BONAPARTE (Lucien). Charlemagne, ou l'Église délivrée. Epic - Lot 210

BONAPARTE (Lucien). Charlemagne, ou l'Église délivrée. Epic poem in twenty-four songs. ÀParis, chez Firmin Didot, 1815. 2volumes in-8, (2blanches)-xxv-(uneblanche)-358-(2blanches) +(4dont la dernière blanche)-389-(uneblanche)pp., fawn calf, broad ribbed spine with gilt decoration including neo-gothic or geometrical motifs, coat of arms and crowned "LPO", boards decorated with a double frieze of palmettes and cold-stamped floral motifs with black fillet and gilt corner finials, gilt wavy fillet on the edges, inner gilt roulette, marbled edges (slightly later binding). Published the year after the original, which was published simultaneously in Rome and London. Charlemagne liberating Rome from the Lombards, a mirror image of Napoleon holding the Pope prisoner. This long poem is an impertinence by Lucien Bonaparte against his imperial brother: estranged from him in 1804, he had taken refuge in the Papal States, which he was soon forced to flee after the annexation of Rome by French troops in 1809. Embarked the following year for the United States, he was captured at sea by the British, and held in England until May 1814: there he devoted himself to literary pastimes, writing the present poetic suite, for example. PiusVII, who excommunicated NapoleonIer in 1809 and was taken prisoner in France, was Lucien Bonaparte's protector against NapoleonIer and then against the Allies at the fall of the Empire, and made him Prince of Canino in August1814. A fine copy bound with the arms and cypher of the future Louis-PhilippeIer as Duke of Orléans (OHR, pl.2577, iron n°11 in small format for the cypher, and iron close to n°2and4 of the same pl. for the coat of arms; on the titles, ex-libris stamps from his Palais-royal library).