NAPOLEON I. Letter signed "Nap" Marshal Louis-Nicolas Davout. Paris, 24th May 1815. 1/4 p. in-4. Framed under glass. "My cousin, give orders that General Loverdo be judged for having killed a mayor of the Dauphiné with his own hand...". This letter is a distorted echo of the violence in which General de Loverdo was involved at the time of Napoleon I's return to France. At the time of the "Flight of the Eagle", General de Loverdo was in command of the Basses-Alpes department (now the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence). He left Digne for Sisteron, but withdrew from the town on 4 March before the Emperor arrived. He went as far as Dauphiné and then soon came back down to Provence, and concordant reports (albeit by Bonapartists) seem to indicate that he and his troops behaved in a questionable manner: at Saint-Julien-en-Beauchêne, in the Drôme, he molested and allowed his men to molest the mayor who refused to give him documents he had received by post. In Aspremont, in the Hautes-Alpes, a local man was killed following a brawl with one of the General's soldiers. The mayor, Mr Veyne, tried to restore calm, but General de Loverdo hit him hard and even prevented him from being stabbed. In short, a man was killed, but not a mayor, and not by General de Loverdo himself, but by soldiers, and not in the Hautes-Alpes. The charges against him were dropped. Originally from Corfu, Nicolas de Loverdo (1773-1837) entered the French army in 1792, was employed by Murat (1804), then by Masséna in Italy (1805), Poland (1807) and Portugal (1810) - he served at Essling and was wounded at Wagram (1809). Made a general in 1813, he rallied to the monarchy in 1815, and served in the army of the Duc d'Angoulême at the start of the Hundred Days. Dismissed by Napoleon on 18 April 1815, he asked to be allowed to return to Corfu, but was accused of having corresponded with the royalist insurgents in Manosque and was imprisoned for a time in Grenoble. Appointed lieutenant-general by the Duc d'Angoulême in July 1815, he served in the Spanish Expedition of 1823 and the Algiers Expedition of 1830. Napoleon I, Correspondance générale, Paris, Fayard, vol. XV, 2018, no. 39792.