L’Histoire et discours au vray du siege

Name: L'Histoire et discours au vray du siege
SKU: 26672
Price: 1200 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Léon Trippault

qui fut mis devant la ville d'Orleans par les Anglois, le mardy xii jour d'octobre mccccxxvii regnant alors Charles vii Roy de France

À Orleans, Chez Olyuier Boynard & Iean Nyon, libraires, demeurans au Cloistre Sainte-Croix. 1606. Avec Priuilege du Roy.

1 vol. (105 x 160 mm) of [2] f. (title, dedication) and 216 p., leaf E3 verso mispaginated 50, F3 verso 86 mispaginated 67, leaf G2 recto 99 mispaginated 199, leaf G5 verso 106 mispaginated 109. Tawny calf, roulette borders on covers and criss-cross pattern of blind fillets, spines decorated with a scattering of stars, title-piece, roulette on edges, gilt edges.

Fourth edition, considerably enlarged, of this very rare chronicle of the siege of Orléans, first published in 1576 from an old parchment manuscript preserved in the city archives.

The text recounts, almost day by day, the military operations undertaken from the arrival of the English before Orléans on 12 October 1428 until the lifting of the siege by Joan of Arc in May 1429. Its precision, its concrete detail and the proximity of its author to the testimonies he drew upon give it particular value among the earliest narrative sources devoted to the deliverance of the city.

The chronicle is traditionally associated with Léon Trippault, an Orléans councillor and scholar who produced its first edition. It appears, however, to derive from an earlier account, commissioned around 1467–1468 by the municipal body from Pierre Soudan to be preserved in the city archives. Trippault did not merely publish it: he supplemented it with annotations and texts intended to place Joan’s intervention within the history and civic memory of Orléans.

The 1606 edition, the first issued in this small format, is notably fuller than earlier ones. It contains in particular the Harangue du roi Charles VII à ses gens, the Harangue de la Pucelle au roi pour l’induire d’aller à Reims, an account of Joan of Arc’s deeds given in Latin and then in French, as well as Léon Trippault’s Antiquité de la ville d’Orléans. The volume closes with a notice concerning the solemn procession held every year on 8 May in commemoration of the deliverance of the city, a tradition that continues today.

The history is announced as “taken word for word without any change of language from an old copy handwritten on parchment, and found in a house of the said city of Orléans,” celebrating Joan of Arc as the instrument of the city’s deliverance and as the figure around whom the civic identity of Orléans was built.

The privilege, granted to Olivier Boynard on 27 January 1606, was established for a term of ten years.

The copy is unfortunately lacking the remarkable engraved frontispiece by Léonard Gaultier, depicting Joan of Arc standing with sword raised, within an architectural frame, between the arms of France and those attributed to the Maid.

A rare early edition of one of the fundamental sources on the siege of Orléans and the memory of Joan of Arc.

A fine copy.

Lanéry d’Arc, Bibliographie des ouvrages relatifs à Jeanne d’Arc, no. 873.

#26672

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