This version of La Crépinade forms part of a highly decorated collection of texts relating to Voltaire and Rousseau

The MS is written in a professional hand, and the text seems closest to the 1725 editions of the work.

The manuscript is a fair copy and is bound after a copy of Tanis et Zélide which bears an following annotation stating that the work was a gift from Voltaire, though the annotation does not identify the beneficiary. This manuscript is part of a collection assembled by the lawyer Louis-Henri Moulin, and bequeathed to the Academy upon his death in 1885.

The MS is in an unknown hand and features neither corrections nor annotations.

This is possibly the MS copy of the work sent from Voltaire to Louise Honorine Crozat Du Châtel, duchesse de Choiseul on 2 February 1769 [D15457].

This copy appears to have been made from CMV36376, or another close copy as it integrates most of the corrections contained within CMV36376 with an additional paragraph at the end. It is the copy given by Voltaire to Madame de Pompadour, whose coat of arms features on the cover of the MS. The title page reads: ‘Histoire de la Guerre de 1741 (par Voltaire) imprimé en 1755 et 1756, in-12, mais avec différences, et recastue en grande partie dans le Siècle de Louis XV’.

The MS consists of 392 pages. However, p.265 was incorrectly numbered as p.365, an error not corrected before the end of the MS. The last page of the MS is thus numbered p.492.

The MS is bound together with a French translation of de Tribus Impostoribus.

The poem consists of 32 lines.