France - Document - Cinco cartas desde el Fort de...

Douai, 1714. Two years after the French recapture of this fortified site, five letters allow us to glimpse the daily life of its garrison: desertering soldiers, men hospitalized, deaths and substitutions that had to be reported to Paris. The collection brings together nine manuscripts in French. Its core consists of five signed letters, sent from Fort de l’Escarpe between July and November 1714 and addressed to Monsieur Pelletier, secretary of the Hôtel Royal des Invalides in Paris. Their provenance has special historical significance. Douai had been conquered by the Allies in 1710 and retaken by French forces in September 1712, following Villars’s victory at Denain. The Scarpe fort itself had been besieged in August 1712. These letters document the activity of that garrison during the closing period of the War of the Spanish Succession, in the final years of Louis XIV’s reign. The writings contain news about military personnel, desertions, hospitalizations and casualties. The soldiers’ names, sometimes accompanied by nicknames introduced by “dit,” add a human dimension to the documentation: they allow recognition of concrete individuals behind the movements of a company. The erasures, additions and marginal summaries show how this information was recorded and updated. The continuity of the correspondent, the recipient and the sending location allows tracing several months of the same administrative relationship. This is one of the main attractions of the lot: preserving a documentary sequence on the functioning of a garrison and its communications with the Invalides. The five letters are accompanied by four independent items: a nominal list with notes of deaths and hospitalizations; a brief military note dated October 1714 and signed by a captain; an extract of affiliation citing the year 1721; and a genealogical sheet with references to the titles of Arlington and Ossulston, the House of Nassau and the British monarchy. The set preserves handwritten addresses, sending folds, cataloging annotations and, in several letters, red wax seals or their remnants. It also bears stamps from the “Collège Héraldique de France – Archives de la Noblesse,” which add interest to its archival history. A testimony to military and social history of the Ancien Régime, especially attractive to collectors of historical correspondence, French manuscripts and genealogical documentation. Condition: creases, stains, wear, small tears and losses of paper. Variable ink intensity and seals partially preserved. The photographs are part of the description and allow assessing the condition of each item.

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