NICOLAY, Nicolas de

by Nicolas de Nicolay

£25,000 · Offered by Sokol Books

First edition in English of the French ambassador Nicolas de Nicolay s account of his travels in the Ottoman Empire, richly illustrated with woodcut depictions of Turkish and Greek costume, first published in French (with engravings) in 1567. The dedicatory letter from John Stell, who paid for the work, is addressed to Sir Henry and Sir Philip Sidney. Nicolas de Nicolay was attached to the 1551 French embassy of Gabriel de Luetz to the court of Suleiman I, on which he acted unofficially as a geographical surveyor but also likely as a spy; the French and Ottomans had been allied since the reign of Francis I. Sailing via the Balearic Islands to Algeria, the embassy quickly ran into trouble: several Christian slaves escaped onto the French galleys; their Algerian owners, incensed, briefly captured Nicolay as collateral but soon released him. Relationships deteriorated and the Algerian artillery fired at the French fleet, which only escaped after payment of a large bribe. Nicolay justifies the slaves on account of their miserable condition; there is a woodcut of a nude Moorish slave in chains. Passing up the coast, Nicolay describes entering a fissure in a rock, where he and his companions encounter a huge number of strange mice (presumably bats) and are forced to retreat, for feare they should pisse on our heads (their pisse being venomous). The French ambassador is persuaded by the Knights of Malta to go to Tripoli, which the Ottomans under Sinan Pasha were besieging, to attemp

• Binding: Hardcover

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