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ETHICS & LEGALITY OF TAKING BOOTY IN WAR
ABRA DE RACONIS, François d'. Le Vray But ou Doivent tendre tous Gens de Guerre qui aiment honneur. Auquel est traicté Du Butin et Droict Usage d'Iceluy.
[Sédan?], 1587. Small 8vo (15.5 x 10 cm). With a woodcut arabesque ornament on the title-page, 1 woodcut headpiece, 1 woodcut tailpiece and 1 woodcut decorative initial (plus 1 repeat). Set in roman type, with italic for the dedication, occasional Latin words, and one French quotation. With a 5-page dedication to Guillaume Robert de la Marck, Duc de Boullion and Prince of Sédan. Eighteenth-century paste-paper wrapper with a floral pattern printed from woodblocks in pink and olive. Preserved in a modern marbled folder.
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Fifth copy located of the first and only edition of a small French treatise on the ethics and legality of taking booty, addressed to "all military men who love honour" and published on the eve of the Prince of Sédan's military campaign in support of the future Huguenot King Henri IV of France. François d'Abra de Raconis, seigneur of Neufville and Havelu, appears to have been treasurer of the army in Picardy and to have taken the Piedmont name De Raconis when he married the daughter of Rafael Balavin, seigneur de Raconis. A Calvinist, he probably came to Sédan soon after the establishment of Protestant Collège there in 1579 (it became the Académie with the support of the Duc de Bouillon in 1602), and he is mentioned in the polemical writings of one of the first theologians there, Pierre Du Moulin (1568-1658). He is believed to have converted to Catholicism in 1592 and to have been the father of Charles François d'Abra de Raconis (1580-1646), Bishop of Lavaur. Although the title-page of the present book gives no author's name, place of publication, publisher or printer, d'Abra de Raconis signed its five-page dedication to the Huguenot Guillaume Robert de la Marck (1563-1588), Duc de Boullion and sovereign Prince of Sédan, from Sédan, 20 April 1587. At this date, the prince was raising a large army and in June 1587 he left Sédan with his army to assist Henri de Navarre but died a few months before he was crowned Henri IV of France. The treatise was therefore very topical when published. Perhaps the U.S., Russian and several other governments could still learn from it today!
Sédan imprints are known from Abel Rivery in 1577 and Mathieu Hilaire in 1589, but they are extremely rare before the Academy Press began work in the early seventeenth-century. The book is set in Robert Granjon's Gros Cicero roman type, which served as the model for today's ubiquitous Times Roman. Its accompanying italic is used almost in the modern manner, a practice just emerging at this date. We have located only four other copies.
In good condition, with only a few small spots on the title-page and some faint, mostly marginal water stains. An extremely rare book on the topical subject of the ethics and legality of taking booty during war.
