[de Launay (Louis-Alexandre, comte d'Antraigues] Letter addressed to the comte d'Antraigues, 1809

Autograph letter signed ("d'Allègre") to "Monsieur le Comte", translation reading "The G. wrote to me that he would be in town, at the latest tomorrow. I regard what has happened as something very fortunate. His mind is made up on the course of action he must take; he expects to see you when he arrives. He does not see that there is anything to be done on your part, but he is very grateful for the step you took with me, which he will await from your friendship.
I have just gotten out of bed to write... I have the chills and a very severe headache, which deprives me of the honor of coming to your home today", one page, address leaf, ("To the Count d'Antraigues, 46. Devonshire Street, Portland Place"), folding marks, age-related discolouration, 4to, n.p. 23 January 1809.

***The Count was a political chameleon driven by a fatal obsession with espionage. A Gascon from the Cevennes, he shifted from Republican in 1788 to Monarchist by 1790, fleeing across Europe—Venice, Vienna, Dresden—before landing in London by 1806. He traded ambition for the thrill of the shadow game, operating as a trusted informant for Louis XVIII, Maria Carolina of Naples, the Tsar, and eventually British Foreign Secretary George Canning. The Count’s stock skyrocketed when he allegedly leaked the secret terms of the 1807 Treaty of Tilsit, a tip-off that prompted Canning to launch a preemptive strike on the Danish fleet at Copenhagen. But the high-stakes game eventually caught up with him. Disgraced and stripped of his credibility, the Count and his opera-singer wife, Saint-Huberty, met a gruesome end. They were mysteriously assassinated outside their Barnes Terrace cottage by a servant fired just the day before. The present letter seems to be related to a dispute stemming from Louis XVIII’s preference for the counsel of the Comte d’Avaray over that of d’Antraigues after Tilsit. In retaliation, d'Antraigues allied with General Puisaye—a prominent leader among the London émigrés—to launch a public attack against d'Avaray in the sixth volume of Puisaye’s memoirs, published in January 1809.

On the signature, there is a documented Jean-Baptiste d'Allègre de Saint-Tronc. He was a Chouan commander who took over Bois-Berthelot's division at Auray in June 1795 during the Quiberon expedition; earlier an escaper from Brest prison in October 1794 with Georges Cadoudal; afterwards closely associated with Puisaye, with whom he lived for a time, emigrating to Puisaye's Upper Canada settlement and returning to England with him in 1802, subsequently employed by the British government.