ABSTRACT
In the second half of the seventeenth century a double market of information emerged in France, due to activity by the French government and by the Renaudot Family. Two dierent kinds of gazettes coexisted within this market. On the one hand, there was the ocial gazette, which supposedly enjoyed a monopoly on news, and which should have stood as a sort of gazette of record.1 e other kind of gazette was produced in Holland but tolerated on French territory. e existence of this complex media system was not due merely to the tacit cooperation of the government. Nor could it be explained by the political context. In fact, it was due to a powerful European demand.2 e popularity of the French language among the European courts, along with the intrinsic power of Louis XIV’s France together determined the impetus given to Francophone gazettes from the 1650s onwards.3 Almost continuous warfare by Louis XIV between 1688 and 1714 required people to seek information regarding ongoing political events. More than ever before, readers were able to compare the information they read in the two dierent types of gazettes. Seeing both sides in political and symbolic matters, as well as in the military operations, readers could gain a fairly accurate impression of what was going on.
