The Treaty of Nîmes (1704): fake news, propaganda and diplomacy during the War of the Spanish Succession

Abstract

Abstract This article reappraises the significance of the ‘Treaty of Nîmes’, a fake historical document that supposedly ended the War of the Cévennes in May 1704. The agreement was negotiated by Camisard leader Jean Cavalier and Louis XIV’s representative in Languedoc, the Maréchal de Villars. It claimed no less than to restore the Edict of Nantes in Languedoc two decades after its revocation, and sparked speculation among the Protestant coalition about the true state of French domestic affairs in the midst of the War of the Spanish Succession. Dissecting its individual articles against the backdrop of contemporary correspondences, newspapers and pamphlets, this article thus reconstructs the origins and true purpose of that controversial agreement to show the limits of the Sun King’s absolutist rule, and makes a case more generally for the historical value of fake historical documents.