[28] St Eligius, bishop of Noyon, apostle of the Belgians and Frisians (d. 659?).
[29] The assurement (assecuratio, assecuramentum) differed from the truce, which was a suspension of hostilities by mutual consent, in so far as it was a peace forced by judicial authority on one of the parties at the request of the other. The party desiring protection applied for the assurement, either before or during hostilities, to any royal, seigniorial or communal judge, who thereupon cited the other party to appear and take an oath that he would assure the person, property and dependents of his adversary (qu’il l’assurera, elle et les siens). This custom, which became common in the 13th century, of course depended for its effectiveness on the degree of respect inspired in the feudal nobles by the courts. It was difficult, for instance, to refuse or to violate an assurement imposed by a royal bailli or by the parlement itself. See A. Luchaire, Manuel des institutions françaises (Paris, 1892), p. 233.—(W. A. P.)
[30] Earl of Richmond; afterwards Arthur, duke of Brittany (q.v.).
[31] Olivier de Serres, sieur de Pradel, spent most of his life on his model farm at Pradel. In 1599 he dedicated a pamphlet on the cultivation of silk to Henry IV., and in 1600 published his Théâtre d’agriculture et ménage des champs, which passed through nineteen editions up to 1675.
[32] Ferdinand is reported to have said: “Le capucin m’a désarmé avec son scapulaire et a mis dans capuchon six bonnets électoraux.”
[33] Jean Orry Louis Orry de Fulvy (1703-1751), counsel to the parlement in 1723, intendant of finances in 1737, founded at Vincennes the manufactory of porcelain which was bought in 1750 by the farmers general and transferred to Sèvres.
[34] Louis Robert Hippolyte de Bréhan, comte de Plélo (1699-1734), a Breton by birth, originally a soldier, was at the time of the siege of Danzig French ambassador to Denmark. Enraged at the return to Copenhagen, without having done anything, of the French force sent to help Stanislaus, he himself led it back to Danzig and fell in an attack on the Russians on the 27th of May 1734. Plélo was a poet of considerable charm, and well-read both in science and literature.
See Marquis de Bréhan, Le Comte de Plélo (Nantes, 1874); R. Rathery, Le Comte de Plélo (Paris, 1876); and P. Boyé, Stanislaus Leszczynski et le troisième traité de Vienne (Paris, 1898).
[35] Charles Laure Hugues Théobald, duc de Choiseul-Praslin (1805-1847), was deputy in 1839, created a peer of France in 1840. He had married a daughter of General Sebastiani, with whom he lived on good terms till 1840, when he entered into open relations with his children’s governess. The duchess threatened a separation; and the duke consented to send his mistress out of the house, but did not cease to correspond with and visit her. On the 18th of August 1847 the duchess was found stabbed to death, with more than thirty wounds, in her room. The duke was arrested on the 20th and imprisoned in the Luxembourg, where he died of poison, self-administered on the 24th. It was, however, popularly believed that the government had smuggled him out of the country and that he was living under a feigned name in England.
[36] T.T. de Martens, Recueil des traités, &c., xii. 248.