Pierre-Cardin Lebret, chevalier, seigneur de Flacourt... [Broadside banning the game of bassette]

[Aix-en-Provence? 1692 or 1693]

1 broadside | Full-sheet | 386 x 262 mm

A broadside decree outlawing the game of basset in Aix, and Provence writ large, following a royal decree to the same effect. It’s certainly possible this was printed on the last day or two of 1692—the decree is dated December 30—but we think early in 1693 may be more likely. The decree is hand-signed by Pierre-Cardin Lebret himself, as well as one Le Guaze or Le Guare?  ¶ We love this game’s story, if only as an allegory on the consequences of the reckless habits of a nation’s governing elite. Bassette came to France in the last third of the 17th century by way of Italy’s bassetta. “In bassetta, players bet on the possibility of particular cards being turned up by the dealer: if they were turned up on to the dealer’s pile, he won; if on to the player’s pile, he won. Although complex forms of betting were associated with bassetta, the structure of the game was rudimentary” (Walker). The stakes were as high as the rules were simple. The game could easily result in breathtaking losses, and so it naturally became a favorite pastime of society’s most affluent. A correspondent of Roger de Rabutin, comte de Bussy, reported that the Marquise de Montespan, chief royal mistress, lost four million pounds in a single evening—a staggering amount that matched the building costs of the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte. “The sums of money lost in France at this game were so considerable that the princes of the blood [a monarch’s legitimate male descendants] were in danger of being undone; and after many persons of distinction were ruined the court of France thought fit to forbid Basset” (Steinmetz). ¶ In France, such prohibitions appeared as early as 1679. Even in early modern Venice, bassetta was the most frequently cited game in gambling prosecutions. Underscoring the severity of the problem—and the particular class of people who played—the present decree levies a fine of three thousand livres on those who participate. This is roughly twelve years’ worth of income for an unskilled worker in Paris. With fines that high, things must have been desperate indeed. And the fines must have worked. By 1710, bassette had all but disappeared from French gaming tables. ¶ We locate no other copies (but acknowledge the vagaries of cataloging items without obvious titles).

CONDITION: Printed on the recto only of a single sheet of watermarked laid paper, retaining three deckle edges. ¶ Creased thrice across the middle, with a one-inch split at the left edge of the middle crease, discreetly mended on the verso; moderately soiled and a little tattered at the edges.

REFERENCES: Jonathan Walker, “Gambling and Venetian Noblemen c. 1500-1700,” Past & Present 162 (Feb 1999), p. 29-30; Andrew Steinmetz, The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims (London, 1870), v. 2, p. 305 (cited above, and followed by an excellent summary of how the game was played), 312 (“It is said that Basset was invented by a noble Venetian, who was punished with exile for the contrivance. The game was prohibited by Louis XIV., in 1691, and soon after fell into oblivion in France, although flourishing in England.”); Thierry Depaulis and Josepha Jullian, “Termes techniques des cartiers français,” Cartes à jouer & tarots de Marseille: la donation Camoin, collection du Musée du vieux Marseille (2004), p. 185 (“The victim of repeated prohibitions beginning in 1679, basset disappeared from France around 1710, not without giving birth to pharaoh around 1685”); Marie Petitot, Anecdotes insolites de la royauté (Editions Jourdan, 2020), unpaginated ebook (reporting on Montespan’s habit)

Item #558