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[Pia Oliver]

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>From Montesquieus's Library ...

[MONTESQUIEU, Charles de Secondat Baron de la Brede et de ]. DE LA VEGA, Garcilaso.  SVITTE DES GVERRES CIVILES DES ESPAGNOLS DANS LE PERV; Iusques a la Mort tragique du Prince TVPAC AMARV, Heritier de cet Empire; Et a l'Exil funests des YNCAS les plus proches de la Couronne. Paris:  Chez SIMEON PIGET, Libraire Iure, rue Saint Iacques, a la Prudence. M. DC.LVIII. AVEC PRIVILEGE DV ROY, 1658. Volume II (of 2).  [2], 555, [21] pp. [Title page leaf],  (A-CCcc) 4. Collates as complete.   [First leaf of quire always given as **, ie. A1 as A**]. Quarto, full contemporary calf, spine with raised bands and extra gilt in compartments. Insignificant inch-long tear in ZZz3 with loss of half of one letter; small tear from edge of CCcc3 with no loss of text, very faded upper corner waterstain from p. 337, wear at hinges but solid, old corner repairs on front cover. A nice copy with wide margins. First edition in French. The titlepage has the [early] ownership manuscript note: 'Ex Biblioth. D. praesidis de Montesquieu catal. inscrip.' 
This volume was Montesquieu's own copy of the seminal study of the Incas, written by the son of a Spanish conquistador and an Inca princess. [see Desgraves, p.396. Item 3173].
The title was cited by Montesquieu as a source in his De l'Esprit des Lois (The Spirit of Laws), 1748, which was in turn one of the philosophical foundations of the constitution of the United States of America.

