king, (by whom he had the honour to be well known, and much esteemed,) obliged him to add to the history of the peace, that of the war, which that great prince made during nine years after his coming to the crown, till the peace of Vervins; which he performed in the three tomes of his "Nine Years Chronology," printed at Paris in the year 1608; in which, before he proceeds to the reign of Henry the Fourth, he makes an abridgment of the most considerable passages in the League, to the death of Henry the Third. And it is partly from this author, and partly from such others as were eye-witnesses of what they wrote, whether in printed books, or particular memoirs, that I have drawn those things, which are related by me in this history. I am not therefore myself the witness, nor as an historian do I take upon me to decide the merit of these actions, whether they are blameable or praise-worthy; I am only the relater of them: and since, in that quality, I pretend not to be believed on my own bare word, and that I quote my authors, who are my warrantees, as I have done in all my histories, I believe myself to stand exempted from any just reproaches, which can be fastened on me for my writing.

On which subject I think it may be truly said, that if, instead of examining matters of fact, and enquiring whether they are truly or falsely represented, that consideration be laid aside, and the question taken up, whether such or such actions were good or bad, and matter of right pleaded, whether they deserved to be condemned or praised; it would be but loss of time in unprofitable discourses, in which an historian is no way concerned. For in conclusion, he is only answerable for such things as he reports, on the credit of those from whom he had them; taking from each of them some particulars, of which

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the rest are silent, and compiling out of all of them a new body of history, which is of a quite different • mould and fashion from any of the authors who have written before him.

And it is this, in which consists a great part of the delicacy and beauty of these kinds of works, and which produces this effect; that, keeping always in the most exact limits of truth, yet an author may lawfully pretend to the glory of the invention; having the satisfaction of setting forth a new history, though, writing only the passages of a former age, he can relate almost nothing, but what has been written formerly, either in printed books, or manuscripts; which, though kept up in private, and little known, are notwithstanding, not the work of him who writes the history.

As to what remains, none ought to wonder, that I make but one single volume on this subject, though the matter of it is of vast extent. I take not upon me to tell all that has been done, on occasion of the League, in all the provinces, nor to describe all the sieges; the taking and surprising of so many places, which were sometimes for the king, and at other times for the League; or all those petty skirmishes, which have drawn (if I may have liberty so to express myself) such deluges of blood from the veins of France. All these particulars ought to be the ingredients of the general history of this nation, under the reigns of the two last Henries, which may be read in many famous historians; and principally in the last tome of the late Monsieur de Mezeray, who has surpassed himself, in that part of his great work.

I confine my undertaking within the compass of what is most essential in the particular history of the League, and have only applied myself to the discovery of its true origin, to unriddle its in

trigues and artifices, and find out the most secret motives, by which the heads of that conspiracy have acted, to which the magnificent title of the Holy Union has been given with so much injustice; and, in consequence of this, to make an exact description of the principal actions, and the greatest and most signal events, which decided the fortune of the League; and this, in short, is the model of my work.

As for the end which I proposed to myself, in conceiving it, I may boldly say, that it was to give a plain understanding to all such as shall read this history, that all sorts of associations which are formed against lawful sovereigns, particularly when the conspirators endeavour to disguise them under the specious pretence of religion and piety, as did the Huguenots and Leaguers, are at all times most criminal in the sight of God, and most commonly of unhappy and fatal consequence to those, who are either the authors or accomplices of the crime.

THE

HISTORY

OF

THE LEAGUE.

LIB. III.

Ir I intended to follow the example of Livy, the prince of Latin historians, who never suffers a prodigy to escape him, and describes it perhaps with as much superstition as exactness, I should here make long narrations how the sun was obscured on the sudden, without the interposition of any cloud appearing in the sky, with a flaming sword shooting out from the centre of the body; palpable darkness, like that of the Egyptians at noon-day; extraordinary tempests, earthquakes, fiery phantasms in the air, and an hundred other prodigies, which are said to have been produced and seen in this unhappy year of one thousand five hundred and eighty-eight, and which were fancied to be so many ominous presages of those horrible disorders that ensued in it.

But because I am not of the opinion, that much credit ought to be given to those sorts of signs,

which are commonly the effects of natural causes, though very often unknown to us; nor to the predictions of astrologers, some of which verily believed they had found in the stars, that this year should be the conclusion of the world, I will only say, that the most sure presage of so many misfortunes then impending, was the minds of men too much exasperated on both sides, to live in peace with each other; and not rather to be searching out for means of making sure of those whom they suspected, and disposing of them according to their jealousies.

In order to this, the Duke of Guise, after he had made an end of ruining the county of Montbelliard, took his way to Nancy, whither he had invited all the princes of his house to assemble in the month of January, there to take their resolutions, in reference to the present condition of affairs; and of that happy success which they had in the war against the Reyters. Some of them there were; as it is reported, so swollen with that victory, and so blinded with their prosperity, that they proposed, in this conference, the most dangerous and most violent expedients; to which the Duke of Lorraine, a moderate and wary prince, would by no means listen. Howsoever it were, (for I find nothing to confirm these relations, not even in the memoirs of their greatest enemies, who have written most exactly of that assembly,) it is most undoubted, that if they proceeded not so far as to those terrible extremities, yet what was then concluded, passed in the world for a most unjust and unlawful undertaking, and was condemned by all those who were not blindly devoted to the League.

It was, that a request should be presented to the king, containing articles, which, under the ordinary pretence of their desire to preserve in France the