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The present contribution outlines the scope of my doctoral dissertation 1 in terms of theoretical, conceptual, methodological and empirical choices. Although my research treated two specific case studies, its theoretical and methodological premises are of interest for the history of public international law in general. My research builds further on traditional, doctrine-or treaty-focused legal history, tackling diplomatic correspondence. Legal argumentation between states and their representatives ought to be read within the framework of legal culture. Norms guiding behaviour are often implicit. Moreover, the effect of formal sources of the law is often situated at the symbolic level, rather than in purely textual or explicit terms. I chose the uneasily calm three decades following the Peace of Utrecht (1713, ending the War of the Spanish Succession) as main case-study 2 . Building on the typology drawn from primary-source analysis, I looked at a test-case for the universality of my hypothesis. Although more than two centuries separated the former from the latter, French contestation of the vertical world order after 1945 appealed to a similar rhetorical set of arguments 3 . Consequently, anti-hegemonic discourse, referring to the material legitimacy of a formal criterion (state consent) appears as an evergreen of legal argumentation between states.

First (Section 1), I treat the theoretical approach, or the conceptual framing of my research. The central question, which will serve throughout the next chapters in the analysis of primary material, will thus be shown to challenge the present acquis in three disciplines: legal history, diplomatic history and international law. Moreover, I will expound the inspiration from neighbouring disciplines or subdisciplines in the broader humanities, that have devoted considerable attention to similar social phenomena. Secondly (Section 2), I propose the methodological approach best suited to the material brought forward.

Section 1: Theoretical premises "Law (and social order in general) is concerned with relationships, and not with separate individuals or groups of individuals. Therefore the standards of legal order ought to be derived from the idea of interrelated and coordinated activities, and not from the idea of the independent existence of persons."

Gerhart Niemeyer, Law Without Force. The Function of Politics in International Law 4 This theoretical part serves to inform the reader on the existing preconceptions of my approach to the sources of public international law. How to make sense out of a tantalizing amount of material ? How to relate findings to principles of a sufficiently general nature, recognized by the scholars active in the field ?

Research is rarely fully original, in the sense that it only develops new theoretical assumptions from the study of previously unknown sources. Essentially, the theoretical approach chosen places the subject matter at the intersection of various disciplines, namely legal history, public international law and history of international relations. The following questions have guided my empirical research.

A. History of International Law

Most general works on the history of international law [START_REF] Gaurier | Histoire du droit international[END_REF] either start from the idea that praxis is only important to study the origin of rules, or chop up history into arbitrary epochs of political domination. Notions as "the French era of public international law, 1648-1815" do not fit reality. If, to follow the example of the "French era", the majority of treaty drafts [START_REF] Count Broglie To Morville | du tems qu'on auroit employé a en faire une traduction latine[END_REF] , or works of reference for international law in the 18 th century, appear to be drawn up in Latin, rather than in French [START_REF]even in 1738, 25 years after the peace of Utrecht, Latin was still labeled the "common language[END_REF] , or, if the French monarchy did not have a prominent doctrinal voice, research should rather focus on the interaction [START_REF] Brunnée | Interactional International Law: An Introduction[END_REF] between states [START_REF]Eine aus einer Anzahl von Menschen bestehende, von niemand ausser sich abhängende und zu einem stets fortdaurenden Zwecke vereinigte Gesellschaft nennet man in Volk oder einen Staat[END_REF] , than on a particular national style, used for framing actions and goals of other parties. Or, to put it in David Armitage's words, the "stories actors told about themselves or their achievements" do not necessarily match "foundation myths retailed by later communities of historians and diplomats, international lawyers and proto-political scientists, seeking historical validation for their ideological projects and infant professions [START_REF] Armitage | Foundations of modern international thought[END_REF] ." This research has been constructed out of the sources, and focuses on the treatment of legal arguments in international politics. To that respect, when it comes to a consistent treatment of authoritative texts, legal history recognizes a medieval mos italicus, or a renaissance mos gallicus, but -at least, until now-no mos trajectensis (a habitus based on the culture of the Treaty of Utrecht) in international law post 1713.

B. Political History

Looking at the eighteenth century from a historian's perspective, most can be explained on an evenemential basis. The lack of respect for alliance clauses or promises to renounce to lost territories could and can lead to a superficial conclusion on international law's ineffectiveness [START_REF] Laurent | brutale, plus elle apprendra aux peuples qu'il n'y a que le droit qui puisse sauvegarder leur liberté et garantir leur indépendance[END_REF] . Frederick the Great's deriding commentaries on his lawyers' justifications for the invasion of Silesia in 1740 can give extra ammunition to this reductionist thesis.

Yet, an evenemential, short-term or "particularist20 " political reading of sources fails to explain why Europe, for an unparalleled period of thirty years, did not have an all-out continental war, any sooner than around 1742-1743. At least one hypothesis is to be found in a shared legal culture that tied Europe's sovereigns together, expressed through diplomacy, or the conduct of foreign policy21 . This phenomenon has been overlooked. In part due to the sheer mass of the available sources. E.g. in 1713, vast diplomatic dispatches left the French embassy in London on a daily basis22 . Mining for legal arguments, intertwined with elaborate anecdotes or court gossip, intercession in favour of merchants, rumours on internal British politics, is like searching for a needle in a haystack. In spite of the numerous generations of previous historians from Voltaire [START_REF] Arouet | Précis du siècle de Louis XV, servant de suite au Siècle de Louis XIV[END_REF] to Jeremy Black [START_REF] Black | British foreign policy in the age of Walpole[END_REF] , who have treated this era, a lot of material still remain unexplored, giving way to new interpretations.

C. Anarchical Society

The interactions between states are generally qualified as a "society" of states, as opposed to a socially more integrated group or "community [START_REF] Truyol | Genèse et structure de la société internationale[END_REF] ". No central authority can enforce agreements, or sanction those who contravene them. Between the actors in this society, contracts are inevitably imperfect [START_REF] Lefebvre | Le jeu du droit et de la puissance[END_REF] and thus precarious. International order in bilateral agreements does not necessarily reflect morality [START_REF] Lauterpacht | No peace without injustice: Hobbes and Locke on the ethics of peacemaking[END_REF] . Lasting power configurations over several decades have more than purely factual consequences. They are the essential precondition to the creation of rules, not to mention their enforcement [START_REF] Grewe | Epochen der Völkerrechtsgeschichte[END_REF] .

