[MONTESQUIEU (Charles de)]. - MATTHIEU (Pierre)]. History of Louis XI. king of France. Et des choses memorables advenues en l'Europe durant vingt & deux annees de son regne. Paris, Pierre Mettayer, 1610. in-folio, (22)-596-(36) pp. i.e.: 22 pp. uncounted, 456 pp. (counted 1 to 207, 206 to 308, 311 to 454, 449 and 450), 8 pp. on 4 ff. (foliated 469 to 472), 132 pp. (counted 473 to 604), 36 pp. uncounted. - Bound in brown calf, spine ribbed, medallion with silver tracery in the center of the boards; binding very worn with rubbed spine and corners, first few leaves stained, tear without missing at the title and at another introductory leaf, marginal wetness, some marginal worm work (period binding). FROM THE LIBRARY OF MONTESQUIEU. FIRST EDITION. Portrait of Louis XI presented as "the most august and magnanimous prince of his century", but painted in a critical historiographical perspective of his means of government. Beautiful copper-engraved title-frontispice outside the text by Jacques Fornazeris A LIGUEUR RALLIED TO HENRI IV, THE LYONIAN LAWYER, WRITER AND HISTORIAN PIERRE MATTHIEU (1563-1621) first published polemical and historiographical texts on the Wars of Religion, compared the cunning of Henry III to that of Louis XI and then, taking the side of Henry IV, praised him and won his good graces until he was appointed historiographer to the king in 1610. The death of the king caused Pierre Matthieu to lose his position at court, and he was only able to return to favor after the elimination of Concini in 1617. He was also the author of tragedies, poems and novels, and died of the plague contracted at the siege of Montauban where he accompanied the king. Provenance: a parliamentarian from Bordeaux (ex-dono of the author handwritten on the title); "De La Brousse" (ex-libris on the lower back cover). CHARLES DE MONTESQUIEU'S EXEMPLAIRE (handwritten bookplate; nº 2985 of the catalog of the library of his castle of La Brède). LOUIS XI, A KING WHO OCCUPIED MONTESQUIEU'S THOUGHTS TWICE DURING HIS LIFE. Around 1731-1733, in Reflections on the character of some princes and on some events of their life, which belong to the collection of quotations and reflections that are his Pensées, Montesquieu studied a parallel in the manner of Plutarch between Tiberius and Louis XI. In a letter of 1747 to the Italian scholar Ottaviano Guasco, he mentioned a history of Louis XI for which he was working on a memoir, inadvertently burned - his correspondent dated this work to the years 1739-1740. An article in the Spicilège, belonging to materials transcribed late by Damours in 1748-1750, contains a sketch of a portrait of Louis XI, and indicates the sources used by Montesquieu on this reign: the present Pierre Matthieu, but also works by Pierre Bayle, Philippe de Commines, Enguerrand de Monstrelet, Claude de Seyssel and Antoine Varillas.