Letters from the Pyrenees: Don Luis Mendez de Haro's Correspondence to Philip IV of Spain, July to November 1659.(Book Review)

Publication: The Modern Language Review

Publication Date: 01-JUL-04

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COPYRIGHT 2004 Modern Humanities Research Association

Letters from the Pyrenees: Don Luis Mendez de Haro's Correspondence to Philip IV of Spain, July to November 1659. Ed. by LYNN WILLIAMS. (Exeter Hispanic Texts, 57) Exeter: University of Exeter Press. 2000. xxvii+ 147 pp. 13.99 [pounds sterling]. ISBN 0-85989-692-7.

The letters that are transcribed and summarized in this volume represent a significant part of the correspondence of the chief minister of Philip IV of Spain, Don Luis Mendez de Haro, written at the time of the meetings that he held with his French counterpart, Cardinal Mazarin, in the late summer and autumn of 1659. Together the two men brought a formal end to a war that had lasted twenty-four years by a treaty which (at least with the benefit of hindsight) may be considered as one of the great watersheds of European history. Not only did the decision to hold a series of exclusive meetings--instead of an open congress like that which had been celebrated in Westphalia during the 1640s--set the tone...

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