II. International Order: Balance of Power

A. Terminology

The first three words of my study's title, "Balance of Power", are of the most controversial in public international law [START_REF] Donnadieu | La Théorie de l'équilibre, étude d'histoire diplomatique et de droit international[END_REF] , international relations theory 31 or diplomatic history [START_REF] Bély | Les relations internationales en Europe: XVI e -XVIII e siècles[END_REF] . Taking Balance of Power, in Talleyrand's words "le palladium des droits de chacun et du repos de tous [START_REF] To Metternich | Le principe d'équilibre et le concert européen, de la paix de Westphalie à l'acte d'Algésiras[END_REF] ", mentioned in Thucydides [START_REF] Sheehan | Balance of Power: history and theory[END_REF] or Gentili 35 , as an analytical concept in a legal study seems more than hazardous. Is "Balance of Power" a mere factual relationship or an appropriate legal expression (ex facto non oritur ius [START_REF]tantôt la primitive union des faibles contre le puissant, tantôt une égalisation des forces[END_REF] ) ? Can it be confined within the limits of a workable definition ? Does it have any significance outside the just war framework 37 ? The expression serves as a metaphor for distinct historical periods, such as the international system of the seventeenth [START_REF] Malettke | Hegemonie -Multipolares System -Gleichgewicht[END_REF] , eighteenth [START_REF] Duchhardt | Balance of power und Pentarchie[END_REF] or nineteenth [START_REF] Bilfinger | Friede durch Gleichgewicht der Macht ?[END_REF] century, or that of the whole Ancien Régime 41 , or even as a synonym for the "Westphalian" system of European international relations [START_REF] Dupuis | Le principe d'équilibre et le concert européen, de la paix de Westphalie à l'acte d'Algésiras[END_REF] . When researchers apply their typology of the concept to facts, their hypotheses are generally rejected [START_REF] Law | Balance of Power as the structure of world politics […] has even come to be incompatible with the international law, which, during most of[END_REF] . The works of Michael Sheehan [START_REF] Sheehan | The Place of the Balancer in Balance of Power Theory[END_REF] and Evan Luard [START_REF] Luard | The Balance of Power. 46[END_REF] stand out in this respect. Both authors argue forcefully in favour of a nuanced but systematic understanding of balancing behaviour between states. Balance of Power is a rational attempt to reconcile anarchy with order, or, in other words, to assign power structures to enforce a minimal consensus between equal players 46 . My dissertation followed this line of argumentation. The falsification of Balance of Power theory as an organizing principle is not a very arduous task. Yet, its vagueness is precisely responsible for its swift adoption by so many different actors throughout history [START_REF] Analogous | Diffusing Bad Ideas: What the Migration of the Separation of Powers Means for Comparative Constitutionalism and Constitutional Transplants[END_REF] . Balance of Power thinking delegates the elaboration of vague norms to diplomats and politicians. The persistence of its use by diplomatic practitioners [START_REF] Soutou | De l'équilibre européen à l'équilibre mondial ?[END_REF] and its enduring appeal to political audiences point to a recurrent legitimating force, that cannot be explained away by mere theoretical reasoning 49 . As Ian Clark has emphasised in his work on legitimacy in international relations, the key explaining factor for the subsistence of any international system is a "highly significant common belief that stability is a function not of material distributions alone, but also of degrees of acceptance within the relevant social constituency [START_REF] Clark | Hegemony in International Society[END_REF] ." The presence of Balance of Power in the title reflects not as much the expression of the rigorous zeal used to judge primary sources, but is more the result of its omnipresence in diplomatic correspondence, as the starting point, or precondition to any legal analysis by the actors themselves [START_REF]Bourdieu's concept of implicit practical logic reinforced this hypothesis[END_REF] . "Balance of Power" is all the more significant as a rhetorical catch-all term for conflict resolution in the early modern period. To paraphrase Vauban, any outstanding quarrel between sovereigns could be resolved by a peace treaty, or, conversely, "par une bonne guerre [START_REF] Vauban | soit par traités, soit par une bonne guerre[END_REF] ". Given that international conflict took place between equals, it could not be subject to the medieval rules of just war [START_REF] Bacot | Paix et guerre dans les grands traités du dix-huitième siècle[END_REF] , which counted on the intervention of a superior authority. In reality, sovereigns disposed of a broad array of possibilities for solving their conflicts themselves, stretching from all-out war to a peace treaty [START_REF]Peace treaties and international law in European history : from the late Middle Ages to World War One[END_REF] . Third party-mediation [START_REF] Dhondt | Balance of Power Language and Mediation Rituals: The Quadruple Alliance's Italian Investitures (1718-1727)[END_REF] , arbitration [START_REF] Gaurier | Histoire du droit international public[END_REF] or the resort to individual or general reprisals 57 permitted to solve problems within the borders of the balance system [START_REF] Dhondt | Legal Discourse between Integration and Disintegration: The Case of the Peaceful Succession Struggles, 1713-1739[END_REF] .

B. Research Hypotheses

Any scientific research entails a choice of "facts deemed relevant or the elements that actually constitute them, hypotheses, theories that should be confronted with the facts 59 ". Moreover, in the present undertaking, the selected cases ("Eighteenth-Century European International Relations after the War of the Spanish Succession" and "de Gaulle's contestation of the Cold War bipolar world in the 1960s") served to test a theoretical hypothesis. I attempted to gain an understanding of the underlying structures which function or guide practice in two diverse historical periods. My yardstick for comparison was the enunciation of anti-hegemonic legal discourses, within the framework of the Balance of Power-metaphor, as used by the actors themselves [START_REF] Dhondt | Law on the Diplomatic Stage: the 1725 Ripperda Treaty[END_REF] .

Schematically, the main hypotheses can be understood as follows: Anti-hegemonic discourse Conflictual, "take it or leave it" Hierarchical, revolutionary

In this scheme, anti-hegemonic discourse is seen as a transformative vector in the "Trente Heureuses", or the decades following the peace treaties of Utrecht and Rastatt 61 . I did not venture to take this expression literally. Military intervention and formally declared wars did not disappear after 1713. However, the contrast [START_REF]Une époque de réparation et de tranquillité[END_REF] with the bellicose 17 th century is striking [START_REF] Corvisier | Présence de la guerre au XVII e siècle[END_REF] . Relying on the superior position of international treaties versus domestic norms, French and British diplomats stabilised international relations. Succession problems capable of inflaming all powers in Europe were solved in diplomatic talks. Negotiations served to amend or enlarge the consensus that brought the War of the Spanish Succession to an end (1711-1713).

De Gaulle's challenge to the bipolar world order after 1945, however, started from an opposite position. The Utrecht system was on the rise after 1713. Chapters 2 and 3 will show Franco-British cooperation growing to an apex in the 1720s, when the legal structure of the mediators' operational methods at the Congress of Cambrai will exert a decisive influence on the other powers' arguments. French contestation of the bipolar Cold War order, however, seemed to be going against the course of history. Economic and military integration produced a new hierarchical system, restricting traditional state freedom.

Hegemonic discourse, by contrast, stood for Imperial legal argumentation in the "trente heureuses", clinging on to the Emperor's prodominium, or feudal overlordship, within the Holy Roman Empire, or to unilateral dynastic claims in the Spanish case. Internal opponents to the Utrecht settlement relied on older norms, such as the French loi fondamentale of inalienability of the crown, or the claims of Philip of Anjou to the whole of the Spanish composite monarchy.

