Lettre autographe d'un républicain au capitaine Jean-Joseph Tarayre : " vivre libre ou mourir"

Handwritten letter dated 23 Brumaire year 6 [November 13, 1797], three pages on a folded sheet, recipient's address Jean-Joseph Tarayre and seal of the sender [Blary?] On the back, slight damage to the text due to the seal.

This letter is the result of a private correspondence between an unidentified Republican and Captain Jean-Joseph Tarayre, it is not an official and factual account of the events but the particular feelings of a partisan engaged in the revolutionary and republican cause, making this letter a rare and precious testimony of his time. The last fires of the revolutionary ideal burn in this letter: " We swore to die free we will keep our oath you know that Republicans do not swear in vain and they will never perjure live free or die this is their motto " .

The letter seizes on the spot a turn unknown and yet essential in the history of the Revolution, far from its original effervescence: "we see however through all that the people open their eyes that he would not want to pay any more tithes or annuities without, however, wanting to repeat the enthusiasm he had in 89 to overcome the enemies and reduce them with a single breath to the impossibility of ever harming him "
Often masked by the great revolutionary symbols, the letter reveals all the fragility of the First Republic. The Republican ranks are constituted by opportunists, the convinced patriots refusing the political roles " We named [Boyeri] cadet, your public accusatory parent who absolutely does not want to accept he has however given evidence of the purest civility [...] we have left [Vaisset] president who has always put himself on the side of the strongest in the different chances of the revolution. "

The royalists, enemies of the Revolution, find themselves paradoxically favored in the elections of 1797. Written a month after the coup d'état of 18 Fructidor, the letter stresses the importance of the army, so far simple agent of execution, in the recent events of the Revolution: " thanks be to you and to all the brave of the army of which you are a part by your burning addresses you have awakened the sacred fire of patriotism you have given [enlightenment] to your comrades in the other armies, and you have taken the memorable day of the 18th Fructidor, from which I believe that we will not feel the happy effects until your return. "
The author, intimate Jean-Joseph Tarayre, then captain in the Army of Italy led by Napoleon Bonaparte, coexists the political sphere and the private sphere in his letter. Testimony of the factory of history, the letter evokes the end of a republican era and the beginnings of the rise of Bonaparte, made explicit by an allusion to the Treaty of Campo-Formio signed on October 18, 1787.

Eclipsed by the bubbling of 1789 and the horror of 1793, few are the testimonies of this year where the signs of the end of the Republic are emerging. During the Coup d'Etat of Bonaparte on 18 Brumaire two years later, the republican ideal collapsed: "Citizens, the revolution is fixed to the principles that began it, it is over" (Napoleon Bonaparte).