An account of the negotiations inside the Parlement de Paris: Claude Guillaume Lambert’s diary

The Parlement de Paris is well known to historians. However, if its role as a recorder of edicts and royal declarations is clear, less is known of the debates that informed its judgments and remonstrances. The official records compiled by court clerks have tended to be the only source used by historians. Yet some magistrates created a more personal memory of the discussions that took place within the secret council. The diary kept by Claude Guillaume II Lambert, a young councillor at the Chambre des Enquêtes, is a good example of this. It uncovers the parlementaires’ connections, power plays and strategic postures from May 1749 to June 1751, brings to life the negotiations that took place within the assembly and abounds in anecdotes. After having been a privileged source of information for the pamphleteering journalists of the eighteenth century, Lambert’s diary offers the historian a window into the very soul of the parlement.