Collectanea Napoleonica ; Being a Catalogue of the Collection Of

Collectanea Napoleonica ; Being a Catalogue of the Collection Of

'-^««swg^^-^;j^ ~^- .«»-" .^w^--— jfc ':^ NAPOLEON IN EGYPT. From a picture by E. Detaille, in the Collection of Sir George White, Bart., of Cothain House, Bristol. lCOLLECTANEA NAPOLEONICA CATALOGUE OF THE COLLECTION OF AUTOGRAPHS, HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS, BROADSIDES, CARICATURES, DRAWINGS, MAPS, MUSIC, PORTRAITS, NAVAL AND MILITARY COSTUME-PLATES, BATTLE SCENES, VIEWS, ETC., ETC. RELATING TO Napoleon I. AND HIS TIMES, 1769-1821. Formed by A. M. BROADLEY, of the Knapp, Bradpole, Dorsetshire Compiled bv Walter V. Daniell. TOGETHER WITH AN EXPLANATORY PREFACE I5Y A. M. BROADLEY, AND A CATALOGUE OF HIS NAPOLEONIC LIBRARY. ILLUSTRATED WITH A HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED PORTRAIT OF NAPOLEON, BY DETAILLE, FROM A PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF SHi G. WHITE, BART., AND SEVERAL REPRODUCTIONS OF RARE ORIGINALS 15Y PER^HSSION OF THE PROPRIETORS OF "THE KING." LONDON: W. V. DANIELL, S5, Mortimer Street, W. PARIS : GODEFROY MAYER, 41, Rue Blanche. MUNICH : EMILE HIRSCH, 6 Karlstrasse. AMSTERDAM : R. W. P. DE VRIES, 146 Singel. BRUSSELS: SPINEUX & Cie., 62 Montagne de la Cour. A< PREFACE. subject of Napoleon, in its various aspects, is as irresistible THEas it is instructive, and as interesting it is as infinite and " inexhaustible. Taking the " Life of ]\Ir. Rose, and the "Last Phase " of Lord Rosebery as a basis, I have devoted the spare moments of four years, and a certain amount of constitutional energy, to extending the original three octavo volumes into twenty-eight folios, for which Messrs. Root & Co. have devised a charming and appropriate binding of a hue which I am assured is essentially Napoleonic, viz., Empire vert. In accomplishing all this I have had an m valuable helper in Mr. VV. V. Daniell, who also collaborated with me in the creation of my grangerized copy of Hutchins's " History of Dorset." Napoleon, strange to say, even entered somewhat largely into that work, for the Man of Mystery was the bogey of the Wessex nursemaids of a century ago, and his threatened invasion of our coasts was still a standing terror when my grandfather came to Dorsetshire in 1805. M. Godefroy Mayer, of Paris, informs me that the sum total of the portraits and engravings relating to the career of Napoleon considerably exceeds eighty thousand, and that new items come to light every day. There are at least 3,200 caricatures on the same fertile subject, England, numerically speaking, heading the list, and France coming next. Even in this attractive and amusing branch of Napoleonic iconography there is no chance of anything like finality. Amongst the caricatures in my own collection one sees the same idea reproduced either successively or contemporaneously in three or four different countries. Gruesome portraits of the Man of Destiny made up of human corpses were, for instance, common to England and France, as well as to Italy and Germany ; while each nation can be credited with the production of a different satirical version of a supposed imperial escutcheon. The collection of every kind of object relating to Napoleon began in England even before the curtain fell on the last act of the tragedy, which began at Waterloo and ended at St. Helena. In 1845, Mr. James Sainsbury compiled a ponderous quarto of over 700 pages, containing a detailed catalogue of the various items he had accumulated in his " Napoleon Museum." Such a collection now would be practically priceless. Lord Rosebery is credited with the possession of many Napoleonic rariora, ii. PREFACE. and Mr. A. H. Lee, M.P., Civil Lord of the Admiralty, possesses numerous valuable and unique portraits and letters of the Emperor, as well as the correspondence of the Empress Josephine and Barras. Mrs. Lee has inherited the splendid extra-illustrated volumes relating to Napoleon and the First Empire, created with so much care, artistic taste and sound literary judgment by her talented mother, the late Mrs. J. G. Moore, of New York. In the Eraser Sale of April, 1901, there were three collections of Napoleonic caricatures. The most considerable of these took the shape of a copy of John Ashton's far from satisfactory work " English Caricature and Satire on Napoleon," extra-illustrated into seven folio volumes by the addition of 557 plates by Gillray, Rowlandson, the Cruikshanks and others. It realized ^254. A smaller collection, made by Sir W. Eraser, containing 135 colour-prints, several scarce French specimens amongst them, is incorporated in this work. M. Godefroy Mayer found many of those caricatures entirely new to him. But Sir W. Eraser's triumphs as a Napoleonic collector pale before those achieved on similar lines by others in America and elsewhere. Mr. of Philadelphia, has beaten all records William J. Latta, former by accumulating about 3,000 caricatures dealing with every phase of Napoleon's career. In every other respect Mr. Latta's Napoleonic collection is