Hegemonic discourse after 1945 should be seen as the revolutionary idea to structure the world in two blocs, on the basis of radically different value systems (market economy v. socialist planning). As such, the promotion of these values had their repercussions on the internal organisation of the participating states. In the 18 th century, alliance between princes were limited to norms governing their mutual conduct. However, the ideological programme behind the 20 th century division tended to reduce sovereignty, in favour of the realisation of common goals. Both blocs created institutions on a higher level. States originally contracted into them, but had to note that, as cooperation increased, they had abandoned competences and thus aspects of their sovereignty. These dynamics were forward-looking and designed to incrementally undermine the European state system as it functioned after the Peace of Westphalia ( 1648), or -in the present dissertation-the Peace of Utrecht (1713). France, in reaction against this logic of bloc building, which subjected interstate relations to supervision by the dominant power in each ideological camp, brandished the fundamental rights of states against interference. In other words, hegemonic and anti-hegemonic argumentation had changed in nature and purpose. Whereas the former had been used to innovate after Utrecht, it became a reference to a safe haven of fundamental state rights in the past. Conversely, whereas the dominant position of the Emperor had always been under ideological and increasingly under material attack in the Early Modern period, Atlantic and European integration were only at the beginning of an impetuous development. The dialogue between these two sets of argumentation is, in my hypothesis, recurring in the structure of international politics. Both strands are simultaneously in search of historical, precedent-based, or moral, principle-based legitimacy. The legal translation of this fundamental need has been at the core of my research.

III. Normativity: law as interaction in the Society of States

"Powerful nations obey powerless rules 64 ". Law is the ultimate expression of consensus between parties, since they judge to feel bound by it. Studying international law thus requires a broadening of the normativity perspective, irrespective of a document's formal status as a source of law [START_REF] Howse | Beyond Compliance: Rethinking Why International Law Really Matters[END_REF] . This means that not only hard, written norms count. In essence, the classical law of nations is of a liberal tendency: only state consent can bind autonomous, sovereign and equal entities [START_REF] Jellinek | Die rechtliche Natur der Staatenverträge : ein Beitrag zur juristischen Construction des Völkerrechts[END_REF] . According to the International Court of Justice's statute [START_REF] Rasulov | The Doctrine of Sources in the Discourse of the Permanent Court of International Justice[END_REF] , international custom [START_REF] Vagts | International Relations Looks at Customary International Law: A Traditionalist's Defence[END_REF] (state behavior, confirmed by an intention to have this new standard set as a rule of law) or "the general principles of law recognized by civilized nations" bear the same intrinsic quality as treaties, albeit accessorily. My study was concerned with international law, in its literal sense of law between sovereigns [START_REF] Zouche | Iuris et Iudicii Fecialis, sive, Iuris Inter Gentes, et Quaestionium de Eodem Explicatio[END_REF] . It aimed at a deliberate comparison of inter-state relations and the permanence in the diplomatic function [START_REF] Kessler | L'ambassadeur n'est pas un anachronisme comme l'écrivait Zbigniew Brzezinski en[END_REF] , Consequently, I left out important developments such as the furthering of collective citizen welfare 71 , human rights or the position of the individual, international criminal law 72 , which lead to situations "unthinkable in earlier times 73 ".

Contemporary international law, although marked by a state consent-centered hierarchy, recognizes other sources as well. State practice, for instance, has always been seen as a classical source of international law [START_REF] Reus-Smit | Obligation through Practice[END_REF] . Soft law has been recognized a source of law [START_REF] Guzman | Against consent[END_REF] . The present contribution, however, focused on a universal attitude in the confrontation of diplomats, who are political practitioners as the agents of their government, and legal arguments, conferring legitimacy on state acts. This exercise necessitatd the analysis of diplomatic correspondence as a supplementary legal source. I did not aim to write a history of "international political thought" in the line of Quentin Skinner [START_REF] Skinner | The Foundations of Modern Political Thought[END_REF] or David Armitage 77 's writings. Not political or legal theory, but legal history was my focus. Legally relevant practical logic, or "the life of the law" was at the center.

The field of the history of public international law is in full frenzied activity, as general public international lawyers again turn to theory and history [START_REF]The Cambridge Companion to International Law; A[END_REF] , influenced inter alia by Martti Koskenniemi's seminal work on the key generation of lawyers during the transition of the late 19 th into the 20 th century [START_REF] Koskenniemi | The gentle civilizer of nations : the rise and fall of international law[END_REF] , or his theoretical work 80 , linking the political character of international law [START_REF] Koskenniemi | La politique du droit international[END_REF] to the necessity of meta-juridical self-reflection or the need of shared interpretation principles [START_REF] Koskenniemi | Fragmentation of international law: difficulties arising from the diversification of international law[END_REF] . Attempts to render international law autonomous, and to see it as a "practical craft 83 " carrying autonomous and self-evident ideas, are long gone. Influenced by the general international turn in historiography 84 , the select studies in the history of international law [START_REF] Anghie | Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law[END_REF] , as well as the most recent collective work tried to incorporate non-Western or European dimensions, stressing the absence of a "single global history" and the importance of "many global experiences" [START_REF]The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law [Oxford Handbooks in Law[END_REF] . Nevertheless, my study was devoted to classical European international relations and did not venture into this field. Yet, the otherness (altérité) which lies at the basis of the recent attempts to contextualize contemporary Western-dominated international law, has, in my view, been present within the European system itself [START_REF] Pillet | Recherches sur les droits fondamentaux des États dans l'ordre des rapports internationaux et sur la solution des conflits qu'ils font naître[END_REF] . This follows the absence of an effective regional hegemon: international structure reflects states' beliefs about legitimate behaviour [START_REF] Kocs | Explaining the Strategic Behaviour of States: International Law as System Structure[END_REF] . At least part of the belief in the universality of "European" international law is grounded in its de-concentrated character.

