Charles Sevin de Quincy

Charles Sevin, marquis de Quincy (Meaux, 1660? – Paris, 10 January 1738 ) was a French artillery general and historian of the Wars of Louis XIV, who is still considered an authoritative source by modern historians.

Life Personal life Charles was the son of Augustin Sevin, seigneur de Quincy, and Marguerite Françoise de Glapion. He married Geneviève Pecquot de Saint-Maurice on 31 July 1696, and they had a daughter, Catherine Charlotte, who married René Jourdan de Launay, then governor of the Bastille, in 1721. His uncle Thierry, seigneur de Quincy (president of the Parlement of Paris), made him his universal heir, which left Charles very well off, despite the fact that the will was contested by Thierry's widow, and he had to pay back her dowry.

Career Charles entered service in the French army in 1676 ), where he eventually ended up as sous-brigadier. He was wounded at the Battle of Blenheim.

Charles wrote most of his military biography of king Louis XIV after his military career had ended. According to his elder brother, Joseph Sevin de Quincy, the author of Mémoires du chevalier de Quincy, who also had a military career, Charles borrowed freely from the latter's diaries, without attribution, for the military history in that work. This clearly embittered Joseph, who writes on page 73 of volume II of his Mémoires: "I can assure you that the journals I kept of my campaigns, and which I sent to him very precisely, contributed not a little to help him compose this history; he did not show me the slightest gratitude. I found myself at nineteen sieges, six battles and several particular actions ... He does not say a word about it ... It amazes me all the more, that he gives praise to many general officers, in truth who hardly deserved them, and whose actions should be buried forever. I attribute this silence towards me to a little professional jealousy which he has always had against me, and which I forgive him with all my heart.

The fact that the biography turned out to be based on the memories of two participants in the actions described, contributed to the value the work has as a primary source for the history of the War of the Spanish Succession, perceived from the French side. It may be said, however, that it often reads more as a hagiography. Another quote from Joseph, describing the unveiling of the equestrian statue of king Louis by François Girardon on the Place Vendôme (then called Place Louis-le-Grand) in 1699, at which he was present together with his brother, may let us better understand the attitude required of historians in the age of Louis XIV. He describes the unveiling ceremony, which involved the highest authorities in Paris making obeïsances to the statue as follows: "It seemed to me that this ceremony smacked a little of Nebuchadnezzarism; at least that reminded me of it."

The Histoire Militaire du Règne de Louis-le-Grand, Roi de France was intended as a replacement for the "official" biography that was supposed to have been written by Jean Racine and Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, but never marterialized, also because much material for it was destroyed in a fire in the library of Jean-Baptiste-Henri de Valincour on the night of 13 January 1716 in Saint-Cloud, according to the Preface. The War of Devolution, Franco-Dutch War, War of the Reunions, and Nine Years' War are treated in the first three volumes of the work, and the War of Spanish Succession in the four following volumes; the eighth volume is an essay on military strategy. In the Preface he furthermore describes the scheme he consistently follows for the description of the several battles and sieges treated in the book (such as strength of the opposing forces; dispositions; identity of commanders; manoevres executed; officers mentioned in dispatches; losses on both sides; and trophies captured; accompanied by the appropriate engraved battle and siege maps). In all of this he observed the best exactitude achievable.

Though Sevin writes in his Preface that "...my principal care has been to rid myself of all spirit of partiality, and to give the most sincere account of what has passed during so long a reign, without increasing the advantages, nor diminishing the losses of one or the other party, the work was written from the French perspective. Ironically, two other French historians, Jean Dumont and Jean Rousset de Missy published a similar history, covering the War of the Spanish Succession written from the Allied perspective, as a military biography of the main Allied commanders John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene of Savoy around the same time:

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