Vic/Vaissete, Histoire Générale de Languedoc, 10 Vol. Réimpression.

In 1845, one hundred years after the publication of the last volume of the General History of Languedoc, commissioned in 1715 by the Provincial States to the Benedictine Fathers of the Congregation of Saint-Maur: Dom Claude Devic and Dom Joseph Vaissete - a monumental work which, in thirty years of work and five volumes, relates the history of the province from its origins to the death of Louis XIII (1643) - the knight Alexandre du Mège undertook to popularise it and to follow it up to 1830. Thirty years before the publishing house Privat took an interest in a new - and final - re-edition, this time in fifteen volumes (1872-1890), this intermediary publication, produced by the Toulouse printer J.B. Paya, which had hitherto been little known or even ignored, was intended to be accessible to a wider public thanks to its modest price and a presentation designed to facilitate consultation. In addition to the merits of its modern typography and its organization in ten volumes, this edition has the advantage, through abundant notes, of describing the main monuments of the region and of preserving the original Occitan texts, which preserve its cultural and linguistic authenticity. Today, this new impression is born of our desire to go to Pézenas, the former seat of the States of Languedoc, and to Nîmes, the former capital of the Volques Arécomiques. It is there with Christian Lacour - a popular publisher from Nîmes - that we found the enthusiastic assent to revive the works of Fathers Devic and Vaissete and the Toulousan Alexandre du Mège. That the Languedocians and others, scholars or simply curious about the history of this province "at the end of the Kingdom", use or discover with profit this work, finally more accessible, such is our only ambition.