A. Cultural Turn in Historiography: Lucien Bély

Yet, the cultural turn in diplomatic history opened a new perspective on the law as an explanatory factor of human behaviour. Lucien Bély's path-breaking study on the Congress of Utrecht appeared in 1990 [START_REF] Bély | Espions et ambassadeurs au temps de Louis XIV[END_REF] . Bély linked the anthropological and cultural acquis of the Annales-school with "traditional" diplomatic history [START_REF] Bély | Les larmes de M. de Torcy: la leçon diplomatique de l'échec, à propos des conférences de Gertruydenberg (mars-juillet 1710)[END_REF] . This combination has proven to be extremely fruitful [START_REF] Bély | Les Temps Modernes[END_REF] . Even twenty years ago, the amount of historical writing on the Spanish Succession [START_REF] Churchill | His Life and Times[END_REF] or the congresses that ended the question, was gargantuan. Yet, the richness and vastness of the available material still makes new interpretations possible, as historical knowledge in other domains progresses. First, diplomatic correspondence flew from the pen of educated, civilized men. The main actors in the networks between courts were commercial experts [START_REF] Dhondt | L'équilibre européen et la Succession d'Espagne. L'épisode révélateur des négociations de Nicolas Mesnager en Hollande, 1707-1708[END_REF] or noblemen brought up by preceptors not averse to the nascent republic of letters, e.g. the French Regent, who had abbot Dubois as his teacher in public law [START_REF] Chaussinand-Nogaret | -1723 ou une certaine idée de l[END_REF] . Their lives are extensively documented in letters leaving in all directions and touching upon so many aspects of 18 th century European society, that historians could almost reconstruct every day. Second, Bély rehabilitated rules of precedency [START_REF] De | Mémoires sur le rang et la préséance entre les souverains de l'Europe et entre leurs ministres représentans suivant leurs différens Caractères[END_REF] or diplomatic incidents, both of them classified as objects of mere erudition, or antiquarianism [START_REF] Bély | L'Art de la Paix en Europe: naissance de la diplomatie moderne[END_REF] . Again, applying the Annales' practice to explore the "non-dits" or "choses banales", or the study of continuity, rather than that of disruptions, reveals anchored mentalities, linked to the social and cultural context wherein law lived.

B. Sociology: Pierre Bourdieu

A second source of inspiration for my work are Pierre Bourdieu's notions of field theory and praxeology. Both terms may be classified as vague. Moreover -as the edition of his course on the State at the Collège de France shows [START_REF] Bourdieu | Sur l'État: cours au collège de France[END_REF] -it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between inspiration and recuperation of wellknown earlier work by historians or legal historians. Yet, both terms are particularly useful to describe the social structure of international relations. In spite of a fundamental anarchy, a consequence of the lack of a proper monopoly of violence [START_REF] Cassese | States: Rise and Decline of the Primary Subjects of the International Community[END_REF] , the European international system has often been characterized by stability, rather than by conflict. To the 21 st century jurist, however, the horizontal law between states of the early modern period seems inadequate to explain this stability, in respect to the vertical institutions which emerged after the first and second world war. An era as the "Trente heureuses" cannot then be explained by anything else but precarious and temporary good personal relationships between prominent internal political actors.

Yet, interactions between actors create new social systems in their own right. As Bourdieu has pointed out repeatedly, language in human interactions is not neutral, but represents power relationships [START_REF] Bourdieu | International legal ideas […] have a considerable historical, intellectual and emotional pull […] They work as critique of power and as instruments of power", Koskenniemi[END_REF] . The agreement on concepts, or a string of concepts carrying legitimacy, is impossible without implicitly recognizing the power of the player who defines them. Bourdieu described the monopoly of the lawyer during the French high middle ages as the power to render monarchical acts acceptable and legitimate.

My work started from the hypothesis that the lawyers working as diplomats, secretaries, secretaries of state, undersecretaries of state or premiers commis 100 , had a similar function in the 18 th century. Not only on an internal level, but most of all on a horizontal basis, when they interacted with their counterparts in another sovereign's service. They shape the practical international law discourse, serving as the unique vector of international politics, and render themselves indispensable in carrying out foreign policy. This essential function of the lawyer as an "apologist" of power is not a unidirectional phenomenon. Legal discourse itself is reinforced when experienced gatekeepers see its permanence as the exercise of their own symbolic dominance 101 .

C. Cultural Constitutional History: Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger

A third source of inspiration was Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger's work Des Kaisers alte Kleider 102 , wherein she described how traditional political history's understanding of the Holy Roman Empire was incomplete. Based on a narrow positivist understanding of the law, previous generations of historians failed to recognize the power of rituals, symbols and communications, or… law on the political stage. My initial idea was to see balance of power as a formal converging principle. The relative stability of international relations made a hierarchy of norms possible. Early modern legal pluralism would thus have been organized around the principle of sovereign equality and consent, introducing the precedence of international norms over vertical ones. Stollberg-Rilinger's work is a warning not to mistake a symbol for a legal principle, or to swap effective legal culture and doctrinal construction. Especially when comparing two periods, the positivist trap, and thus the attempt to prefer the seemingly most congruent explanation, can be deceitful. Ancien Régime legal culture, and diplomacy in general as well "did not suppress its institutions", but "superimposed new forms by allowing the old ones to remain dormant and in atrophy without realizing that one day they might be resuscitated 103 ". Social or legal institutions and their perceptions can live through a cyclical evolution, whereby their legitimacy does not collapse, but can gently erode, at a slower pace than first thought 104 . Thus, the initial scheme sketched above (Section 1: I) whereby, in the eighteenth century, Balance of Power and normative hierarchy impose themselves from 1713 on, should be nuanced from the start on, and understood as an attempt to describe one distinct pattern in a general legal pluralism.

B. Post 1945

Recent handbooks on the legal discourse of the foreign service are rare 115 . Yet, diplomatic practice has been extensively published for France (Documents Diplomatiques Français 116 ) and Germany (Akten zur Auswärtigen Politik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 117 ). In view of the emphasis of my research on the first cluster, the second part being accessory and comparative, I have limited this inquiry to the DDF and AAPD-series, bringing argumentation in bilateral meetings between heads of state and government, legal advice or diplomatic dispatches in relation with the typology observed in the first part.

II. Methodology

"International Law is not a blueprint, still less a logical system, but a language within which contrasting interests and values may be presented, a habit in which they may be dressed […] Often the good answers are intensely contextual: a compromise between opposing parties that can work only where it has been attained." Martti Koskenniemi 118 "Eine Entzifferung der Grammatiken der Wortverwendungen, der Denkstrukturen und der Gefühle der Vergangenheit […] setzt voraus, sie erst einmal als fremde zu akzeptieren und der Neigung entgegenzuwirken, vordergründig sprachliche Assonanzen zwischen gestern und heute mit den Etiketten "schon" und "noch" zu bekleben." Michael Stolleis 119 My thesis had both the advantage and the disadvantage to be an interdisciplinary undertaking between the disciplines of law and history. Can history be seen as a science ? On one hand, a considerable number of renowned scholars doubt that one can ever become a good historian by sticking to a dry enumeration of facts, or the constitution of an objective narrative 120 . History is an art, a craft one can learn by observing the implicit logic of a master at work, and not a codified and predefined procedure. A researcher's individual pleasure and drive seem to have been behind the inspiring major works of historiography, who are closely linked to empathy or aesthetic quality as a writer, more than to his rigid confinement to a sole paradigm 121 . On the other hand, historiography is subject to scientific waves or fashions, that can at times seem to crush or alter its very essence, at the image of the devastating impact of postmodernity on the epistemological foundations of historical knowledge 122 . As far as my study was concerned, history is not a conversation between historians (people writing on history), but is about facts in the past. Without the basic guidelines or garde-fous 123 of historical criticism, a historian cannot rank or counter-check the affirmations in his sources. I did not deal with theoretical or meta-historic aspects, which I rank in the realm of the respectable disciplines of philosophy and epistemology.

