of other countries and make witchcraft an "Exceptional Crime". In 1588, the Parliament issued regulations to prevent what they termed as "excessive" zeal and exaggerations in witchcraft persecutions. However, it is known that local courts ignored the recommendations of the Parliament of Paris, and the number of local witchcraft sentences which were never reported or appealed to Paris, is unknown or unconfirmed. In 1624, a new law required all sentences made by a local court in Northern France to be confirmed by the Parliament of Paris before they could be carried out. With one exception, the Parliament of Paris stopped confirming death sentenced for witchcraft after 1625. However, local witch trials who did not report their cases to be confirmed by Paris would still go undetected. North East France The North East of present-day France, particularly Lorraine and Franche-Comté (at that time a part of the Holy Roman Empire), was an area strongly affected by witch hunt. About 800 witch trials took place in these areas with numerous executions in the period of 1603-1614 and 1627-1632, and again in France-Comté with 100 executions in 1658-1661. Southern France Southern France was not under the jurisdiction of the Parliament of Paris, and a number of large witch trials were conducted there during the first half of the 17th century, among them being the famous Labourd witch-hunt of 1609 and the Aix-en-Provence possessions (1611). End of witch trials Peronne Goguillon has been referred to as the last woman to be executed for witchcraft in France in 1678. There have been different opinions as to whether the Affair of the Poisons (1679–1682) should be defined a witch trial or not. While the accused of the Affair de Poisons had indeed positioned themselves as professional witches, they were prosecuted and executed for poison and murder rather than for witchcraft. The 1682 Edict of Louis XIV of France described witchcraft as fraudulent magic, a definition which did not as such prevent witch trials, but made it more difficult to convict people of witchcraft. A few witch trials were conducted in France during the 18th century, some of which resulted in death sentences for men. The execution of an alleged male sorcerer in Bordeaux in 1718 has traditionally been referred to as the last. However, a donkey-driver was in fact executed for this crime in Paris in 1724. The last witch trial resulting in an execution in