the secret history of the Court of France during
the seventeen eventful years 1565-82.

The events of the seventeen years referred to are of surpassing interest,
including, as they do, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, the formation of
the League, the Peace of Sens, and an account of the religious struggles
which agitated that period. They, besides, afford an instructive insight
into royal life at the close of the sixteenth century, the modes of
travelling then in vogue, the manners and customs of the time, and a
picturesque account of the city of Liege and its sovereign bishop.

As has been already stated, these Memoirs first appeared in French in
1628. They were, thirty years later, printed in London in English, and
were again there translated and published in 1813.

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

The Memoirs, of which a new translation is now presented to the public,
are the undoubted composition of the celebrated princess whose name they
bear, the contemporary of our Queen Elizabeth; of equal abilities with
her, but of far unequal fortunes. Both Elizabeth and Marguerite had been
bred in the school of adversity; both profited by it, but Elizabeth had
the fullest opportunity of displaying her acquirements in it. Queen
Elizabeth met with trials and difficulties in the early part of her life,
and closed a long and successful reign in the happy possession of the
good-will and love of her subjects. Queen Marguerite, during her whole
life, experienced little else besides mortification and disappointment;
she was suspected and hated by both Protestants and Catholics, with the
latter of whom, though, she invariably joined in communion, yet was she
not in the least inclined to persecute or injure the former. Elizabeth
amused herself with a number of suitors, but never submitted to the yoke
of matrimony. Marguerite, in compliance with the injunctions of the
Queen her mother, and King Charles her brother, married Henri, King of
Navarre, afterwards Henri IV. of France, for whom she had no inclination;
and this union being followed by a mutual indifference and dislike, she
readily consented to dissolve it; soon after which event she saw a
princess, more fruitful but less prudent, share the throne of her
ancestors, of whom she was the only representative. Elizabeth was
polluted with the blood of her cousin, the Queen of Scots, widow of
Marguerite's eldest brother. Marguerite saved many Huguenots from the
massacre of St. Barthol