DAVILA, Henry Catherin, a celebrated historian, was born on the 30th October, at Sacco, a village near Padua. He was the youngest son of Antonia Davila, grand constable of Cyprus, who, on the taking of that island by the Turks in 1570, had been obliged to retire into Spain, from which this family supposed that they had derived their named and origin. From Spain Antonio repaired to the court of France, and settled his son Louis and two daughters under the patronage of Catharine de’ Medicis, whose name he afterwards gave to the young historian. The little Davila was brought early into France; and at the age of eighteen he signalized himself in the civil wars of that country, and had a horse killed under him at the siege of Harfleur in 1594. His last exploit there was at the siege of Amiens, where he fought under Henry IV. and received in the knee a wound from a partizan. After peace had been established in France in 1598 he withdrew [7:7:636]into Italy, whither he had been recalled by his father, and afterwards entered into the service of the Venetians. While at Venice he wrote his admirable work, entitled Historia delle guerre civili di Francia di HenricoCaterino Davila, nella quale si contengono le operationi di quattro re, Francesco II., Carlo IX., HenricoHI., et HenricoIV., cognominato il grande, in fifteen books, Venice, Tommaso Baglioni, 1630, 4to, which contains every thing worthy of notice that passed from the death of Henry II. in 1539 till the peace of Vervins in 1598. He continued to serve the republic of Venice with great reputation, till an unfortunate adventure put an end to his life in 1631. Happening to pass through Verona with his wife and family on his way to Crema, which he had been appointed to defend, and demanding, according to the usual custom of persons in his station, a supply of horses and carriages for his retinue, a brutal Veronese, called II Turco, entered the room where he and his family were at supper, and being mildly reprimanded for his intrusion by Davila, discharged a pistol at the historian, by which he was shot dead on the spot. The accomplices of the assassin also killed the chaplain of Davila, and wounded most of his attendants. But his eldest son Antonio, a youth of eighteen, revenged the death of his father by killing the murderer on the instant. All the confederates were secured next morning, and publicly executed at Verona.

There is only one opinion concerning the merit of Davila as a writer. His style is singularly exempt from the vices which prevailed at that time, and, though less pure than that of Guicciardini, is more compact and concise, and at the same time distinguished for its admirable facility. Nor is his manner of disposing and narrating events, of linking them together, of introducing his personages, and making them act and speak, and describe places, towns, fields of battle, feats of arms, assemblies, councils, and the conduct of negotiations, less commendable than the qualities of his style. He appears indeed to have taken great pains to discover the truth, to have derived his information from the best sources, and to have spoken in general with much freedom. But this explicitness is sometimes affected by his individual position and connections, and also by the prejudices of his age and country. An Italian of this period could not possibly hold the balance even between the Catholics and Protestants. A man who owed the fortune of his sister, of his brother, and also the commencement of his own, to Catharine de’ Medicis, and whose very name reminds us that he had been devoted to her service from the period of his birth, could not be an impartial judge of the conduct of the queen-mother. He has accordingly been censured, and not without reason, for the partiality which he evinces towards that bold, bad woman. He dwells upon her address and her prudence, when he should have exposed her profound dissimulation, her perfidy, and her cruelty in meditating and preparing, during more than two years, in masking under deceptive caresses, and, finally, in perpetrating, amidst festivities, the massacre of forty thousand Frenchmen. In one place, however, he admits that the effusion of human blood in no degree alarmed Catharine; and when, at the end of the ninth book, he has finished the relation of her death, and the delineation of her general character, the conscience of the historian at length resumes the empire which it ought always to have exercised. He then adds that the queen-mother was accused of infamous bad faith, the common fault, says he, of all times, but particularly of this age; that she was also charged with an avidity, or rather a contempt, for the effusion of human blood, greater than became the tenderness of her sex, as if such avidity or contempt were naturally characteristic of men; and that on many occasions she appeared to regard as lawful any means which she judged useful for accomplishing her ends, however iniquitous or perfidious these might in themselves be. Davila would no doubt have escaped reproach in regard to Catharine de’ Medicis, if, in describing the different acts of her regency, he had always depicted her as he has done in this tardy and reluctant confession. But notwithstanding some grave faults, on which this is not the place to expatiate, his history remains with all the eminent qualities that distinguish it, whilst as to its defects they can no longer be productive of error or misconception. The course of ages restores every thing to its proper place, and, as always happens after a certain lapse of time, this or that historian ceases to have the power of deceiving us in regard to facts; whilst, on the other hand, facts which are well ascertained enable us to judge of the degree of credit due to the historian himself.

The edition which Davila published of his history was very incorrect. It is said that he had offered the work to several publishers of Venice, but that they had all refused it, with the exception of Baglioni, whose presses were idle, and who undertook to print it, on the condition, however, that if any preferable employment came in his way, the printing of the history should give way to it. But when the edition was finished, it met with so rapid a sale that the whole was disposed of in a week. It is added that it was reprinted under the same date, and that 15,000 copies were sold in the course of a year; but this appears to be greatly exaggerated. The editions which followed, Venice, 1634 and 1638, Lyons, 1641, and Venice, 1642, were scarcely less faulty than the first; but a better, and indeed a very beautiful one, issued from the royal press at Paris in 1644, folio. The work was translated into French by J. Baudoin, Paris, 1642, in two vols. folio, a translation which has been several times reprinted; into Spanish by Basil Varen de Soto, Madrid, 1651 and 1659; and into English, first by William Aylesbury, London, 1647, folio, and next by Charles Cotterell, London, 1666, folio. Lastly, it was translated into Latin by Pietro Francesco Cornazzano, Rome, 1745, in 3 vols. 4to. The best edition of the original work, however, is that printed at Venice in 1733, 2 vols. folio.