Stuart, Charles (later Baron Stuart de Rothesay).

together with some retained copies of letters by Stuart, other copy letters on French politics, and some later letters and documents, the bulk of the letters relating to affairs in France and the Low Countries, in French and English, correspondents including British ministers and diplomats such as Richard Gardiner (including on “the sudden Re-Appearance of Bonaparte in France”), Alexander Ferrier, James Craufurd, William Walton (reporting “that in the whole of Spanish America a great deal of odium & animosity exists against the British name”), Lord Bathurst; many letters by French and Dutch ministers such as the Duc D’Ursel, the Comte de Blacas d’Aulps (6. including reports on the Channel ports), Anne Willem Carel van Nagell (extensive series of c.23 letters), Marquis de Bonnay, Duc de Duras, and the Duc de Feltre; military figures including George Bathurst and General D’Arblay (mentioning the relationship between Wellington and Blücher); bankers and merchants including Thomas Coutts; providing a detailed insight into the politics of the Bourbon Restoration and the Hundred Days with dramatic letters announcing the return of Napoleon (“a Jew Merchant of immense dealings & connections has just ...  recd an express ... with the intelligence that Buonaparte was actually at the head of a considerable insurrectionary body in the South of France”) and much correspondence relating to affairs in the Low Countries; altogether about 245 items, 1814-1842 (but the vast majority 1814-1815); browning, nicks and tears

Charles Stuart (1779-1845) was appointed interim British Ambassador in Paris in April 1814 after the abdication of Napoleon, and was present to observe the newly restored King Louis XVIII form his first government as well as securing the building that remains the British embassy today. Stuart had only just been appointed as Ambassador to the Netherlands when Napoleon returned from exile. Stuart was accredited both to the court in exile in Ghent and to the Dutch court in Brussels from March to June 1815 (many of the letters in this collection date from this period), and then returned to Paris after the final defeat of Napoleon.