David Bardey, Les ducs de Bourgogne et l’administration du duché (1272–1349): une histoire documentaire de la principauté capétienne de Bourgogne. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2025, 684 pp.

At the heart of David Bardey’s book is the fact that the administrative records of medieval Burgundy, like those of so many of the great principalities of France, have suffered heavy losses. Most readers of this journal know of one or two of the causes of these misfortunes, most especially of the destructive impulses of the French revolutionaries and the wars – civil and national – fought on French soil over the centuries. However, some acts of destruction were the consequence of deliberate and repeated administrative policy to sell or incinerate records deemed out of date and, thus, of no value and to make room for new parchments and papers. It is an irony that many sales were made to the cartridge manufacturers who supplied the army and insurrectionaries with the ammunition to sustain the destructive military activity (pp. 36–45).