to get him out."] At other times, Méhée shows himself cruelly laconic: "Le Duc de Serent : Ancien gouverneur des enfans [sic] du comte d'Artois, et fait duc depuis son émigration. Il n'a aucune influence." ["The Duke of Serent: Former governor of the children of the Count of Artois, and made duke since his emigration. He has no influence."]
 
Méhée de la Touche had begun his career as a secret agent thanks to Count Mirabeau and the Marquis de La Fayette, who had sent him to Saint Petersburg where he was however quickly unmasked. He then worked in Poland, before returning to France in 1791-1792. He then took part in the attack on the Tuileries Palace and became Secretary of the Paris Commune, then First Secretary of the Ministry of War under the Directory. Following the Coup of 18 Fructidor, he was condemned to hard labor but escaped before being sent to Cayenne. Reinstated by Bonaparte, he was dispatched to England to carry out his mission of spying on the exiled royalists. This book was later disavowed by its author, who experienced disgrace under the Restoration. Authorized to return to France in 1819, he died in poverty in 1826 in Paris.
 
This uncommon account, composed of numerous letters, reflections, analyses and anecdotes that give it all its charm, delivers the complex image of a pivotal era, between the definitive burial of the Ancien Régime, the fall of revolutionary ideals and the advent of a very powerful imperial power.