Conversely, law, as a living discipline, has always been close to practice. The legal science's object, stricto sensu, is a closed and auto-referential system of norms, whose existence stands as an axiom. Practitioners see science as a handmaiden, bringing systematisation and structure. Legal scholars traditionally are learned men with a thorough knowledge of positive law, sanctioned by the justice system 124 . As such, the utility of legal history seems instrumental, explaining norms' genealogy or putting older rules into their societal context. In the eyes of the historian, however, his colleagues in the law faculty stay aloof from intellectual developments in the broader humanities. Institutional or legal subjects get associated with late 19 th -century German scholarship around figures as Leopold von Ranke 125 , relics from an era imbued with the illusion of explaining history as a lawyer would explain an article of the Civil Code, without ever questioning the basic assumptions of his activity. International law has -19 th century positivism left aside 126 -been an exception to this 127 . Many of its themes, including its very existence or universality as law of nations, are claimed by other disciplines as well, such as philosophy or theology 128 .

I have chosen to focus on the object of my research, and to avoid getting entangled in other conceptual discussions than those closely related to my basic question: how did diplomats make use of state-created legal obligations in international relations, in two given cases: the "trente heureuses", and Charles de Gaulle's challenge to Cold War hegemonic discourse ? This choice entailed several risks. Positivist historians could judge that I ignored the historicity or uniqueness of events, made a needless abstraction of a legal discourse embedded in a multi-layered and far more complex cultural context, and ventured into a "History without Historicism 129 ". Theoretical or philosophically oriented historians, conversely, will abhor an all too factual and source-driven underpinning of a mere restatement of the same old realist principles of international relations: why write several hundred pages, if it is all about power and its varying legitimacy? What kind of difference between a political and a legal pretext, if both turn out to be pretexts after all 130 ? Positivist lawyers, on the other hand, will get the impression that there is not much law in my analysis, in view of the lack of sanctioning institutions. Alternatively, they can see this work at the most as an historical introduction to contemporary international legal source theory 131 .

Primary sources (manuscript and published diplomatic correspondence, legal memoranda), drafted or finalised by the practitioners, the main actors of this research, occupy the most eminent place in my hierarchy of sources. Sometimes written as if their author was still reasoning and formulating his discourse, they serve as the most accurate mirror of international relations. My approach does not eliminate published treaties 132 or doctrine 133 . Quite the contrary. I aimed to complement them, and, consequently, to reinterpret them in the light of their immediate context or practical pedigree 134 . Or, in other words, to link two distinct types of knowledge: sophisticated political background analysis and public international law as expressed through state practice 135 . A mere deconstruction of discourse, or focusing on law as an object of symbolic communication only, would not help us any further than a state of the art would show us. This would, again, create a risk to fall in a factual analysis without intellectual depth. Ideas can originate in diplomatic negotiations, and die before the political process is completed. Yet, failure or non-explicit alternatives to seemingly self-evident paths chosen by the actors constitute a treasure for jurists as well as historians 136 . Documents ought to be studied for what they intended to say, and not merely for what they literally express 137 . The analysis does not seem novel: one of Grotius's -an ad hoc diplomat himself-basic exercises was the accommodation of neo-scholastic theology 138 and Roman law 139 with the rules states actually accepted 140 . The relevance of a source is determined by its normativity, or the "oughtness" of a legal rule. For example, reiterating the building blocks of the international system, establishing a hierarchy between distinct legal sources, or the analysis of a contentious point between two parties by distinguishing their claims in opposite concepts. Any document which "does not merely describe some aspect of reality but poses requirements for it 141 ", fell within the scope of my work. For the reasons above mentioned and foremost in view of the determining role of context, I preferred a chronological approach to a thematic one. If, politically speaking, "everything is in everything", the role of law in the very dynamics of negotiations can only be shown if the reader is presented the complete story.

Conclusion: Diplomatic Correspondence As The Legal Historian's Window On Legal Practice

Constructing a bottom-up history of public international law requires a study of the interaction between states and the legal language used to formulate claims and pretensions. Balance of Power-rhetoric, if not universal, then at least recurrent in international relations, offers the framework that enabled European diplomats to elaborate vague treaty norms. This practical legal process is hardly covered by traditional histories of international law, based on treaty publications or doctrinal writings. Starting from this angle, I identified two case studies: Franco-British tandem diplomacy after the Peace of Utrecht ( 1713) and French contestation of the bipolar Cold War world order (post 1945). Anti-hegemonic legal discourse served to convince other sovereigns and their representatives. Diplomatic relations or European states witnessed the formation, adaptation or interpretation of rules in a continuous process. Inspired by the turn to cultural diplomatic history (Lucien Bély), the field sociology of Pierre Bourdieu or Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger's cultural constitutional history, we can reinterpret primary sources once thought to have been exhaustively treated by historians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. As a result, our understanding of the life of international law can be considerably enhanced. ), Hugo Grotius and international relations, Oxford: Clarendon press, 1992, XI + 331 p. On Grotius' life as a diplomat and Dutch academic, see H. Nellen, Hugo de Groot. Een leven in strijd om de vrede 1583-1645, Amsterdam, Balans, 2007, 829 p. 141 Koskenniemi, "International law in the world of ideas", 60.

Looking

  Beyond the Tip of the Iceberg: Diplomatic Praxis and Legal Culture in the History of Public International Law Frederik Dhondt Ph.D.-Fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO)Legal History Institute, Ghent University (Belgium)

  138 C. von Kaltenborn, Die Vorläufer des Hugo Grotius auf dem Gebiete des Ius naturae et gentium sowie der Politik, Leipzig, Gustav Mayer, 1848, 250 + 148 p. 139 D. J. Bederman, Classical Canons. Rhetoric, classicism and treaty interpretation [Applied Legal Philosophy], Aldershot, Ashgate, 2001, 340 p. 140 H. Bull & B. Kingsbury (eds.

J. M. Hobson & G. Lawson, "What is History in International Relations ?", Millennium: journal of International Studies, XXXVII (2008), No. 2, 420.

Sometimes opposed to its formulation by politicians (definition of Roberts, Satow's diplomatic practice, 3). The strict line between the formulation and carrying out of foreign policy is not adequate for the analysis of material treated in this dissertation: the conceptual separation between formulation and execution or conduct is inexistent in the 18 th century, e.g. in the case of Horatio Walpole or James Stanhope, who acted at the same time as instructors and executioners.

