Geneve, chez les principaux libraires, 1862. Thin pamphlet by J.-Aug. Bost, here bound with related tracts forming a sammelband of abolitionist writings, including sections titled Encore une fois plus d’exécution capitale à Genève, Le bourreau, Notes sur l’assassinat légal, Raisons chrétiennes contre la peine de mort (Nos. 1–2, second edition), Lettre à Monsieur le bourreau, and Une exécution capitale ou la conscience publique, dated 24 avril 1862. Imprint references include Geneva printers Pfeffer et Puky and Bonnant. A strongly argued Protestant critique of capital punishment rooted in evangelical morality, reflecting mid-19th century Swiss debates on penal reform.

Issued at a moment when Geneva and the Swiss cantons were actively debating penal reform, these tracts belong to the wider 19th-century European movement toward the restriction and eventual abolition of the death penalty. Since the late 18th century, thinkers such as Beccaria had challenged capital punishment on rational and humanitarian grounds, and by the mid-1800s Protestant circles in Switzerland and France were recasting the argument in explicitly religious terms. Bost’s text reflects this shift, invoking the Gospel to oppose what he calls “l’assassinat légal,” and situating execution as a relic of medieval justice incompatible with modern Christian conscience. The references to recent executions at Geneva indicate a local controversy, where public spectacles of punishment were increasingly criticized as demoralizing and unjust. Such pamphlets, cheaply printed and widely circulated, were instrumental in shaping public opinion during a transitional period that would, over the later 19th century, see many European states reduce or abandon capital punishment.

In the decades following this 1862 publication, abolition advanced unevenly but steadily across the world. Venezuela had already abolished the death penalty for all crimes in 1863, becoming the first modern state to do so; Portugal followed for civil crimes in 1867, and the Netherlands abolished it in 1870. In the Americas, Costa Rica (1877) and Brazil (effectively by the late 19th century for ordinary crimes) moved toward abolitionist practice. In Europe, Italy abolished the death penalty in 1889, while Switzerland itself, after periods of cantonal variation, abolished it at the federal level for peacetime crimes in 1874 and definitively in 1942. The early 20th century saw further progress: Norway (1905, completed 1979), Sweden (1921), and Denmark (1930) abolished it for ordinary crimes, while many Latin American countries followed suit.
After the Second World War, abolition became increasingly associated with human rights frameworks. The United Kingdom abolished the death penalty for murder in 1965 (fully in 1969), France in 1981, and Canada in 1976. Internationally, treaties such as the European Convention on Human Rights (Protocol No. 6 in 1983 and Protocol No. 13 in 2002) and the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1989) accelerated abolition. By the late 20th and early 21st centuries, most European countries, as well as large parts of Latin America, had abolished capital punishment entirely. Today, over two-thirds of the world’s countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice, marking the long trajectory of reform to which Bost’s Geneva pamphlets belong.

Below is the list of countries where the death penalty is still being applied with a caveat for Russia, Sri Lanka and South Korea.

United States, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Yemen, Libya, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Belarus, Russia moratorium, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka retention, Japan, North Korea, South Korea moratorium, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman.

United States — death penalty status by state (current landscape)

States with active death penalty (executions carried out in recent years)
Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah
States retaining the death penalty but with a moratorium or no recent executions
California (governor’s moratorium since 2019), Oregon (moratorium), Pennsylvania (moratorium), Nevada (no executions since 2006), Montana (no executions since 2006; limited by court rulings), Wyoming (no executions since 1992; de facto non-use), Kentucky (no executions since 2008; litigation delays), North Carolina (no executions since 2006; legal challenges)
States that have abolished the death penalty
Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin
Federal and military
United States federal government retains the death penalty (last executions carried out in 2020–2021, currently paused under policy review)
U.S. military law also retains capital punishment (rarely used)

Volume 5

While volume three does not contain any more information on J. B. Adrien Durand’s timeline, the whole manuscript is a collection of translated Martial’s Epigrams, the Poesies Lyriques, penned in volume five, consolidates Adrien Durand’s captivity, release, Italian movements, and later poetic activity into a single clarified chronology. It integrates evidence drawn from his manuscripts (Amusemens littéraires), dated poems, and contextual military events, resolving earlier ambiguities caused by retrospective copying and thematic rather than chronological arrangement.

Captivity and the conditions of writing

1794 Durand is taken prisoner by Austrian forces and transferred to Hungary.

1794–1797 He remains imprisoned in Hungary for approximately three years. During this period he composes verse, reflections, letters and documentary notes. The letters are particularly important as some original letters received by Durand are loosely inserted in the manuscript as well as copied into the manuscript. It confirms the faithful discipline of the copyist when transcribing the original materials used to produce the present manuscript. Several texts later copied into bound volumes originate here, although the manuscript books themselves were assembled decades later.

Transition from captivity to the Italian theater

Early spring 1797 While still in Hungary, Durand receives news of an impending exchange of prisoners (la nouvelle de l’échange). His writings from this moment mark a psychological shift from endurance to expectation.

