Vertot - Révolutions de Portugal - 1768

VERTOT, René Aubert de (Abbé)
Revolutions of Portugal.
New edition, revised & augmented.

In Paris, at Durand, nephew, rue S. Jacques, at la Sagesse, 1768.

The work is adorned with a frontispiece engraved off-texte representing a scene of the Portuguese revolution and with a superb folding genealogical plate (facing page 34) depicting the royal line of claimants against a symbolic background.

Published for the first time at the end of the XVIIth century, this major work by Abbé de Vertot (1655–1735) achieved enormous European popularity thanks to the dramatic, fluent, and scholarly style of its author. The book recounts the 1640 coup d’État that ended sixty years of Spanish domination and restored the Braganza dynasty to the throne of Portugal, with John IV at its head.

This 1768 edition, issued by Durand, asserts itself by the quality of its printing and the presence of its superb engraved illustrations, evidence of the Enlightenment bibliophiles’ taste for political history narrated like a great dramatic novel.

A fine copy in contemporary marbled calf binding. Headbands and corners slightly worn from use, strong joints, very fresh interior, enriched by the full frontispiece and the folding genealogical plate, well preserved.

Abbè de Vertot was famous for his incisive prose and his sense of historical romanticism, to the point of sometimes sacrificing archival rigor for dramatic effectiveness. It is told that one day, while a correspondent was finally sending him original and unpublished documents to correct the account of one of his famous sieges, the abbé rejected the manuscripts exclaiming: “My seat is made!” (a proverb in French).

Although Vertot never set foot in Portugal, his Revolutions were so captivating that they became the standard manual for diplomats and the cherished book of many great eighteenth-century collectors, mesmerized by the epic breath he infused into the ebbs and flows of European history.