Printed in London for a continental audience, Mercure Britannique presents a range of political essays, reports and despatches reporting on affairs unfolding in Europe during a period of unprecedented change.

Printed in London for a continental audience, Mercure Britannique presents a range of political essays, reports and despatches reporting on affairs unfolding in Europe during a period of unprecedented change.

The closing years of the eighteenth century saw the consolidation of Napoleon's political power and militarisation of the French Republic. The author, Jacques Mallet du Pan, was vigorously opposed to the revolution in France and wrote from the relative safety of Switzerland, using a London publisher to print his material for continental distribution (indeed, the imprint boasts these volumes were available in Hamburg, Vienna, Berlin, Leipzig and Venice). Mallet du Pan championed the cause of émigrés and courted the conservative anti-revolutionary governments of continental Europe. As both a Royalist and champion of the aristocracy, he idealised the British constitution as a preferred model for the future of Europe. Accordingly, much of the Mercure Britannique is concerned with developments in the British political scene.

Of particular military interest is the detailed examination of the Napoleonic Egyptian campaign, including a public letter by Nelson followed by a list of British ships in the line Battle of the Nile. Likewise, the extent of the Russian empire is probed with a view to expansion, prescient given the future course of the war.

This set is beautifully preserved in full contemporary matching calf bindings.