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Mémoire pour le Sieur Jean-Baptiste Cousot, imprimeur, demeurant à Chaumont, opposant; contre M. le Procureur du Rois près le Tribunal de première instance de Chaumont, demandeur au principal, et défendeur à l’opposition.

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First edition of this apparently unrecorded pamphlet concerning a secret society of ‘gallant’ teenagers in Chaumont, Haut-Marne in eastern France, called ‘l’Ordre de l’amitié’. The youngest member, also one of the most influential, being only fourteen years old, and the majority still in school.

The society lasted only a few months, between the years 1816 and 1817, though several years later in 1822 a printer, Cousot, is accused of having supplied the miscreants with money (about twelve francs and some centimes) to encourage them to overthrow the government; this pamphlet is his defence. The crucial evidence in the case is the printing of fictitious money used by the group, the ‘assignat de cinquante baisers’ (bill of fifty kisses, payable to the bearer) registered to the ‘domaine de l’amitié’, decorated with a gallant symbol of two hearts pierced by a dart beneath a halo, and bearing gallant mottoes. Cousot claims this was printed more than twenty years ago, at the time of the Revolution, and has nothing to do with his shop, citing typographic evidence.

Not in OCLC or COPAC; we have been unable to trace any copies. An example of a variant assignat to the one depicted here is recorded at the Musée Carnavalet, Paris.

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