Autograph letter signed "Réné".

Fol. 1½ pp. Highly interesting letter from the aftermath of France's failed Egyptian campaign, written to the maritime prefect of Toulon, Admiral Jean Gaspard de Vence (1747-1808). Following the capitulation of Alexandria signed by General Jacques-François Menou (1750-1810), his British counterpart, General John Hely-Hutchinson, and Admiral Lord Keith on 2 September 1801, the remaining French troops including Jean Gaspard Pascal René, then brigadier general and chief of the army's general staff, were slowly repatriated on English vessels according to the terms of the capitulation. At the time he wrote the letter, René was already on a French ship, the frigate Didon, which would be captured by the Royal Navy in 1805 and recommissioned as the HMS Didon. He requests Vence to give orders to new arrivals on the then "English ship the Marianne", also a prize of war, that had transported "officers of the état-major général" of the former Armée de l'Orient to Marseille, to re-embark immediately in order to join René, most likely in Toulon: "I have learned, Citizen Prefect, that the English ship the Marianne, on which were the deputy general staff officers and secretaries, has arrived in Marseille. Several of them are very much needed here, as they have various reports to make to the Minister. I would be infinitely obliged if you could give orders for the ship to be sent here, or else for the officers only to be sent by a small ship from Marseille". - In the second part of the letter, René thanks Vence for sending him the "preliminaries of peace", referring to the preliminaries signed in London on 1 October 1801, six months before the conclusion of the Treaty of Amiens on 25 March 1802 between France and the United Kingdom that effectively ended the War of the Second Coalition, thereby marking the end of the French Revolutionary Wars. He then mentions that the "general in chief", Jacques-François Menou, wishes to "go today to the lazaret destined for him" and was therefore in need of "several large boats to transport his belongings and those of the troop with greater speed". - The letter bears testimony to the final chapter of the French Egyptian campaign, when René and his officers in the general staff counted the losses in order to report to the minister and Menou recovered in a lazaret. While Vence retired in 1803 and Menou took on political positions, first as a member of the Tribunat in 1802 and later as Governor of Venice, René held important commands in the Grande Armée until 1808, when he was captured and executed by Spanish guerilla forces in La Carolina. - With an old water damage and minor ink corrosion affecting the text but no text loss. Some browning and several insignificant tears. With a recipient's note in ink.