Using archival materials and church charters from the province of Anjou, Paul Marchegay provides a broad and comprehensive picture of the history of this province of western France. In Volume 1, published in 1853, the Anjou native and archivist of the province makes use of three primary sources: the papers of the eighteenth-century politician Armand-Thomas Hue, seigneur de Mirom nil, a report on the land ownership, economic resources and social conditions of the province made by the diplomat Charles Colbert de Croissy (younger brother of Loius XIV's minister of finance), and finally the medieval charters of Anjou. Marchegay ends this compilation of historical documents on a curious note by transcribing the records of various medieval court cases which were settled by the ordeal of boiling water.