Covering volumes AMAE, CP, Angleterre, 243-251 and Angleterre, Supplément, 5, or about 2700 folios.

Section 2: Sources and Methodology

I. Sources A. Eighteenth Century


Frederik Dhondt

Ghent

Frederick Duffy

; The Great

Friedrich Kunisch

Der Grosse

Espions Bely

Karl Vi Rill

Leon Sanz

Friedrich Hinrichs

I Wilhelm

Philippe V Varga

Charles VI famously promised Prussian King Frederick William I the succession of the duchies of Jülich and Berg in 1726, but did not keep this treaty pledge. Frederick II did not think high of public international law, but used this as a political motive for revenge on Austria in November 1740, starting the War of the Austrian Succession. Although the Emperor benefitted from an advantageous position in Imperial law, which was essentially feudal for successions, his decisions in the 1720s were always the counterpart of a bilaterally negotiated concession by the other party, triggered by European, rather than German politics. In the light of the Utrecht and Italian examples, it can be argued that the power relations at the inter-sovereign level and the resulting political compromise created an implicit hierarchy, where vertical Imperial law was bowed and bent to fit the main players' horizontal options. 1 In addition to the corpus, which remains within the 4.000 word-limit (3.

Context, method and sources

Frederick the Great's invasion of the Austrian province of Silesia in November 1740 marked the end of three decades of peace in Europe 2 . The Prussian King ended an unusually quiet era for "bellicose" Early Modern Europe, which the Peace Treaties of Utrecht 3 , Rastatt and Baden (1713-1714) had inaugurated. Frederick's claims on Silesia were extremely doubtful and vague. He condemned jurists' pretexts for war or peace as irrelevant. Yet, the King saw promises made by Emperor Charles VI (1685-1740) 4 to his father, King Frederick William I (1688-1740), 5 as a valid political motive for revenge.

Charles's pledges concerned territories more than 800 kilometres away from Breslau, the Silesian capital. The duchies of Jülich and Berg were situated along the Rhine, and separated by the archbishopric of Cologne. The Hohenzollerns disputed these territories to the ruling Wittelsbachdynasty. As the extinction of the latter's Palatinate-Neuburg branch was likely, Elector Carl Philip III (1661-1742) being childless, the Hohenzollerns claimed his succession. Thanks to a 1629 bilateral treaty, Frederick II of Prussia already ruled the duchy of Cleves and the county of Mark, bordering on the duchy of Berg.

The fight over Jülich and Berg seems very German in essence. Yet, princes of the Empire (Reichsfürsten) enjoyed autonomy in foreign affairs. The contenders in this battle for Imperial favour -on the one hand, the Palatinate-Sulzbach branch, on the other hand, the Hohenzollerns-sought support outside the Empire. Therefore, the international context of the Post-Louis XIV era is vital. Emperor Charles VI had rather unwillingly signed the Peace of Rastatt (6 March 1714). His original ambition had been to become King of Spain, and displace Louis XIV's grandson, Philip of Anjou 6 . However, the latter had obtained international recognition at the Peace of Utrecht, albeit under one condition: the crowns of France and Spain had to remain separate for ever, in order to safeguard the European balance. Nevertheless, both Philip and Charles contested the partition of the Spanish monarchy that resulted from Utrecht. Whereas the Austrian Habsburgs had been allies of the Protestant and maritime powers Britain and the Dutch Republic, against Louis XIV, Charles' disgruntlement with the Utrecht settlement drove his former friends into the arms of the French. 7 Consequently, foreign interference in the Empire concerning the question of Jülich and Berg (and other dynastically linked territories) came from the Anglo-French side. Whenever Charles VI felt inclined to grant the succession to the Palatinate-Sulzbach, the Hohenzollerns sought support, and vice versa. Brandenburg-Prussia could play the card of Protestant solidarity (with Hanover-Great Britain), and of the Peace of Westphalia, which gave France an intervention right to safeguard the States of the Empire (Reichsstände)'s liberties. 8 Moreover, the Wittelsbach branches (Bavaria, Palatinate-Neuburg, Palatinate-Sulzbach and Palatinate-Zweibrücken) had teamed up, constituting an alternative Catholic bloc in the Empire. The union of the Electors of Bavaria, Cologne, Trier and the Palatinate could pose a threat to Charles VI's own succession as Emperor. Charles Albert of Bavaria, spouse of Archduchess Maria Amalia, the Emperor's niece, was determined "à faire un personage" in international affairs. 9 As a result, the Emperor had every interest in keeping both camps satisfied.

The whole diplomatic game had legal aspects as well 10 . The impermeability of the domestic public legal order had come under pressure as a consequence of the treaties of Utrecht, Baden and Rastatt. Philip V of Spain had sworn a renunciation of his rights to the throne, contrary to the French loix fondamentales. Nevertheless, the Parliament of Paris had registered the peace treaties, successively confirmed by the British (1716), the Dutch (1717) and the Emperor (1718). Political compromises in these international treaties gradually imposed themselves over even the most fundamental norms of imperial feudal law, as the example of the internationally settled succession of the duchy of Parma-Piacenza and the grand-duchy of Tuscany (1718-1731/1737) shows. 11 Political historians tend to discard the legal discussions as the mere rhetorical disguise of each party's interest. Legal historians, conversely, have preferred to work on scholarly writings and "big names". Yet, the European diplomatic community was a creative legal environment in itself. Esteemed practitioners, jurists themselves or counselled by jurists, 12 applied and modified positive law, in constant mutual interaction. As such, law was seen as the main legitimating vector for the interests of princes, capable of creating convergence or acceptance, and not as a mere instrumental or apologetic device, as the absence of a centralized monopoly of violence would suggest. 13 Legal discourse reflected power differences between individuals as well as states, and was an essential element of diplomatic "praxeology" or implicit practical logic. 14 In French and British diplomatic correspondence and legal memoranda for the 1710s, 1720s and 1730s, legal reasoning is at every time historical and precedent-seeking. 15 Diplomats had to be good historians, as well as text analysts: their work consisted in combining and criticising texts, to see the consistency or fallacy of the chronological enumerations used to prove the lawfulness or the legitimacy of a political position. 16 Archivists such as Nicolas-Louis Le Dran (1687-1774), who served as premier commis in Louis XV's administration of foreign affairs, identified original and authoritative documents and wrote considerable treatises at simple request. 17 Diplomats could then work with their writings, or consult the popular compilations of Rousset de Missy,18 Glafey 19 or Schweder. 20 The Jülich and Berg question, which has triggered a substantial production of historiography, will be approached from the latter perspective: how did French and British diplomats qualify the Prussian and Palatine requests for support in the case of Charles III Philip's eventual decease ? How did France and Britain see the Imperial law and institutions ? And, finally, how did this change impact on the theoretically discretionary Imperial freedom of action ?

