Philippe De Sanis/Philippe De Zaghly in Vienna and in Viennese Sources

This article traces the infamous Armenian adventurer and "trickster-traveller" Philippe de Sanis as far as his life can be constructed when looking at the sources in the Aus-trian State Archive in Vienna. These previously neglected documents allow reconstructing especially the years de Sanis spent in the Holy Roman Empire, Poland and Vienna (1689–1694) before resettling to Sweden, but also shed light to his earlier years in France and Swit-zerland. Thereby de Sanis’ relationship to his brother-in-law, the traveller and merchant Tavernier, and the former’s claims to the latter’s inheritance move into the focus. I show that de Sanis and his friends invested a lot of time to pursue a dubious claim that in the end pro-duced nothing. Another focal point of the article is de Sanis’ integration into a French espio-nage scheme and intriguing network.