MAZARIN JULES: (1602-1661) Italian Cardinal, Diplomat and Politician, served as Chief Minister of the French ...

MAZARIN JULES: (1602-1661) Italian Cardinal, Diplomat and Politician, served as Chief Minister of the French Monarch 1642-61. L.S., J Card. Mazarin, two pages, folio, St. Quentin, 3rd July 1649, to de Chaunes, a Councillor of King Louis XIV, in French. Mazarin writes an informative letter to his correspondent, discussing the need to increase the number of horses in order to transport the munitions of war, and remarking that forty have been approved, explaining that he has given instructions to make a payment of one hundred francs to a spy, and that he has also given orders to provide flour for forty thousand rations of bread for the cavalry of the German army, further declaring 'I believe appropriate and even very necessary that M. le Compte d'Harcourt, being in the Limemy (?) country, should have published in quantity handbills signed by him stating that in whatever place he passes where he finds mills ruined by inhabitants, he will have those same places burned down and will not pardon any peasant. By this means we would generate fear and we would make it easy to have the wheat ground for the subsistence of the army....pursue your efforts with the same diligence, so that with each acting on your own initiative we may have some good success in this campaign which will oblige the Limemis to make peace....' With integral address leaf bearing two small red wax seals, one with the small original red ribbon affixed. Some light age wear to the edges and a small wormhole just affecting a few letters of text, but not the signature. About VG