The gazette begins by a sort of general statement that it is worth while to quote in full: "The troubles and different revolutions that have taken place for the last ten or twelve years in England, Scotland, or Ireland, have provided us such a number of fine deeds, that, though writers, especially abroad, have unjustly tried either to stifle them by their silence or to tarnish their lustre by lessening their price or worth, nevertheless, enough has been seen, though as through a cloud, to move with admiration the best disposed minds that have heard about them. Now that the war with Scotland, that with Ireland, and the present differences with Portugal, are likely to provide us with new ones, I have deemed it not unacceptable to foreign nations, to impart in a language that extends and is understood throughout Europe, all the most signal and remarkable happenings. To that effect, should this account and the following be favourably received by the public, I propose to carry it on every week, on the same day, briefly and with what truthfulness can be obtained in things of that nature out of the several rumours that the passion of every one disguises according to his temper."
The Council of State could not but acquiesce in an endeavour to enlighten public opinion on the Continent. Du Gard kept his promise to say the truth: his paper is as unimpassioned as could well be a paper published "by authority."
If the newswriter was anxious to keep his readers well informed, he did not at the same time conceal his admiration for Cromwell. Maybe he was sincere. It was difficult not to be impressed by the soldier who had won Dunbar and Worcester.
Readers in Paris and Brussels did not only peruse the accounts of these Puritan victories, they learned also all about the flight of the Lord's anointed, young Charles II.
Such sufferings and trials were not enough: impossible to read even now without some emotion the bare paragraph in which Du Gard, with official coldness and hard-heartedness, tells about the death of little Princess Elizabeth.
"Princess Elizabeth Stuart, daughter to the late King, who you know was brought together with her brother[278] to the Isle of Wight, having got overheated while playing at bowls and drenched afterwards by an unexpected fall of rain, took cold, being moreover of a weak and sickly health, and fell ill of a bad headache and fever, which increasing, she was obliged to be abed where she died on December 8th inst., though carefully attended by Mr. Mayerne, chief physician to her late Father" (September 1650, p. 41).
But the triumphs of the Parliament extend to enemies abroad; Portugal and Holland are both humbled, Barbadoes and Jamaica forced to surrender. Du Gard remained true to his promise. All Europe might peruse the famous letter, "des généraux de l'armée navale du Parlement et de la République d'Angleterre au très honorable Guil. Lenthal ecuier, orateur dudit Parlement, écrite à bord du navire le Triomfe en la baie dite de Stoake," and signed: Robert Blake, Richard Deane, George Monck. Sprung from the ranks of the people, those revolutionists used, when occasion needed, the language of patricians. "M. Bourdeaux (the French envoy) having delivered a copy of the letters accrediting him and subscribed: To our very dear and good friends, the people of the Parliament of the Commonwealth of England, it was directed to be returned, for all addresses should be subscribed: To the Parliament of the Commonwealth of England" (p. 513).
Such patriotic pride must move the writer of the Nouvelles ordinaires. So in one of his very few outbursts of humour he exclaims: "The King of Portugal being unable to do us harm, had tried to frighten us, but being unable to do either, on the contrary showing the most egregious cowardice and poltroonery as ever was seen, without the slightest regard for his reputation, has tried to conceal his shame by a lying account, signed by himself; if the said King thinks he has seen what he has written, it must be said that his spectacles were set awry" (p. 45).
Religious intelligence takes up a great space in the Nouvelles ordinaires. The readers are not spared a single proclamation about days of fasting and repentance; lengthy abstracts are duly given of the sermons preached at the Abbey or St. Margaret's; nor are the wordy resolutions of the several committees on religious affairs omitted. The quakers are often spoken about. The first risings of the sect are set forth with the kind of minuteness that appeals to a modern historian. They are "evil-disposed and melancholy people" (gens malfaits et mélancoliques); most pestilent and persevering proselytisers, with an inordinate appetite for martyrdom, they appear at the same time in the most unexpected quarters; driven from Boston, they cause a holy panic in Hamburgh and Bordeaux (p. 1375). Their leader, or at any rate "the chief pillar of that frenzied sect," is named George Fox. "Many think the said Fox is a popish priest, there being several of that garb among the said quakers, and what makes the opinion plausible is that he is strong for popish and arminian tenets, such, for instance, as salvation by good works." (p. 981).
With the exception of the poor Piedmont Waldenses, who had found a strenuous protector in Cromwell, the foreign Protestants interest but little the editor of the Nouvelles ordinaires: he was probably afraid of offending those in high places by more than casually alluding to the Huguenots who had shown themselves vehemently opposed to independency. Thus it would be difficult to find a more explicit piece of news than the following: "Letters from Paris say that of late divers outrages have been committed on the Reformed, under frivolous pretences quite contrary to their privileges, especially at La Rochelle, Metz, Amiens, Langres.... Local quarrels breaking out daily in divers places on the score of religion, together with the massacres of Protestants in Piedmont, make it feared lest there be a universal hidden design of the Papists to endeavour to exterminate all those that make profession of the Reformed religion in all places in the world" (p. 1057).