Storia do Mogor 9.1.1

9.1.1

Some time in 1704 or 1705 Manucci received from Catrou an advance copy of his 'Histoire,' or of the preface to it. A perusal of this communication aroused intense indignation in the Italian author, and in January, 1706, he resolved to despatch to Europe the original draft of his Parts I., II., and III., together with the Part IV. on which he had been engaged since the beginning of 1701, accompanied by a Latin letter to the Venetian Senate, of which the following is a translation, made for me by my friend Mr. James Kennedy : ' MOST SERENE PRINCES ! ' Love of travel and inborn inclination to visit foreign nations caused the writer, Nicolo Manucci, a client and nursling of the Most Serene Republic, to leave Venice when he was only fourteen, and led him happily to the Empire of the Mogul (Mogor), in which he served divers princes of the blood royal for a period of fifty-four years, as this history shows. There, at the request of certain friends, Frenchmen by race, he began a most extensive account of this despotism, and finished it in 1700. Of which work as soon as the Reverend Fathers of the Society of Jesus residing in India got wind, they left no stone unturned to appropriate it, as if it were their own. But considering my many vigils and the sundry expenses I had to incur, it did not seem to me right that the aforesaid Fathers should transfer to themselves the glory won by another's labour, nor that I should be cheated out of my expectations.