[Military miscellany]. by (MILITARY). POTIER, Charles Baron de.

[Military miscellany]. by (MILITARY). POTIER, Charles Baron de. < >
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  • Another image of [Military miscellany]. by (MILITARY). POTIER, Charles Baron de.
  • Another image of [Military miscellany]. by (MILITARY). POTIER, Charles Baron de.

~ [Military miscellany]. [France, c. 1850s].

Manuscript, small 4to (196 x 156 mm), pp. [27], 128, [131], plus numerous blanks at end, several pages excised after p. [130], explained in early manuscript in p. 131 (see note). In French, neat and legible throughout. Contemporary half roan. Rubbed.

An extensive miscellany gathering texts, some original, some copied or translated, concerning French military campaigns of the decades prior to 1860, especially in Russia, including the Napoleonic campaigns (the Battles of Smolensk and Moscow and the retreat from Moscow) and the French involvement in the Crimea (including the Siege of Sebastopol). The extracts include an almost hagiographical biography of Napoleon’s aide de campe, General Drouot (1774-1847); translated passages from Louis Oliphant’s Russian Shores of the Black Sea (1853) concerning Balaclava and Sebastopol; descriptions of Nicolaieff, Kerson Bay and Perekop and an account of an excursion in the North African desert. The last few pages of this last text have been carefully excised, and an explanation in another nineteenth-century hand to the following leaf explains: ‘Les pages qui manquent, peut-être un peu légères, ont sans doute ete arachées par le B[ar]on de Potier leur transcripteur, après qu'il fut tombé dans la haute dévotion.’

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