French have been long
pre-eminent as writers of memoirs, and already in the sixteenth
century such personal recitals are numerous. The wars of Francois
I. and of Henri II. gave abundant scope for the display of individual
enterprise and energy; the civil wars breathed into the deeds of men
an intensity of passion; the actors had much to tell, and a motive
for telling it each in his own interest.

The _Commentaires_ of BLAISE DE MONLUC (1502-77) are said to have
been named by Henri IV. "the soldier's Bible"; the Bible is one which
does not always inculcate mercy or peace. Monluc, a Gascon of
honourable birth and a soldier of fortune, had the instinct of battle
in his blood; from a soldier he rose through every rank to be the
King's lieutenant of Guyenne and a Marshal of France; during fifty
years he fought, as a daring captain rather than as a great general,
amorous of danger, and at length, terribly disfigured by wounds, he
sat down, not to rest, but to wield his pen as if it were a sword
of steel. His _Commentaires_ were meant to be a manual for hardy
combatants, and what model could he set before the young aspirant
so animating as himself? In his earlier wars against the foreign foes
of his country, Monluc was indeed a model of military prowess; the
civil wars added cruelty to his courage; after a fashion he was
religious, and a short shrift and a cord were good enough for heretics
and adversaries of his King. An unlettered soldier, Monluc, by virtue
of his energy of character and directness of speech, became a most
impressive and spirited narrator. His Memoirs close with a sigh for
stern and inviolable solitude. Among the Pyrenean rocks he had
formerly observed a lonely monastery, in view at once of Spain and
France; there it was his wish to end his days.

From the opposite party in the great religious and political strife
came the temperate Memoirs of Lanoue, the simple and beautiful record
of her husband's life by Madame de Mornay, and that of his own career,
written in an old age of gloom and passion, by D'Aubigne. The ideas
of Henri IV.--himself a royal author in his _Lettres missives_--are
embodied in the _OEconomies Royales_ of the statesman Sully, whose
secretaries were employed for the occasion in laboriously reciting
his words and deeds as they had learnt them from their chief. The
superficial aspects of the life of society, the manners and morals--or
lack of morals--of the time, are lightly and brightly e