[CORSAIRE] Code des prises ou Recueil des édits, déclarations, lettres patentes, arrêts, ordonnances, réglements & décisions sur la courses & l'administration des prises, depuis 1400 jusqu'à présent

Rare first edition (cf. Polak, 1808; Quérard, II, 133. Not in Crowne Library. Absent from Brunet.) Contemporary full marbled calf, spines with five raised bands framed by gilt fillets and decorated with gilt double compartments and ornamental tools, red morocco lettering-pieces, marbled endpapers, gilt edge-rolls and red edges. Some early restoration to the joints; gilding at the spine ends and on the numbering-piece of the second volume partly faded. Occasional foxing; final leaves and endpapers of both volumes lightly toned in the margins.

At a time when American privateers were being fitted out in French ports and their captures were raising unprecedented questions of law, Daniel-Marc-Antoine Chardon occupied a position of particular importance. As attorney general to the Royal Prize Council, he was the magistrate called upon to argue cases in which maritime warfare, the interests of the French Crown and those of the young American nation converged.

First edition of the Code des prises, the extensive collection of maritime legislation compiled by Chardon and printed by order of the King. Two substantial quarto volumes (19.4 x 25.8 cm). Volume I: 2 unnumbered leaves, xxxv, xxvii and 610 pages, 1 unnumbered leaf; volume II: 1 unnumbered leaf, pp. 611-1230 and xlii pages. The Bibliothèque nationale de France records the Paris edition of 1784 with the same overall collation.

The work brings together almost four centuries of edicts, declarations, letters patent, judgments, ordinances, regulations and decisions concerning privateering and the administration of maritime prizes, from 1400 to 1784. The great Marine Ordinance of August 1681 naturally occupies a central place, accompanied by the legislation that preceded it, defined its application or adapted its principles to the successive conflicts fought by France.

In the closing sections, this long legislative history meets the immediate realities of the American War of Independence. Chardon includes articles from the Treaty of Amity and Commerce concluded between Louis XVI and the United States on 6 February 1778, together with decisions concerning captures made by American privateers fitted out in French ports. The book therefore does more than preserve earlier jurisprudence: it records how French maritime law accommodated a new power, allied to the Crown but still foreign to its legal institutions.

Chardon's authority rested upon experience acquired in the colonies, the courts and the ports. Intendant and first president of the Superior Council of Saint Lucia from 1763 to 1764, he became a maître des requêtes in 1765, then intendant of the troops in Corsica and first president of the Superior Council at Bastia. By an order of 23 November 1777, he was appointed to perform the duties of attorney general to the Royal Prize Council. During the American war, he was sent to the principal Atlantic ports to accelerate the settlement of prizes and adjudicate the disputes arising from them.

It was in this capacity that he entered into direct correspondence with Benjamin Franklin, then minister plenipotentiary of the United States in Paris. On 19 March 1779, after reading Chardon's submissions in the case of Captain McNeill, Franklin addressed him in terms of unusual warmth. Having praised the magistrate's learning and skill, he declared that the American nation would know "that it is treated there as a brother, and defended by you as a friend."

The phrase reveals the political significance of the collection. Prize law was no abstract discipline: it determined the fate of vessels, cargoes and crews, but also the confidence binding allied powers. The decisions assembled by Chardon trace the delicate adjustment between the French monarchy and the United States, and between the established maritime law of the kingdom and the demands of a war fought beside a newly independent nation.

A handsome contemporary-bound copy of this major compilation of French prize law, assembled by the magistrate who defended American maritime interests before the King's courts during the War of Independence and received Benjamin Franklin's personal tribute for doing so.