[BRENNER, Domokos Antal Ignácz]; Francis II RÁKÓCZI. Histoire des révolutions de Hongrie, où l’on donne une idée juste de son légitime gouvernement …

Memoirs of Habsburg War by Hungarian National Hero

[BRENNER, Domokos Antal Ignácz]; Francis II RÁKÓCZI. Histoire des révolutions de Hongrie, où l’on donne une idée juste de son légitime gouvernement … The Hague: Jean Néaulme. 1739.

Two volumes in one, 4to. Contemporary English sprinkled sheep with modern rebacking, gilt black morocco lettering-piece to spine, edges sprinkled red; vol. I: pp. [iv], 443, [1 (blank)]; vol. II: pp. [2], [445]–504, 258, [31], two (repeated) copper-engraved frontispiece portraits, folding engraved map facing p. 1; title-pages printed in red and black, text in two columns; uniform light toning, some browning to first and final quires, occasional light spotting; else a very good copy; contemporary engraved armorial bookplate of Henry Duke of Kent, dated 1733, and nineteenth-century engraved armorial bookplate of Thomas Philip Earl de Grey of West Park to front pastedown; late nineteenth-century engraved armorial bookplate of T.A. Walker to front free endpaper.

First edition, simultaneously published by Néaulme in quarto and duodecimo, of this history of Hungary from Stephen I (c. 1001–1038) to Rákóczi’s War of Independence against the Habsburgs (1703–1711), this copy with interesting English provenance.

Long before Hungarian self-determination, this was a seminal text of Hungarian historiography. The final 258 pages comprise the first appearance of important memoirs on the war by Francis II Rákóczi (II. Rákóczi Ferenc, 1676–1735), now considered a Hungarian national hero. He began composing his Memoires in exile, beginning his first draft in 1717 during his stay at the monastery of the Camaldoese de Grosbois near Paris.

‘Only after the completion of the Confessio [handed over to the Grosbois monks in August 1717] did he revise, also in Turkey, the Memoires. The manuscript was corrected by César de Saussure [...] and handed over to Louis Molitard, a member of Rákóczi’s bodyguard, in 1734 with the instruction that it should be published only after his death’ (NLN 67:3 and 4 (2019), pp. 227–28).

Domokos Brenner (c. 1675–1721) was a Hungarian priest-turned-diplomat who followed Rákóczi into exile in Paris. He served as Rákóczi’s envoy to the Pope in 1707–08, and in 1711 was envoy to Tsar Peter I; he gained French citizenship in 1712 and was imprisoned in the Bastille in 1721 for mishandling aid money he received from the French court; he committed suicide whilst in prison.

Provenance:
1. Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Kent (1671–1740), British politician and courtier.

2. Thomas Philip de Grey, 2nd Earl de Grey (1781–1859), of Wrest Park in the parish of Silsoe, Bedfordshire, British Tory statesman.

3. Thomas Alfred Walker (1862–1935), historian, dean, bursar and librarian at Peterhouse, Cambridge.

STCN 289332095; see Brunet I, col. 1221n (26525).

SKU: 2124864