S^r,

You bear a name that j love and respect; j have these twenty years since the honour to be a friend to S^r Evrard Fawkener.
J hope t'is a recommendation towards you. A better one is my love for truth; j am bound to speak it. My duty is to write the history of the late campains. And my king and my country will approve me the more, the greater justice j'll render to the English.

Tho our nations are ennemies at present, yet they ought forever to entertain a mutual esteem for one another; my intention is to relate what the duke of Cumberland has done worthy of himself and his name and to enregister the most particular and noble actions of y^r chiefs and officers which deserve to be recorded, and what pass'd more worthy of praise at Dettingen and Fontenoy, particularities, if there are any, about general Campbel's death, in short all that deserves to be transmitted to posterity.

J dare apply to you s^r on that purpose. If you are so kind as to send me some mémoirs, j'll make use of'em. If not j'll content my self with relating what has been acted noble and glorious on our side, and j'll mourn to leave in silence many great actions done by y^r nation which j would have been glorious to relate.

If you think fit s^r to do me the favour j ask, j pray you to direct the pacquet to Monsieur de Sechelles, intendant de L'armée de France.

I am, s^r with respect

y^r most humble obed. servant

Voltaire historiografe de France

à Paris ce 1^er octobre 1745