reputed to be the largest and finest in the world. Dr. Achilles Bertarelli has found it necessary to add a new story to his hospitable and artistic house in the Via Barnaba, Milan, for the accom- modation of no less than 1,649 specimens, chiefly caricatures, dealing exclusively with Napoleon's operations in Italy. In Russia are the two enormous collections of Napoleonic caricatures made, regardless of expense, by H.I.H. Nicholas Mikhailowitcli, and his brother Michael. Mr. Robert McCormick, who has just been appointed American Ambassador in Paris, has a unique collection of the rarest and most costly portraits of Napoleon, but very few caricatures. General von Hoffman's German collection has been purchased by M. Godefroy Mayer, who is mainly responsible for the signal success of Mr. Latta. Caricatures scarcely enter at all into the priceless Napoleonic treasures belonging to Prince Victor Napoleon in Brussels, and the Princes de la Moskowa, d'Elchingen and d'Essling and M. Frederic Masson in Paris, where the Baron Le Roux has a small but choice collection of caricatures. In addition to Dr. Achilles Bertarelli, Milan can boast of two other enthusiastic Napoleonic collectors in the persons of Dr. Luigi Ratti and Signer Comandini. The only department in which anything like completion has been attempted in the present work is that of Autographs, in which I have had the invaluable assistance of M. Noel Charavay, Madame Veuve ; PREFACE. in. Gabriel Charavav, Herr Emile Hirsch, the late Mr, Frederic Barker, Messrs. Sabin, Sotheran, Tregaskis and Maggs, Dr. Scott, Mr. George Gregory, of Bath, Mr. J. G. Commix, of Exeter, and others. As far as letters, state-documents, and other forms of MSS. are concerned, there is scarcely a single man or woman who played a part of the smallest importance in the great Napoleonic drama, whose calligraphy is not to be found in one or other of these twenty-eight volumes. Napoleon's own signature and handwriting (as will be sufficiently seen) varied strangely at the different epochs of his career. The whole of his Marshals and great Officers of State are represented, although the letters of some of them, like those of Desaix and Lannes, are exceedingly rare. The same may be said of the numerous members of the Imperial Family, male and female ; the Supreme Pontiffs who incurred Napoleon's wrath and endured his persecution ; the European Sovereigns who became in turn his bitter enemies or his admiring but friends ; the German Princes who were at one time his liege-vassals, ultimately served in the ranks of the allied Army at Waterloo ; the sailors like Brueys and Villeneuve who offered a stubborn resistance to Pitt and Hood and Nelson ; the statesmen who sought to outwit the Code Napoleon ; the Prelates Portland ; the lawyers who elaborated who helped to bring about the Concordat ; the Cardinal who crowned him in Italy; the poets, painters, and play-actors of the Imperial Court the celebrated German writers like Schiller, Goethe, and others whose works helped so materially to hasten Napoleon's downfall, as well as Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Raynal, the philosophers upon whose theories he more or less based the opinions which shaped his conduct. Letters places of George III. and Queen Charlotte will be found in their proper ; so also will holograph epistles of Pitt and Fox, Sidmouth and Melville, Portland and Windham, Holland and Bathurst. Nor have the great diplomatists, who in turn crossed swords either with Napoleon himself or the astute Talleyrand, such as Nesselrode, Pozzo di Borgo and Metternich, been forgotten. An effort has been made to discover letters of all the English Naval and Military Commanders of the epoch, from Wellington and Nelson, down to the Captains and Colonels who thronged the ballroom of the Duchess of Richmond on the eve of Quatre Bras. Very rare indeed are the letters and documents signed by the ill-fated Due d'Enghien, the two Robespierres, and Marat. Almost equally scarce are such costly specimens as the letter addressed by Benjamin Franklin, at Paris, to George Washington in New York, the letters of Haydn and Beethoven, and those of Henri and Louis La Rochejaquelein. At the important Bunbury sale of June, 1905, I obtained the letter addressed by Louis La Rochejaquelein to Sir Henry Bunbury a few hours before his death, as well as the MS. draft of his iv. PREFACE. proclamation to the Vendeans. Other unique features amongst my autographs are the original holograph despatch of Lord Cawdor, giving the Duke of Portland the fullest details of the defeat of the French at Fishguard in February, 1797, and Charles Dibdin's MS. of three songs on the death of Nelson, one of which is still unpublished. For both these items I was indebted to the good offices of Mr. George Mackey, of Birmingham. Freemasonry, it will be seen, entered largely into Napoleon's scheme of political influence, nor did he for an instant fail to recognise the power of the painter, the poet, the priest, and even the play-actor.

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