Beschreibung:

SOULT, Jean de Dieu (1761-1851, Marshal of France, Duke of Dalmatia). Series of forty-five autograph letters signed ('M[arech]al de la G[uerre]'), to his wife Louise, Olivenza, Badajoz, Seville, Granada, and other places in Spain, 23 January - 25 December 1811 , describing important battles during the Peninsular War including Olivenza, 'ce matin nous sommes entrés dans Olivenza après un siège de onze jours. Nous avons pris 4,500 hommes', Gebora and Badajoz, 'Chere Louise. J'ai eu le bonheur de soumettre la place de Badajoz aux armes de S.M. l'Empereur ou j'ai complété l'entière Destruction d'une armée de 22,000 hommes', expressing his enthusiasm for Napoleon, showing his devotion to his family and his impatience to rejoin them; in a number of letters writing of the paintings he is acquiring and sending to France, also of horses and other purchases and indicating a growing detachment from the campaign ('Je suis blasé surtout, rien ne peut plus m'affecter et je ne puis me considérer que comme un personage historique'), altogether approximately 127 pages, 4to , 4 address panels 'à Madame la Maréchale Soult Duchesse de Dalmatie en son hotel rue de l'Université à Paris', 3 seals. Created Duke of Dalmatia in 1808, Soult commanded the 2e corps of the Grande Armee d'Espagne , and in these long, frank and affectionate letters to his German-born wife, he writes of his military activities in Andalusia. Soult frequently expresses his devotion to Napoleon, 'J'ai eu l'honneur de feliciter S.M. l'Empereur aux epoques du mariage et de la grossesse de S.M. l'Imperatrice et je n'attends que d'apprendre son heureuse delivrance pour envoyer un officier porter aux pieds du trône de sa majesté l'expression de la vive allegresse que cest Evenement qui comblera les voeux et les esperances d'une grande partie de l'Europe'. Tracing his progress from one town to another, he announces from Badajoz, 'J'ai emporté des drapeaux, des canons, et des prisonniers', reporting (incorrectly) that the English commander, General Beresford has been recalled and is to lose his place. Responding to Louise Soult's own letters of which he apparently receives many, the Marshal writes often and affectionately of his children, Napoleon (later known as Horatio, godson of the Emperor and of Josephine) and Hortense, and instructs his wife on business matters. From the summer of 1811 he evidently writes to the Emperor asking to return to France, seeming increasingly impatient or depressed, 'Ma situation est toujours le meme - Toujours un travail excessif, et une responsabilité immense. J'obtiens frequemment des succès, et toujours de bons resultats sous des rapports où bien d'autres echoueraient, je n'en retiens que des désagrements ... Plusieurs fois j'ai demandé mon rappel il ne se passe pas de semaine que je n'en renouvelle l'insinuation mais c'est encore sans succès ... il est indubitable que depuis longtemps j'aurais succombé si je n'etais soutenu par la pensée qu'un jour Sa Majesté me rendra la justice qui m'est due'. Soult was more interested in art than any other Napoleonic military leader, and drawn particularly to the Spanish schools of painting. His collection, sold at auction in Paris in 1852, included works by Murillo, Zurbaran and Ribera, and many interesting passages in the present letters refer to his new acquisitions ('une Vierge de Murillo devant laquelle il faut s'extasier ... une esquisse de Murillo representant St Antoine en adoration'). (45)