[31] La Fère had fallen on August 31st.
[32] “De nomine hujus urbis quidam scribunt, sed sine probatione, ipsum tractum a Basalisco. Fuerunt alii qui priusquam evulgarentur omnes libri Ammiani Marcellini (saltem qui extant) putabant Basileam sic dictam a passagio et trajectu, qui in eo fuit loco anteaquā civitas extrueretur, ut scilicet a passagio illo rectius Pastel quam Basel primum fuerit vocata. At Ammianus irrita reddit hanc cōjecturam, qui civitatē illam Græca voce βασιλείαν, id est regnū vocat, quasi Regnopolim seu regiam civitatem.”—Munster, Cosmographie 1566, p. 400.
[33] It is difficult to identify this personage; probably he was Simon Grynæus minor (so called to distinguish him from his grandfather Grynæus major) who wrote on medicine and mathematics, and died in September 1582. Or he might have been Samuel, a younger son of Grynæus major, a jurisconsult who was syndic of Basel, and died in 1599. There was also a John James, a famous theologian, who died in 1617.
[34] François Hottoman was a French jurisconsult, sprung from Silesian parentage, born at Paris in 1524. Though he became a Calvinist, he retained the favour of Catherine dei Medici, who sent him twice on missions into Germany. He fled from Paris after St. Bartholomew, and died at Basel in 1590. He was always in poverty through his attempts to find the philosopher’s stone.
[35] Cardan, in his De Rerum Varietate, first published in 1553, gives a description and drawing of smoke-jacks then used in Italy. Book xii. c. 58.
[36] The Aar to Brugg.
[37] This sentence is confused and incorrect. The reference is manifestly to the abbey of Königsfelden, close to Brugg, which was founded in 1310 by the Empress Elizabeth and her daughter Agnes, Queen of Hungary, on the spot where Albert of Austria, husband of the former, was killed by John of Suabia in 1308. Duke Leopold and sixty of the knights who fell at Sempach in 1386 were buried here, but were disinterred by the order of Maria Theresa in 1770, and re-entombed at St. Blasien, in the Black Forest. Querlon mistakes it for the abbey of Mouri.
[38] Reuss.
[39] At this date there were thirteen cantons in the Confederation.
[40] Eaux-Chaudes, in Béarn.