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Loudun. This photograph, which was taken from one of the highest points in the village of Loudun, shows its elevated position above the surrounding country and affords a bird’s-eye view of the adjacent river, the Martray. (Courtesy of Monsieur le Pasteur Paul Barnaud, of Sainte Foy la Grande [Gironde], France.)

At the time when Renaudot came to Paris, there existed no such thing as the “Journal”—that is, a printed periodical such as he contemplated and afterward founded. At an interview with Cardinal Richelieu, the Secretary of State of Louis XIII., Renaudot proposed that all the news received from the outside world, the king’s edicts, and treaties made with other nations should be brought together and published at stated intervals in a single printed sheet. The cardinal at once saw how important the proposed journal would be for his own interest, especially if its management were intrusted to a man who agreed with him in regard to political questions. Then, in addition, the mere fact that it was an official sheet, the only strictly French periodical, would be of special value at that moment, when the princes of the blood were forming alliances with the enemy. So, on May 30, 1631, Louis XIII. granted to Renaudot “the privilege to make, print and sell, through any agent whom he might select and wherever it seemed to him best to sell copies, the news, the official appointments and accounts of all events occurring both within and outside the kingdom.” The first number of the “Gazette de France”—which was the name that Renaudot gave to his periodical—appeared on the day mentioned above. The price at which this sheet of four pages sold was two liards.^[1]