Jean-Jacques ROUSSEAU (1712-1778). Autograph manuscript 3 pages in-4. Notes for the work on women that Rousseau began in 1746 and continued until 1751 for his patron Mme Dupin, but which never saw the light of day. One page mentions women combatants, in particular the Dame de Balagny, wife of the Lord of Cambray who, in 1595, "did her duty as captain and soldier in the defence of this town against the Spaniards. Night and day, she went to visit the sentries and reconnoitre the Battery; she worked on the fortifications; she fired the cannon; she exposed herself, pike in hand, to all dangers and braved the Spaniards, without ever wanting to hear talk of surrender". Then, referring to the Armenians who could not stand the domination of a woman named Erato, he quotes the translator [Amelot de la Houssaye]: "Gynecocracy is the worst of all governments. For this sex, says Tacitus, is not only imbecilic and voluptuous, and consequently unfit for the management of state affairs; but in addition to that it is cruel and indocile"... Another page refers to the right of women to the succession of a state; this "has never been properly clarified" and does not seem to be a matter of custom; the assembly of the dukes of Lorraine therefore made a declaration "out of indulgence for Duke Thibaut in which the right to claim daughters to the Duchy of Lorraine is incidentally insinuated". Attached is an autograph page (in-8) on the Amazons, with a Latin quotation from Tacitus's 1649 edition of Les Elzévirs; Rousseau says that he has not had 'the time to go through Usserius in its entirety' [James Ussher, Irish archbishop], but in the life of Alexander and his other works he has found no allusion to the Amazons.