1695 French Military Enrollment Certificate with Red Wax Seal, Framed

Period
1695, French

Size
11¾ x 10¼ inches, framed

A manuscript certificate on laid paper, signed and sealed, issued at the bailliage of Berry.

The text is written in brown iron gall ink in a practiced chancery hand. It is issued by Claude Dubier, Knight, Lord Baron of Maubranchère, Counselor to the King and Lieutenant General at the bailliage of Berry seated at Bourges, and it certifies that Sieur René Colon de la Charnaie was enrolled in the ban de Berry. The date is written out, the sixteenth of May 1695. Two hands appear on the sheet, Dubier signing above the seal and his secretary signing at the lower right beneath the words Par mondit Sieur. It is sealed in red wax at the lower left, beside the signature, an armorial impression showing a shield below a coronet with scrolling mantling in the manner of the reign.

The wax impression is intact. Sold as found.

It is float mounted on a warm white mat so the deckle edges show, glazed with Tru Vue Conservation Grade 99 percent UV glass, in a black frame with a gilt inner fillet, wired in copper.

Historical Context
The ban was the body of the king's direct vassals, called to serve in person, and the arrière-ban extended the summons to the vassals of those vassals. The obligation dates to the twelfth century and was already largely ceremonial by the reign of Louis XIV. May 1695 falls inside the Nine Years' War, when French field armies reached a hundred thousand men and Namur was under siege. Because a convocation admitted only those who could establish their standing, the rolls of the ban function as a census of the nobility of a bailliage, which is why single certificates of enrollment survive in family papers.