Lettre autographe par le commandant de l'Orient à bord de son vaisseau

Autograph letter signed "Luzio," by Luc-Julien-Joseph Casabianca. Two and a half pages in black ink on a bifolium, with autograph date (8 Prairial - 28 May 1798) and address. A few minor marginal tears affecting two letters with no loss of text, and a small corner loss to the address leaf without loss of text.

A precious letter written by Luce de Casabianca "aboard the Orient" to his brother-in-law, André Colonna Ceccaldi who led a Corsican uprising for independance the following year. 

Casabianca speaks tenderly of his son, young Giocante, aged ten, who would die at his side aboard the Orient during the Battle of Aboukir, just weeks after this letter was written.

The Romantic era quickly referenced the twin deaths of Luce and Giocante, both in literature and in the countless engravings depicting the tragedy of Aboukir: "Alfred de Vigny, in his book Servitude et grandeur militaires, book III, speaks of Giocante. Vigny puts these words into Bonaparte's mouth:

"I do not like men to bring their children along; I only allowed it for Casabianca, and I was wrong."

Lamartine, too, in his Vie des grands hommes (Les hommes de la Révolution, chapter IV, Paris, 1865, p. 351), devotes an Ode to Luce de Casabianca and to Giocante. In England, the poet Felicia Dorothea Hemans wrote a poem around 1875 in memory of the Casabianca family, a poem taught in schools even today!" (Michel Vergé-Franceschi, "Le héros d'Aboukir: Luce de Casabianca (1762-1798)," in Cahiers de la Méditerranée, no. 57, 1, 1998, Bonaparte, les îles méditerranéennes et l'appel de l'Orient)

A touching portrait emerges of this child in the letter: "Jocante seemed to me sorry not to have stayed longer with his sister and his other relatives. His first concern was to tell me that you had fed him polenta, piticcine and frittelle. It is difficult to gain a true sense of the fondness, I might almost say the passion, that this child retains for all the produce of our native land. Having learned that the post was to return to Corsica, he thought it perfectly natural to go once more to Bastia and come back with Jean Pasquino Mari, whom I am very glad to have brought to join me."

The Orient had left Toulon on 19 May 1798 and had put in briefly at Bastia. "I gave your regards to General Bonaparte, who seemed to me to remember you favourably." Off the "Bouches de Boniface," between Corsica and Sardinia, he reproaches his brother-in-law for not having come to see him aboard his ship before his departure: "I could not properly abandon the ship," he writes to him. Casabianca, who had sat on the Council of Five Hundred, also discusses politics and cites Corsican parliamentarians: "I feel, as you do, all the benefit accruing to our country from the admission of Jean Baptiste [Galeazzini] to the Corps législatif, and the increase in vexations through the triumph of [Barthélémy] Arena. [...] Had matters been conducted with more prudence, the oppression of these petty tyrants would have been short-lived."

The remainder of the letter feels like a testament. The commander, removed from his family's affairs, urges Ceccaldi to take charge of everything: "as it is impossible for me to be sufficiently informed to give advice or dictate my wishes, I shall always repeat to you that you should do for me what you would do for yourself. [...] Let Faustine be well, let her receive a good education, let her be content and happy, and I shall be fully satisfied." After his death, his daughter Faustine was granted a pension by the French navy by decision of Bonaparte.

At the helm of the Orient, Casabianca took part in the capture of Malta on 10 June. The fleet set out again on the 19th and came in sight of Alexandria on 1 July. The ship anchored in Aboukir Bay on 3 July. On 1 August (14 Thermidor Year V) it was attacked by the English squadron under Nelson's command. The blazing ship exploded, killing and wounding those aboard, and carrying away Casabianca and his son:

"Bonaparte wrote to the Directory on 4 Fructidor Year VII:
"Casabianca died with calm and composure amid the blaze consuming his ship. He perished with it. His son, aged 9, would never leave his father's side and was consumed by the flames in his arms" (Michel Vergé-Franceschi, ibid.)