[MONTLEZUN (Barthélemy Sernin Du Moulin de Labarthète, baron - Lot 49

[MONTLEZUN (Barthélemy Sernin Du Moulin de Labarthète, baron de). Voyage fait dans les années 1816 et 1817, de New-Yorck à La Nouvelle-Orléans, et de l'Orénoque au Mississipi, par les Petites et les Grandes-Antilles. Paris, librairie de Gide fils, 1818. 2 volumes in-8, (4 of which the last is blank)-372 [misquoted 313] + (4 of which the last is blank)-408 pp. half green basane, smooth spines decorated with gilt fillets and cold fleurons with title and tomaison proper to the collection, marbled edges; spine faded and rubbed (period binding). ORIGINAL EDITION; forming volumes XXII and XXIII of publisher Théophile-Étienne Gide's "Collection de voyages modernes". Diary of a journey that first took the Baron de Montlezun from Norfolk, Virginia, to Baltimore, Washington, Monticello, then from Charlottesville to Philadelphia and New York. It continued in several stages, with sea crossings, to New Orleans, Havana, Charleston (South Carolina), the islands of Guadeloupe, Marie-Galante and Saint-Thomas. A royalist attached to the Ancien-Régime, Baron de Montlezun did not spare American society, being particularly critical of democratic relations between individuals and between the sexes, and of what he considered excessive materialism. He also refused to accept the idea of freedom of expression as it was strictly respected in the United States, and resented the fact that Bonapartist émigrés and regicides could express themselves freely in public. VETERAN OF THE SIEGE OF YORKTOWN, BARON DE MONTLEZUN (1762-1844) led a career as a military officer: as a member of the Touraine regiment, he was first stationed in Saint-Domingue and, when France sided with the United States, he served in Virginia in 1781, then aboard French squadrons engaged in American waters in 1782. When, in 1790, his regiment mutinied against its royalist colonel, Mirabeau's brother, Baron de Montlezun emigrated and served in the army of the Prince de Condé. He returned to France to serve in Napoleon's army, and found himself unemployed during the first Restoration. The return of the Emperor prompted him to leave France for the United States, where he intended to settle permanently. He left in the summer of 1815, and thanks to a letter of recommendation from the Marquis de La Fayette, was welcomed by President James Madison, and later met Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe. He then made a trip to the South, which took him to New Orleans, but abandoned the idea of rebuilding his life there. Returning to Paris in September 1817, the following year he published two complementary works with the same publisher, the present Voyage and Souvenirs des Antilles: voyage en 1815 et 1816, aux États-Unis, et dans l'archipel Caraïbe.