December 6, 1795: Mallet du Pan After Vendémiaire

Abstract

Jacques Mallet du Pan was a journalist and political analyst who wrote steadily about European and French affairs through the 1780s and 1790s to his death in England in 1800. Mallet du Pan was a Swiss and a citizen of Geneva, but he wrote about the French Revolution with the passion of a member of the family. He lived in Paris as the principal political writer of the Mercure de France, narrating the political scene week by week, from the mid-1780s until he left the country on a secret mission for Louis XVI in 1792, and he knew everyone of importance. After his diplomatic mission he continued to report from Berne and, finally, London, partly as a journalist and partly as a news analyst for various governments, with the help of agents in France and in the European centers most sensitive to French and international affairs. Mallet du Pan was a moderate royalist, a very close friend of Malouet, Mounier, and others of Anglophile political views. Charles Saladin was a Swiss friend of Mallet du Pan, a fellow Genevan who was resident in England, where he had married an English girl, Elizabeth Egerton. Mallet du Pan’s letters to him were informal and very outspoken, but Mallet du Pan knew that through Saladin his analyses reached government circles. The letter that follows is from Lettres de Mallet du Pan a Saladin-Egerton (1794–1800) publiees par Victor van Berchem (Geneva, 1896) [Extrait de Pages d’histoire dediees a M. Pierre Vaudier, Professeur a l’Universite de Geneve] pp. 24–29.