43 - LAMARTINE (Alphonse de). Autograph manuscript titled “TOAST TO THE ARMY OF THE ALPS delivered… before the officers of the National Guard of the Army. November 15, 1848.” 9 ff. folio

LAMARTINE (Alphonse de). Autograph manuscript titled “TOAST TO THE ARMY OF THE ALPS delivered… before the officers of the National Guard of the Army. November 15, 1848.” 9 ff. folio This large-format document is likely the one intended for the public reading given by Lamartine. Corrections in smaller handwriting and darker ink were made during a final proofreading—either before the reading or, more likely, in preparation for the text’s publication. Lamartine, who would soon announce his candidacy for the upcoming presidential election, expresses a very favorable view of the French military institution: recalling his own role in the provisional government and then in the Executive Commission of the Second Republic (February–June 1848), he presents the army as a deterrent in the eyes of foreign sovereigns hostile to the Republic, as an instrument serving Italian national aspirations threatened by Austria, and as the guarantor of order in the face of “civil or social war” (an allusion to the insurrectionary days of June 1848). He concludes by dismissing the fears expressed regarding the army’s commitment to republicanism—one month before the election of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte and three years before his coup d’état... “... Gentlemen! It was I—forgive me for reminding you on a day that allows me to take pride in it—it was I who formed the Army of the Alps, that first great gathering of troops, immediately after the proclamation of the Republic! I was Minister of Foreign Affairs, that is to say, Minister of Peace. The imposing yet peaceful stance I ensured the Republic adopted before Europe speaks volumes. But I was not a minister of peace at any cost! Nor was I a minister of France’s complacency toward Austria in Italy! Nor was I a minister of the perpetual subjugation and servitude of the Italian people, who would have known how to reclaim their rights as a nation! I was therefore, at the same time, a minister of war or of a possible armed demonstration on the other side of our Alps!...” ENCLOSED IS THE RARE PRINTED BROCHURE OF THE TEXT, published by Dejussieu in Mâcon in 1849, according to the BnF catalog.