Marie-Jeanne Roland | Autograph letter signed, warning of the coming Terror, with related material, 1792

Marie-Jeanne ("Manon") Roland

Autograph letter signed (with a paraph), to her friend Lanthenas,

predicting the coming of the Terror, recognising the danger of her situation but refusing to let it disturb her peace of mind ("...jamais ma tranquillité d'esprit ne fut plus grande et je sais fort bien que je serai toujours digne de moi, cela me suffit. Je connois assés les hommes pour ne rien attendre de leur justice...ma conscience me tient lieu de tout..."), admitting that the end of the revolution is uncertain and that it will continue to claim the lives of innocent victims, but posterity will judge fairly those who are now out of favour, vowing to share her husband's fate and to do her duty to the end, 4 pages, 8vo, address panel, with contemporary endorsement ("Lettre de madame Roland"), [Paris, ?December 1792], remains of guard, trace of seal, small tear not affecting text

[with:] Warrant ordering the arrest of Madame Rolland ("...mettre en état d'arrestation La Citoyenne Epouse de Rolland ex Ministre et la constituer prisonnier à L'abbaye pour demain être interrogée..."), on printed stationery of Municipalité de Paris, 1 page, 31 May 1793,

[with:] Jean-Marie Roland, letter signed ("Roland"), as Ministrer of the interior, to les regiments des étapes et convois militaires, 1 page, folio, 28 May 1792

[with:] Manuscript commentary by madame Roland on a text by Algarotti in a scribal hand, 3 pages, 8vo; with related manuscript notes, 2 pages, folio

"...j'ai la persuasion que mon mari y trouvera sa gloire [se. dans la postérité], et le pressentiment qu'elle sera payée de notre vie. Peutêtre faut-il des victimes pures pour appeller le règne de la justice...je ne m'éloignerai jamais de mon mari, je partagerai sa destinée et je mourrai comme j'ai vécu; ne pouvant trouver de bonheur que dans mes devoirs quoi qu'il me coûtast souvent à les remplir..."

A REMARKABLE PREMONITION OF THE TERROR. Madame Roland was one of the most important women to play a leading role in the French Revolution; she was praised by Stendhal as "the woman he most respected in the world". She and her husband were leading Girondins. Roland resigned from the ministry of the interior the day after the King's execution, but by then he was a marked man, and his wife, a noted political hostess, equally at risk from their enemies on the extreme left. She refused to flee or go into hiding when the Girondins were overthrown (see lot 90) and even went to the Convention to protest at the attempted arrest of her husband. She was arrested on 1 June 1793 and was guillotined on 8 November 1793, one of the first victims of the Terror. As she went to the scaffold, she is uttered the celebrated words "O liberté, que de crimes on commet en ton nom!" Her husband committed suicide when he heard of her execution. 

Following her incarceration in the Abbaye prison Madame Roland began composing her memoirs, which were published by her friend Bosc in 1795 under the title Appel à l'impartiale postérité (a phrase which echoes her declaration in the present letter.) In the first chapter she describes the circumstances of her first arrest, and how, on asking on what authority, a man drew from his pocket the mandat from the revolutionary committee (included in the present lot) to conduct her to the Abbaye prison. As Madame Roland points out in her memoirs, the mandat gives no grounds for her arrest. She was released on 24 June, but was immediately re-arrested and taken to the prison of Sainte-Pélagie.

One paragraph of the present letter is published in C. Perroud's edition of Madame Roland's letters (no 518), the text being taken from a Charavay catalogue of 1852. Perroud dates the letter to circa December 1792. 

PROVENANCE:

Sotheby's, London, 1 December 1995, lot 28