Code de Police pour les villes et fauxbourgs de Nancy

Nancy: J. B. Hiacinthe Leclerc, 1769. 12mo (147 x 90 mm). 212, [3] pp. Woodcut thistle ornament on title, woodcut tailpieces. Half-title tearing slightly along gutter, old paper reinforcements to gutters of A8v and B1r, 2 or 3 short marginal tears, occasional light foxing. Contemporary red morocco, double gilt fillet border to sides, smooth spine gold-tooled, with green morocco gilt lettering-piece, gilt edges, marbled endpapers (extremities rubbed). Provenance: Stanislas de Guaita (1861-1897), poet and expert on the occult, bookplate; by succession to de Guaita's brother-in-law, Pierre de Lallemand de Mont, with his bookplate; Philippe Zoumeroff, sale, Paris, 16 May 2014, lot 27.***

First Edition of the first ordinances of Lorraine as part of France. Although the Duchies of Lorraine and Bar had been ceded to France by the Treaty of Vienna in 1738, for political reasons Louis XV postponed annexation, and named his father-in-law, Stanislas Leszczy ski, deposed King of Poland, as the last titular sovereign Duke of Lorraine and Bar. The two duchies were not officially annexed to France until the latter's death in 1766. This comprehensive set of revised laws governing the newly French capital city of the province of Lorraine was promulgated three years later, on 4 January 1769.

The highly detailed regulations cover matters of municipal safety and hygiene, commerce and trade, and interpersonal relations, providing a vivid and sometimes surprising view of daily life. The 18 chapters are devoted to: protection of Sundays and holidays (on which only fruit and vegetable sellers are allowed to work, before 9 am); regulation of foreigners and their conditions of residence and admission to the status of bourgeois; relations between servants and their masters; regulation of the grain market, delivery of grains, etc.; rules for bakers, butchers, sausage-makers, fishmongers, open-air-markets, taverners, restaurateurs, and billiard-hall owners; general commerce, delivery of wood, drivers and delivery-boys, private porters (of chairs), public carriages, street hygiene and safety, fires, and échenillage,  the obligatory extermination of caterpillars and other arboreal pests.

OCLC lists 4 copies (Harvard Business & Law Libraries, Yale Law Library, and Bibliothèque Ste.-Geneviève).