18 April 1797 [the manuscript incorrectly gives April 18, 1798] Durand is present at the French camp at Leoben, participating in celebrations following the preliminaries of peace between France and Austria. This date anchors his liberation and return to French military space.

The Italian journey sequence (1797)

Following his release, Durand moves with French forces and administrative columns through northern Italy. His itinerary aligns with the operational geography of the Army of Italy rather than with a continuous combat posting.

Spring 1797 Leoben → Klagenfurt.

Summer 1797 Southward movement into Italy, passing through Castelfranco.

Late summer–autumn 1797 Residence or passage at Verona, during the reorganization of Venetian territories under French control.

3 November 1797 Documented presence in Venice, coinciding exactly with the final phase of French art confiscations and evacuations following the Treaty of Campo Formio.

Late 1797 Westward movement through Marquia Pellegrini and Brescia, concluding the Italian sequence.

Post-captivity reflection and literary consolidation

1797 Durand composes Le Songe, a reflective text synthesizing captivity, release, and moral reckoning. Although written close to the events described, the surviving form is preserved through later copying.

1799 Durand is documented at Caen, indicating reintegration into metropolitan France and a shift toward civilian life.

Later political poetry

1814–1815 Durand writes poems responding to the Bourbon Restoration, demonstrating political adaptability and continued engagement with public events.

4 April 1831 He produces celebratory verse honoring Louis-Philippe, marking his final known dated political-poetic intervention.

Clarifying note on manuscript chronology

The manuscript volumes preserving these texts are not contemporaneous notebooks but later compilations. Dates within the texts reflect moments of composition, not moments of copying. This distinction explains apparent chronological inversions within Amusemens littéraires and reinforces the need for an external, event-based timeline such as the one established here.

The collection 

The writings of Jean Baptiste Adrien Durand (1767-1834), former infantry officer and native of Dieppe, survive in a remarkable group of four uniformly bound manuscript volumes, organized and copied in the mid nineteenth century from Adrien’s earlier papers by his son Jules Adolphe Durand (1801-1882).

Durand died at Fécamp in 1834. His son, Jules Adolphe Durand (born at Fécamp on 16 June 1801), is directly associated with the surviving four manuscripts. A note in the volume bearing Adolphe’s name refers to the death of his wife, Émilie Gingois, confirming his role in either preparing or transmitting the material. Both the internal reference to Émilie Gingois and the handwriting indicate that Jules Adolphe Durand copied or arranged the extant texts, working from his father’s earlier papers. The four volumes—numbered 1, 2, 3, and 5—are uniformly titled J. L. A. Durand Amusemens Literaires.  There is a fifth volume, titled J. A. Durand Poesies Diverses that is entirely the work of Adolph.
Volume 4 is missing, presumably containing writings between 1800 and the time Adrien died in 1834. We make this assumption on account that little is written about his married life and his spouse. The missing volume may have been kept by the descendants.

No statements in the manuscript identify any other contributors, and the narrative itself consistently attributes the events described to Jean-Baptiste Adrien Durand, all bear the same title on the spine and start with the same title page identifying Adrien as the author.

Together they present a complete record of his literary, personal, and intellectual life: poems, songs, polemics, reflections, theatrical pieces, allegories, translations, and correspondence. Each volume is carefully transcribed by his son, the whole forming a coherent portrait of a soldier-writer shaped by the Revolutionary era.

Volume I, strangely out of chronological order, situates J.-B. Adrien Durand at the very heart of the French occupation of northern Italy, after his release from captivity, during one of the most consequential cultural episodes of the Revolutionary Wars: the systematic seizure of Italian artworks and scientific collections in 1797. Far from being a passive observer, Durand moved through the same cities, corridors of power, and intellectual circles as the French commissioners tasked with selecting objects for transport to Paris. His letters, composed as he followed the shifting front from Lombardy to the Adriatic and back toward the Venetian mainland, offer an unusually intimate perspective—neither administrative nor propagandistic—on how a reflective, educated officer perceived the unfolding cultural expropriation. What follows traces, through his letters, Durand’s itinerary, his encounters with scholars, collectors, and artists, and his gradual realization that he was witnessing not merely military occupation but the transformation of Italy’s cultural landscape.

Volume II is the most historically significant of the set. It opens with Durand’s major work: a forty-five-page “Rapport au Ministre de la Guerre des traitements atroces qu’ont éprouvé les prisonniers français dans la Hongrie,” an account of the brutal conditions endured by French prisoners held in Austria and Hungary after the defection of General Dumouriez. Durand stated that he had secretly smuggled the original text out of the prison despite the vigilance of his jailers, preserving it at great personal risk. His narrative is followed by forty-six pages of related writings—letters, warnings, confessions, petitions,inscriptions, verses, and appeals—composed during or shortly after his captivity. These include a “General Confession of a French Prisoner of War” a direct address “To the Peoples Armed Against France.” and a “Free Translation of an Order Issued by the Major Commanding the Prison of Klein-Zell.” a rare documentary piece on life in the Hungarian prisons. The tone of these texts moves between patriotic indignation, personal testimony, philosophical reflection, and restrained satire, always returning to the central theme of how war and political events shaped the fate of ordinary soldiers.

