J. P. Brissot, Deputy of Eure and Loire, to his Constituents, on the Situation of the National Convention;

Notes

First edition in English of Brissot's tract, first edition of Mémoires Secrets. Brissot, a key figure in the Girondist faction in the French Revolution, originally published this work in France in 1793, a few months before he was guillotined. Taking the form of an open letter his constituents, it warns of the "anarchism" of the Jacobin faction, and appeals for moderation. The present edition was translated by William Burke, and has a lengthy preface purporting to be by the translator but frequently attributed to Edmund Burke. Burkean scholar David Bromwich writes that the preface, "seldom reprinted, is as close as Burke comes to a documentary treatment of the French Revolution, and it displays in a brief compass his exceptional gift for historical narrative. Since he left no full-scale response to the Terror, it also affords an indispensable clue to what he would have said about that episode" (in his Speeches and Letters of Edmund Burke, p. 440-2).

The second work is the posthumous memoir of the adventurer and impostor Victor Claude Antoine, going under the false title of Robert, Comte de Paradés. Paradés acted as a spy against the British and ingratiated himself into the French court, before being sent to the Bastille for fourteen months due to his role in the failed Armada of 1779. When first published, many saw his memoirs as a historical romance, but the book is generally accepted to be genuine.