Claude Boisot could barely contain his excitement as he sat at his writing desk early in July 1674. Two weeks earlier, his new patron, the marquis de Louvois, had summoned him to a meeting at the French army's camp at La Loye near Dole. During it, the royal minister had asked him to nominate candidates for vacant offices in the Parlement of Franche-Comté. Blamed by the Spanish for the debacle of the first conquest and suppressed in 1668, the sovereign court was being restored by Louis XIV in one of his first acts as the province's new ruler. Boisot had answered Louvois by naming some of his closest friends and relatives. Now, he wrote to one of them, his kinsman Jean Borrey, urging him to make the most of this unexpected stroke of good fortune. Borrey was to become a lay councilor, and the king would deliver this office without charge. All he needed to do was appear at Dole on July 15, the day the court would hold its first session. Boisot closed his letter by admonishing Borrey not to hesitate: “be certain, cousin, that we are French forever, and so you must seize this opportunity that will never again present itself to you.”

For his part, Borrey proved less sanguine regarding the prospects of French domination. When the Parlement duly met, he was conspicuous by his absence. He later explained that he had been too ill to attend. But Louvois suspected that Borrey's real reason was he feared that Louis XIV would once again return Franche-Comté to the Spanish Habsburgs.