Legal argumentation a. The Empire and International Law

Should it be repeated that the distinction between private and public law was a fairly recent one, even in 18 th century Germany ? The differences between common feudal law, in essence an instrument to organize the patrimony of private individuals, and its imperial variant, were not clear. [START_REF]MOSER's 101 word-definition[END_REF] An imperial fief could have movables as well as immovables, territories or dignities, lay and ecclesiastical, regalia or income as an object. Doctrine distinguished vassalship, or the Bartolian dominium utile ('property in analogy') from lordship (dominium directum). However, in public law, the element of power, or the exercise of legitimate violence over the inhabitants of a given territory, leads to a de facto internal and external independence, which we call sovereignty. Public law is thus a different kind of lex terrae, where concepts depend on historically and politically constructed discourse.

How far did the feudal bond of loyalty reach in a vast geographical entity, stretching from Bohemia to the Rhine, and from the Alps to the Baltic ? In theory, any territory in Germany was considered an Imperial fief, unless explicitly provided otherwise. 22 In practice, the loyalty of the German princes amounted to treaty loyalty, and this in a Hobbesian era. 23 Consequently, the Emperor, as lord, could have as much, more, or less authority over his vassal than in 'common' feudal law, by which German authors generally designate the feudal law of Lombardy. 24 However, the ensuing political conflicts between the Emperor and members of the Empire led to the imposition of constitutional arrangements, such as the Peace of Augsburg (1555) or the Peace of Westphalia (1648). The latter brought innovations at two levels. First, all members of the Empire acquired a ius territoriale ("landeshoheit"), or the right to legislate, to punish or to levy taxes, including the right to send out diplomats [START_REF]De jure suprematus[END_REF] or to contract defensive and offensive alliances with partners outside the borders of the Empire. [START_REF] Dran | Memoire sur les droits[END_REF] This was limited by collective solidarity: never could a prince give occasion to a breach of the Imperial Peace (Reichsfriedensbruch), in which case the Imperial Diet (Reichstag) could declare an Imperial war (Reichskrieg). Second, as indicated previously, France and Sweden, who intervened in the Thirty Years' War, obtained a right of intervention on behalf of the Protestant Powers "pour empecher que l'Empereur ne parvint peu a peu a traiter les Princes de l'Empire selon son bon plaisir". 27 Emperors Leopold I (1640-1705), 28 Joseph I (1674-1711) 29 and Charles VI strongly affirmed their central powers to the detriment of the states. Joseph I accused the Electors of Bavaria and Cologne of felony. They had concluded alliances with Louis XIV against the pretensions of the House of Habsburg to Spain. Consequently, Joseph put them into the ban of the Empire at the Diet of 1708, annexed Bavaria to his Austrian dominions and gave its electoral see to the house of Palatinate-Neuburg. Charles VI, his brother, had to come back on this after international pressure. Moreover, Charles VI used his dominium directum over fellow monarchs, who happened to be his vassals in the Empire, as a bargaining chip to exact concessions of European partners. E.g. George I (1660-1727), the King of Great Britain, was at the same time Elector of Hanover. In 1716, he bought the duchies of Bremen and Verden in North Germany. It took sixteen years for Charles VI to grant him the formal investiture 30 . The Emperor toyed with the idea to shift the duchies to the King of Denmark, to compensate the Duke of Holstein, related to the Czar, with Sleswig. This situation, of course, was schizophrenic and led to sarcastic comments by outsiders, 31

b. Feudal Law of the Empire

The Jülich-Berg question was similar. In Imperial feudal law, the personal bond between a lord, count, margrave or duke and the Emperor was formed through a ceremony at the start of his tenure33 . When his predecessor died, the new vassal had to come to Vienna to receive official Imperial confirmation. In case the family died out, the Emperor became the new master of the fief and could award it to a new vassal of his choice. To prevent this, Charles III Philip married his daughter Elisabeth Auguste Sophie (1693-1728) to Joseph Charles of Palatinate-Sulzbach (1694-1729) in 1717. The Hohenzollerns, on the other hand, claimed that the 1666 partition treaty for Jülich, Berg and Ravensberg (Palatinate-Neuburg) and Mark and Cleves (Hohenzollern) provided a valid title to recover all of the dominions. However, in the early 17 th century, Hohenzollern and Palatinate-Neubourg had seized the territories by use of force, leaving out the Emperor, who could not intervene militarily. A third party, Saxony, claiming the succession in the three duchies on the basis of a 15 th century Imperial privilege, was thus shut out.

According to internal feudal law, succession rules fell into two categories: legal succession and feminine succession. The former stated that only males (ascendants, descendants and then collaterals) could inherit 34 . In most cases, either imperial law, imperial privilege or treaties had established primogeniture, whereby the oldest son inherits everything. Almost all the parties in the present case invoked the consent of the Jülich and Berg estates. 35 There is no trace of any normative hierarchy. When imperial privilege is in their favour, the pretenders give it the preponderant weight. Nevertheless, when it becomes hard to sustain what the Imperial position was (which clearly favoured the Palatinate-Neuburg family, when Emperor Leopold I took Eleonore of Palatinate-Neubourg (1655-1720) as his third and ultimate spouse in 1676), other documents are given more weight, as the maxim lex posterior derogat priori could erase numerous late medieval concessions to the House of Saxony. Furthermore, it was argued that all possible pretenders needed to consent explicitly in their exclusion from the order of succession, a point which Saxony did not omit to contest. Feminine succession was the exception to the general rule. The succession of women as rulers, or passing on successions to their heirs, was only allowed in case of the extinction of the male line, 36 if explicitly stated in the grantof the fief by the Emperor (at renewal, or at the initial investiture), if granted by Imperial privilege (during a vassal's life), or if feudal court jurisprudence accepted it.

c. Prussia between Hanover and Vienna

On 30 April 1725, Emperor Charles VI signed a peace treaty with Philip V of Spain, leading to the break-up of the Cambrai peace conference, charged with the elaboration of the Treaty of the Quadruple Alliance. As a result, two blocs formed in Europe: a league between Vienna, Madrid and Moscow, and one between Versailles, London and Berlin. Frederick William I of Prussia adhered to the so-called League of Hanover (3 September 1725) 37 with the secret clause that he would acquire the succession of Jülich and Berg. Yet, the conclusion of an alliance between Charles VI and Czarina Catherine of Russia made Prussia change sides. Charles VI promised Frederick William his best offices in the succession affair at the secret treaty of Wusterhausen (12 October 1726). 38 The tension between the two blocs did not subsist long. On 31 May 1727, the Parisian preliminaries inaugurated a new series of treaties and talks. 39 Yet, Frederick William had lost credit with the Allies of Hanover. France was now treating with the four Wittelsbach Electors. In exchange for support in the troubles of Mecklenburg (a duchy bordering on Hanover) 40 , foreign affairs secretary Chauvelin asked the British an engagement "à n'entrer en aucune negociation sur la Succession de Berghes et de Juliers avec [v]

