Submitted Abstract
In May 1687, Louis XIVth, accompanied by a lot of courtesans, leaves Versailles in order to inspect the Place of Luxembourg, conquered by the French army three years before, in 1684. In its edition of June 1687 (II) , the Mercure galant, paper founded by Donneau de Visé, gives a detailed relation (337 pages in-12°)of this royal journey; no other French document of the XVIIth French century so explicitly treats of the city of Luxembourg. The different areas, civil, military, religious not only are mentioned, but are describes up to the least detail. Moreover all the places visited in the context of the journey to and back from Luxembourg, give rise to numerous comments of all kinds, the whole making up a real encyclopedia of the “Grand Siècle”.First, the Mercure insists on the fears provoked, especially in Germany , by the journey to the borders of France of this very martial king, but also on the insurances given by him concerning his pacific intentions. Several manuscript documents related to these questions and provided from international libraries are exhibited in the footnotes or the annexes of the book.Second, we have the long list of the participants of the journey, each of them identified in very explicit footnotes based on authentic witnesses of the time.Third, trough the evocation of the different halting-places of the journey, all aspects of XVIIth France are explored: army, institutions, religion, culture and so on, developed in very explicit footnotes . The publication as a whole comes to 523 pages with scientific comment in the Introduction and 1215 footnotes.The last section of the book includes the other contemporary relations of the Luxembourg journey, those of Dangeau, Sourches, Raveneau and Courtilz de Sandras as well as a commented letter of Racine, participant in his quality of royal historiographer, written fron Luxembourg to Boileau.Furthermore numerous manuscript documents related to the event and consulted in the archives (Luxembourg, France, Italy) followed by four Indexes (Names of Persons, Names of Places, Institutions, Events) and a very voluminous bibliography give an idea of the variety and multiplicity of this scientific publication.