Emmanuel Legeard, Histoire du Berry: De la cité des Bituriges aux départements révolutionnaires. Quintin: Éditions Jean-Paul Gisserot, 2024, 128 pp.

The fabulous bibliophile Jean, duc de Berry (1340–1416), is known to all enlightened people; but few know Berry, his duchy, located around Bourges some 150 miles south of Paris. An elegant little volume helps correct this in nine chapters. Their themes are thus: from the Gaulish Bituriges “Kings of the World” (their name behind Berry and Bourges alike) to the defeat of Bretons by Visigoths (in 469) at Déols, in west Berry; from paganism to Christianity; feudal Berry; from Arnaud de Cervole (d. 1366), bandit and mercenary, to Duke Jean; the kingdom of Berry; from the “Pragmatic Sanction” (of 1438) to the financier Jacques Cœur (d. 1456), who possessed fantastic wealth, yet died an exile in Greece; the Age of Louis XI; from the Wars of Religion to Sully, counsellor to Henry IV; from the Condés (of military fame) to 1790, when Berry was split into its two existing départements. Result: a scholarly revelation.