French foreign policy memoirs

Manuscript volume, Aug 1710, containing memoirs of the latest peace negotiations held at Gertruidenberg, Brabant, between Mar and Jul that year [to attempt a peaceful settlement to the War Of the Spanish Succession], and notes regarding the means of damaging the commerce and fishing of the Dutch and English. A note in pencil on the title-page attributes this work to 'M de Torcy', though no reasoning is given for this attribution.

Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Marquis de Torcy (1665-1746) was a French diplomat and foreign minister who negotiated some of the most important treaties of Louis XIV's reign. As Minister of Foreign Affairs, Torcy drafted the famous manifesto in which the king called on the nation to make a supreme effort to win the War of the Spanish Succession, 1708. Torcy was also the guiding spirit at the innumerable conferences that resulted in the treaties of Utrecht (1713) and Rastatt (1714). He wrote Mémoirs pour servir à l'histoire des négotiations depuis le Traité de Riswick jusqu'à la Paix d'Utrecht (1756).

Single item.

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Part of the Goldsmith's Library of Economic Literature, initially collected by Herbert Somerton Foxwell and presented by the Goldsmith's Company to the University of London in 1903.

Collection level description.

Manuscript quarto.

Compiled by Sarah Smith as part of the RSLP AIM25 Project.

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