La bibliothèque du prince Eugène de Savoie

Jânos Kalmâr : Prince Eugene of Savoy's library. Prince Eugene of Savoy, the French-born general of the Imperial army in the first half of the 18th century, was part of the nobility of varied national origins, which formed around the court in Vienna and dominated the Imperial institutions and the army. He was praised in his day as a cultivated patron of letters and a collector, and although many of his collections were split up on his death, his library has luckily survived. It indicates his love of learning, a wide- ranging curiosity and a typically French attitude, that of the honnête homme, who in addition to his qualities of courage, charity, sociability and cosmopolita¬ nism, was interested in the arts and sciences. Thus Prince Eugene helped to bring French culture to Austria, despite the disapproval of the Imperial court which did not see it merely as one among the different national cultures existing in Vienna. It was both the culture of the new Enlightenment and already an international culture.Kalmâr Jânos. La bibliothèque du prince Eugène de Savoie. In: Dix-huitième Siècle, n°25, 1993. L'Europe des Lumières. pp. 199-206