Conclusion

The Emperor's manoeuvring between Electors did not lead to an effective war with France and Britain. In the words of Stephen Poyntz, British envoy extraordinary and plenipotentiary at the Congres of Soissons: "The Imperial Court is sensible, the subsidys and concessions necessary towards securing these Princes would [r] more than counterbalance any advantage the Emperour can possibly hope from a War, or even from the friendship and treasures of Spain and that it would be cheaper as well as safer for him to compound with the utmost demands of his adversarys, than to purchase friends at so dear a rate 44 ." Nevertheless, the negotiations on Jülich and Berg shed a different light on the nature of succession quarrels in the eighteenth century. Although the Emperor benefitted from an advantageous position in Imperial law, which was essentially feudal for successions, decisions were always the counterpart of a bilaterally negotiated concession by the other party. The legal and historical arguments used by all parties mainly regarded imperial recognition of family treaties, or the granting of a specific favour or investiture in times long past. In practice, the Emperor had the freedom to pick and choose the relevant facts of legal acts to motivate his decision, or to let the Aulic Council perform the job. Yet, his freedom of action was constrained by the international political context. In that respect, I plead for a multilevel legal interpretation. In the light of the Utrecht and Italian examples, it can be argued that the power relations at the inter-sovereign level and the resulting political compromise created an implicit hierarchy, where vertical Imperial law was bowed and bent to fit the main players' horizontal options.

Frederik Dhondt Ph.D.-Fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO)

Legal History Institute Ghent University (Belgium) List of abbreviations 41 Chauvelin, Versailles, 13.1.1729, NA, SP, 78, 190, fol. 49 v -50 r . The British reaction was not overenthousiast, and consisted in "not acting contrary to the Guaranty of France", albeit "not […] in writing" (Poyntz to Newcastle, Paris, 23 March 1729, NA, SP, 78, 190, fol 132 v ). 42 NA,SP,78,190,f. 272 v . Francis Louis' contemplating to lay down his ecclesiastical orders and marry was coupled with a back-up plan, so the Wittelsbachs could hold on to Trier or Mainz: Johann Theodor, Bishop of Regensburg (1703-1763), from the Bavarian branch, was eager to move to one of the archbishophrics.

43 "Projet qui prouve la façon dont Sa Maj té Imp le pourroit fortifier ses Alliances, en cas qu'Elle fût obligée a faire la Guerre et comment Elle pourroit aussy sans guerre mettre les Alliés d'Hannovre a la raison", NA, SP, 78, 190, fol. 310

  VON ARETIN, Kaisertradition; ULBERT, Frankreichs Deutschlandpolitik; WHALEY, Holy Roman Empire 9 Poyntz to Newcastle, Paris,23.3.1729, NA, SP, 78, 190, f. 311 v .

7 BOURGEOIS, La Diplomatie secrète. 8 10 DHONDT, From Contract to Treaty. 11 STEIGER, Völkerrecht versus Lehnsrecht ?. 12 DE LA SARRAZ DU FRANQUESNAY, Le ministre. 13 REINHARD, Geschichte der Staatsgewalt. 14 BOURDIEU, Sur l'État. 15 LOUGHLIN, Foundations 56-60. 16 THUILLIER, La première École d'Administration.

  such as the French foreign affairs legal experts: "Si la souveraineté reside dans la Personne seule de l'Empereur, les Etats n'en peuvent pas participer. Et si les Etats en participent, il est impossible quelle reside dans la seule Personne de l'Empereur […] Grotius a déjà prouvé, que les Puissances Feudataires peuvent étre Souveraines, et quil ne faut pas se laisser imposer par l'ambiguité des mots, ni s'eblouïr par l'apparence des choses exterieures". Charles VI was compared to his ancestor Ferdinand II, who engaged the Thirty Years War in 1618, "avec cette difference que Ferdinand II. agissoit a-force-ouverte et par les armes, et que c'est presentement par le Conseil Aulique et sous le nom et l'autorité d'un Juge Supréme dans l'Empire qu'on se propose le même but". 32

  le Roy de Prusse, soit en renouvellant l'annexe Secret du Traitté de Hanover, dont sa Maj té Brit e ainsy que Sa Maj té Trés Chret ne sont entierement degagées […] aprés tout 34 VON SCHÖNBERG, Recht der Reichslehen, 166-168. 35 'Raisons du Roi de Prusse', ROUSSET, Les Intérêts, I, 201-210; 'Prétensions de la Maison de Saxe sur la succession de Berg et de Juliers', DERS., Les Intérêts, I, 210-241; 'Prétensions de la Maison Palatine de Neubourg', DERS., Les Intérêts, I, 241-273. 36 LE DRAN, Sur le droit feodal fol. 136 r : "filia non succedit in feudo, nisi investitura fuerit facta in patre, ut filii et filiae succedant in feudum". 37 Treaty of Alliance between George I, Louis XV and Frederick William I, Hannover, 3.9.1725, in: CUD, VIII/2, nr. XLI, 127-129; CHANCE, Alliance of Hanover. 38 Traité apocryphe de Wusterhausen entre l'Empereur & le Roi de Prusse, Wusterhausen, 12.10.1726, in: CUD, VIII/2, nr. LI, 139-140. 39 Articles Préliminaires conclus entre l'Empereur & les Alliez d'Hanover, Paris, 31.5.1727, NA, SP, 78, 187, fol. 314 r -316 r . 40 HUGHES, Law and politics. ce qui s'est passé de la part du Roy de Prusse." 41 The allies even contemplated a partition of Charles Philip's possessions. In 1729, his younger brother Francis Louis, Archbishop of Trier and Elector (1664-1732), had designs to marry and asked for the cession of Jülich and Berg. 42 Charles Philip refused and stuck to the Wittelsbach family pact. Yet, the promises of Charles VI to Frederick William made an accommodation possible, in case a war broke out between the alliances of Vienna and Hanover. The equivalent offered for Berg and Jülich could consist of the seigneurie of Ravenstein, "dont le Revenu est tres considerable" and "une partie des Conquêtes qu'Elle [Sa Majesté Impériale] pourroit faire pendant la Guerre ." 43

Extrait de la lettre de Mr. Chambrier au Roy de Prusse du 10 Janvier 1729 N.S.,NA, SP, 78, 190, fol. 155 r .

BÉRENGER, Léopold I er .

INGRAO, In Quest and Crisis.

MECENSEFFY, Die Bündnispolitik Karl VI. 14.

BRAUN, La connaissance.

NA, SP, 78, 190, fol. 210 v , 213 r (reference to De Iure Belli ac Pacis (1625), I, cap. 3, §10 and §23) and 215 r .

STOLLBERG-RILINGER, Le rituel de l'investiture.