The remaining volumes—devoted primarily to poetry, songs, epigrams—reveal the more intimate and artistic side of Durand. Many poems are set to popular airs, implying light public reading or performance. Letters addressed to Durand are copied throughout the set, and several original letters from his friend Laboissiere  are loosely laid in Volume II, adding an important personal layer to the collection as it came directly from the inherited archive.

Taken together, these four manuscripts volumes form the fullest surviving portrait of J.-B. Adrien Durand. They show him as a witness of war and captivity, a writer of humor and sentiment, a translator, a musician, a playwright. Few manuscript collections of the Revolutionary period survive with such breadth, personality, and unity of execution. They amount to the literary and emotional autobiography of a French officer whose voice—copied with care decades later but rooted in writings once smuggled past his jailers—still resonates with clarity and humanity.

Volume one:

An Officer’s Witness: J.-B. Adrien Durand and the French Confiscation of Italian Art and Cultural Treasures, 1797
 
 Volume two:

Unpublished manuscript of Adrien Durand, French prisoner of war in Hungary in 1793

Volume five

Adrien Durand: Clarified Chronology of Captivity, Italian Journey, and Later Writings

Exact list of one hundred masterpieces of art chosen by French Commissioners to be transported from Rome to Paris, following the Treaty of Bologna(*), of 3 Messidor, Year 4 [June 21, 1796]

(*) An armistice was signed in that city; but the Peace Treaty was negotiated and signed at Tolentino on 1st Ventose Year 5 (February 19, 1797.)

Art. 7. The Pope renounces in perpetuity, cedes and transfers to the French Republic all his rights over the territories of the legations of Bologna, Ferrara and Romagna… Art. 13. Article 8 of the armistice treaty signed at Bologna concerning manuscripts and art objects will have its complete and most prompt execution possible.

From the Vatican Museum

Apollo (Apollo Belvedere)
Laocoön (Laocoön and His Sons)
Torso (Belvedere Torso)
Mercury called the Antinous
Hercules with a child in his arms
Demosthenes seated
Trajan seated
Menander seated
Posidonius seated
A warrior, called the Phocion
Ariadne called the Cleopatra
Two cupids, half-figure
A Philosopher believed to be Sextus of Chaeronea
Health (Hygieia)
Juno
Venus crouching
Adonis
Paris
Discobolus
Another Discobolus
Bearded Bacchus, called the Sardanapalus
Augustus
A veiled Roman
The Cybele of Capri
Meleager
The Nile (colossal figure)
The Tiber (colossal figure)
Ceres, colossal
Melpomene, colossal
Apollo musagetes
The nine Muses found at Tivoli (items 31-39)
A small seated Urania
A small Clio

From the Capitoline Museum

Equestrian statue, the large one
Antinous
Apollo with a griffin
Cupid and Psyche
A dying Gladiator
A Faun playing the flute
A young woman holding an urn in her hands
Juno
Venus
Flora
Antinous
The philosopher Zeno

From the Palace of the Conservators

The young man pulling a thorn from his foot (Spinario)
From the Pio-Clementine Museum – Busts

Hadrian
Antinous
Serapis radiant
Jupiter of Otricoli
Triton of the Ocean
Comedy
Tragedy
Demeter
The Menelaus called Pasquino
The Minerva of Castel Angelo

From the Capitoline Museum – Additional Busts

A bust of M. Brutus
The Ariadne
The head of the Sun called the Alexander
One of the four Dominars

From the Palace of the Conservators

The bronze bust of Titus Brutus

Monuments of Another Kind – Pio-Clementine Museum

A two-handled vase with masks and lyres
A sepulchral altar placed in the portico before Antinous
A tripod on which emblems of Apollo are engraved
An altar with bas-relief sculpture found in the gallery of the Candelabra
A large Candelabrum having a circle in the middle with bas relief
Another Candelabrum whose base is four-sided
Another with small atlases or small Atlantids on the pedestal
Two Sphinxes of red granite (items 77-78)
Two seats of white marble sculptured, taken from the door of the Museum of candelabra (items 79-80)
Sarcophagus with the nine Muses
Another with a marine Divinity
Marble tripod
Paintings

The Transfiguration by Raphael
Communion of Saint Jerome by Domenichino
Saint Romuald by Domenichino
Entombment of Christ by Michelangelo
The Dead Christ
Saint Petronilla

From the Vatican Gallery

Crucifixion of Saint Peter
Miracle of Saint Gregory by Annibale Sacchi
The Saint Thomas
The Martyrdom of Two Saints by Valentin
The Saint Erasmus by Poussin
Saint Cecilia by Pierre Vanni
The Holy Family by Poussin
Fortune

Outside of Rome

Coronation of the Virgin by Raphael
The Ascension
The Coronation of the Virgin
Supplement – Additional Works

Note: These precious objects followed the first hundred closely.

A Saint Jerome by Le Sueur, life-size
Descent from the Cross by Rubens
Battle of Zama won by Scipio
Actium, or the Last Sigh of Rome by Raphael

Additional Collections Mentioned

Collection of Forty-Two Roman Emperors