Montesquieu (who had two libraries, one at La Brede and one in Paris, cited Garcilaso de la Vega in his footnotes: [Preface, Note 5.] See Solis, History of the Conquest of Mexico, and Garcilasso de la Vega, History of the Conquest of Peru. In Book XXV Montesquieu refers to the Incas. [XXV, 22.] "The unhappy State of the Inca Athualpa. The principles we have just been establishing were cruelly violated by the Spaniards. The Inca Athualpa [n. 52] could not be tried by the law of nations: they tried him by political and civil laws; they accused him for putting to death some of his own subjects, for having many wives &c., and to fill up the measure of their stupidity, they condemned him, not by the political and civil laws of his own country, but by the political and civil laws of theirs." [Trans. Thomas Nugent (1752)].
A revised edition of Garcilaso's Histoire was published in France in 1744. It is important to note that Montesquieu owned the earlier 1658 edition whilst he was writing De l'Esprit des Lois. The revision is discussed by Neil Safier in Rewriting Incan History at the Parisian Jardin du Roi, Book History, 7 (2004), pp.63-96.
Montesquieu believed that all things were made up of rules or laws that never changed. He set out to study these laws scientifically with the hope that knowledge of the laws of government would reduce the problems of society and improve human life. According to Montesquieu, there were three types of government: a monarchy, a republic , and a despotism. Montesquieu believed that a government that was elected by the people was the best form of government. He did, however, believe that the success of a democracy - a government in which the people have the power - depended upon maintaining the right balance of power.
Montesquieu argued that the best government would be one in which power was balanced among three groups of officials. He thought England - which divided power between the king (who enforced laws), Parliament (which made laws), and the judges of the English courts (who interpreted laws) - was a good model of this. Montesquieu called the idea of dividing government power into three branches the "separation of powers." He thought it most important to create separate branches of government with equal but different powers. That way, the government would avoid placing too much power with one individual or group of individuals. He wrote, "When the [law making] and [law enforcement] powers are united in the same person... there can be no liberty." According to Montesquieu, each branch of government could limit the power of the other two branches. Therefore, no branch of the government could threaten the freedom of the people. His ideas about separation of powers became the basis for the United States Constitution.
The author's father was the Spanish conquistador Sebastian Garcias Lasso de la Vega y Vargas, who served in Mexico under Cortez, in Guatemala under de Alvarado, and in Peru under Pizarro. His mother was Isabel Suárez Chimpu Ocllo, an Inca princess. He learned Spanish from a priest, and the Inca language from his mother. She suggested that he should perpetuate the glory of his ancestors by writing a true history of the Incas and of Peru. Garcilaso de la Vega travelled all over the country to collect material for his work, assembling information from the Incas as well as from the Spanish colonists, and visiting the ancient Inca monuments. De la Vega was highly esteemed by the Incas, who considered him the legitimate descendant of their monarchs. His work remains an important sourcebook for the history of the Spanish conquests in Peru. The Universidad Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and Cusco's main stadium, Estadio Garcilaso de la Vega, are both named in his honour.
COPAC lists two copies only of this edition: the Cambridge University Library copy (R*.9.39-(D); damaged titlepage), and the University of Edinburgh copy (*R.21.2-3). WorldCat lists two US-held copies (at the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library, and in the James Ford Bell collection at the University of Minnesota).
A good deal of Montesquieu's manuscripts and books remain in France. In 1994, the Countess Jacqueline de Chabannes, a direct descendent, bequeathed the family library and papers to Bordeaux Public Library. Items from the library in private and institutional collections are from sales held in 1926 and 1939. The volume in question came from the 1926 sale and was lot No. 992, in volume II of the catalogue (ref: Beaux livres anciens et modernes provenant de la bibliotheque du château de La Brede vendus en mai et en novembre 1926 a l'Hotel Drouot. Paris: C. Bosse et F. Lefrancois, 1926. 2 volumes.)
The inscription "Ex Biblioth. D. praesidis de Montesquieu Catal. Inscriptus" is found in virtually all books from Montesquieu's own library. It is interesting to note that the University of Texas, Austin, attributes the inscription to 'Dominicans, Montesquieu, France' in two volumes in their library: 1. Barbaro, Ermolao. ['Castigationes Plinianae et Pomponii Melae'] (Rome: 1492-3). [INCUN 1492 B232C]. David Jackson McWilliams bequest. 2. Milles de Souvigny, Jean. 'Praxis Criminis Perseqvendi' (Paris: 1541). [BX 1939 T65 M5 1541]. Ex-libris Georges Wendling. 
This is in complete contrast to volumes from Montesqiueu's library held by other institutions, such as  The Library of Congress with 3 volumes with this same ownership inscription which the Library states as "being part of Montesqieu's own library": 1. Dinus, de Mugello. Dyni Muxellani I.V.D. Celeberrimi Commentarii in Regulas Iuris Pontificij (Lyon: 1583) [KBR1753.A3 D4 1583]. 2. Corpus et Syntagma Confessionum Fidei quae in Diuersis Regnis et Nationibus (Geneva: 1612) [BX9421.L387 C677 1612]. 3. Desargues, Gerard.  La Maniere Universelle de Mr. Desargves (Paris: 1643) [TS548 .D5].
The Whipple Library, Cambridge has Montesquieu's copy of William Gilbert's De Magnete (London: 1600) [STORE 58:1]. Again, this bears the same ownership inscription on the titlepage.
Harvard has two volumes with this ownership inscription: 1. A ms. volume of the poetry of Jean-Leon de Metivier (d. 1697) purchased with the Amy Lowell fund in 1959 [Houghton f MS Fr 187].  2. A copy of the Argonautica in Latin and Greek (Basle: 1523) [Houghton Typ 515.44.451].
Note that the University of Notre Dame (Indiana) holds the collection of Professor Jose Durand (1925-1990). Durand spent years reconstructing the library of Garcilasso de la Vega, and sold it to the university in 1970. 

[LeClerc 1744; Palau 354828; Sabin 98750. Desgraves, Louis, Catherine Volpilhac-Auger, and Francoise Weil, eds. "Catalogue de la bibliotheque de Montesquieu a La Brede." Napoli: Liguori Editore; Paris: Universitas; Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1999. Cahiers Montesquieu, 4. p.396. Item 3173. Beaux livres anciens et modernes provenant de la bibliotheque du château de La Brede vendus en mai et en novembre 1926 a l'Hotel Drouot. Paris: C. Bosse et F. Lefrancois, 1926. 2 volumes].		$3,500.00  (trade courtesy, institutional billing on request).

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