The Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, vol 1 | Page 4

NAVARRE
Written by Herself
Being Historic Memoirs of the Courts of France and Navarre

PUBLISHER'S NOTE.
The first volume of the Court Memoir Series will, it is confidently
anticipated, prove to be of great interest. These Letters first appeared in
French, in 1628, just thirteen years after the death of their witty and

beautiful authoress, who, whether as the wife for many years of the
great Henri of France, or on account of her own charms and
accomplishments, has always been the subject of romantic interest.
The letters contain many particulars of her life, together with many
anecdotes hitherto unknown or forgotten, told with a saucy vivacity
which is charming, and an air vividly recalling the sprightly, arch
demeanour, and black, sparkling eyes of the fair Queen of Navarre. She
died in 1615, aged sixty-three.
These letters contain 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. Bartholomew's Day,
and, according to Brantome, the life of the King, her husband, whose
name was on the list of the proscribed. To close this parallel, Elizabeth
began early to govern a kingdom, which she ruled through the course of
her long life with severity, yet gloriously, and with success. Marguerite,
after the death of the Queen her mother and her brothers, though sole
heiress of the House of Valois, was, by the Salic law, excluded from all
pretensions to the Crown of France; and though for the greater part of
her life shut up in a castle, surrounded by rocks and mountains, she has
not escaped the shafts of obloquy.
The Translator has added some notes, which give an account of such
places as are mentioned in the Memoirs, taken from the itineraries of
the time, but principally from the "Geographie Universelle" of Vosgien;
in which regard is had to the new division of France into departments,
as well as to the ancient one of principalities, archbishoprics, bishoprics,
generalities, chatellenies, balliages, duchies, seigniories, etc.
In the composition of her Memoirs, Marguerite has evidently adopted
the epistolary form, though the work came out of the French editor's
hand divided into three (as they are styled) books; these three books, or
letters, the Translator has taken the liberty of subdividing into twenty-
one, and, at the head of each of them, he has placed a short table of the
contents. This is the only liberty he has taken with the original
Memoirs, the translation itself being as near as the present improved
state