[MARINE - MANUSCRIT] Extraits des ordres du Roy et Dépêches du Conseil de Marine, depuis le mois de septembre 1715 jusqu'au mois de mars 1723

Folio manuscript from the second half of the 18th century, comprising 2 unnumbered leaves and 258 foliated pages, containing extracts and summaries of royal orders and dispatches of the Conseil de Marine from September 1715 to March 1723. The volume therefore covers the entire period of activity of this institution, created at the beginning of the Regency as part of the polysynody and maintained until its disappearance in 1723.

Contemporary restored full tan calf. Smooth spine decorated with gilt compartments and gilt tools, partly faded, lettering-piece lacking, a gilt rampant lion stamped at the centre of each board, marbled-paper endleaves and pastedowns, double gilt fillets to the board edges. Rubbing and corners worn.

The extracts are carefully dated and systematically accompanied in the margins by references to the register and folio of the original minutes from which they were taken. Such precision goes well beyond that of a simple scholarly compilation: it reveals a genuine archival survey and suggests that the compiler had direct access to the records of the Department of the Navy. The manuscript could thus serve as a practical reference tool, allowing an earlier decision to be located rapidly without having to consult the complete original registers.

Its contents are divided into nineteen principal headings: Admiralty; Armaments, with subdivisions devoted in particular to the regulation of armaments, the campaigns of 1716-1717, the war with Spain from 1718 to 1720, the Barbary powers, and the Guinea coast; Artillery; Classes and Seamen; Colonies and Levant Ports; Commerce, including Spain, Portugal, the South, Guinea, the African Company, and the Compagnie des Indes; Shipbuilding and Refits; Finance; Coastguards; Honours, Rank and Command; Justice, Police and Discipline; Munitions, Merchandise and Timber; Officers; Fisheries; Ports and Roads; Prizes; Salutes; Troops; and Provisions.

The Conseil de Marine was established in September 1715 as one of the councils created by Philippe d’Orléans in an attempt to associate the high nobility with government during the minority of Louis XV. Placed under the authority of the Comte de Toulouse, it occupies an exceptional position in the history of the polysynody: when most of the other councils were abolished in 1718, the Conseil de Marine was retained and continued to function until 1723, when the king’s majority brought the system to an end and naval administration reverted to a secretary of state.

The present manuscript therefore follows, almost day by day, the activity of the last great council of the Regency. Its scope extends from the organisation of the fleet and dockyards to the recruitment of crews, provisioning, maritime justice, prizes, fisheries, coastal defence, the colonies, and trading companies. Through this thematic arrangement emerges the full range of responsibilities exercised by a maritime state confronted with war, colonial expansion, and the reorganisation of overseas commerce.

Several passages give the volume particular historical interest. It includes a detailed account of French, British, Dutch, Danish, and Carib possessions and settlements in the Lesser Antilles in 1723, together with instructions relating to religious regulation in the colonies. In the context of Franco-British cooperation, the manuscript also records the dispatch of six hundred French seamen to reinforce Admiral Norris’s squadron in the Baltic in 1719. Other extracts concern the great trading companies, notably the Compagnie des Indes reorganised under Law’s financial system in 1719.

An early pencil note on the first flyleaf reads: “Aux armes [du] Maréchal Duc de Duras, de l’Académie française”. It most probably refers to Emmanuel-Félicité de Durfort, fourth Duc de Duras (1715-1789), Marshal of France and member of the Académie française from 1775, whose substantial library was dispersed at auction in 1790. 

By virtue of its thematic structure, systematic references to the original minutes, and the chronological extent of its survey, this manuscript is far more than a collection of copies. It transforms the eight years of activity of the Conseil de Marine into an organised memory of naval government under the Regency, preserving not only its decisions but also the manner in which the 18th-century administration sought to classify, retrieve, and transmit them.