Holland. He settled at
Rotterdam as a minister pensionary till 1691, when he was chosen pastor of
the Walloon church. In 1709 the grand pensionary A. Heinsius (1641-1720)
secured his election as one of the pastors of the Walloon church at the
Hague, intending to employ him mainly in civil affairs. Accordingly he was
engaged in a secret negotiation with Marshal d'Uxelles, plenipotentiary of
France at the congress of Utrecht--a service which he executed with so much
success that he was entrusted with several important commissions, all of
which he discharged with great ability. In 1716 Dubois, who was at the
Hague at the instance of the regent Orleans, for the purpose of negotiating
the Triple Alliance between France, Great Britain and Holland, sought the
advice of Basnage, who, in spite of the fact that he had failed to receive
permission to return to France on a short visit the year before, did his
best to further the negotiations. The French government also turned to him
for help in view of the threatened rising in the Cevennes. Basnage had
welcomed the revival of the Protestant church due to the zeal of Antoine
Court; but he assured the regent that no danger of active resistance was to
be feared from it, and, true to the principles of Calvin, he denounced the
rebellion of the Camisards (_q.v._) in his _Instructions pastorales aux
Reformes de France sur l'obeissance due aux souverains_ (Paris, 1720),
which was printed by order of the court and scattered broadcast in the
south of France. Basnage died on the 22nd of September 1723.

Basnage was a good preacher and a prolific writer. His works include
several dogmatic and polemical treatises, but the most important are the
historical. Of these may be mentioned _Histoire de la religion des eglises
reformees_ (Rotterdam, 1690), the _Histoire de l'eglise depuis Jesus-Christ
jusqu'a present_ (_ib_. 1699)--both of them written from the point of view
of Protestant polemics--and, of greater scientific value, the _Histoire des
Juifs_ (Rotterdam, 1706, Eng. trans. 1708) and the _Antiquites judaiques ou
remarques critiques sur la republique des Hebreux_ (1713). He also wrote
short explanatory introductions and notes to a collection of copper-plate
engravings, much valued by connoisseurs, called _Histoires du Vieux et du
Nouveau Testament, representees par des figures gravees en taille-douce par
R. de Hooge_ (Amsterdam, 1704).

BASOCHE, or BAZOCHE, with the analogous forms BASOQUE, B