Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by the Digital & Multimedia Center, Michigan State University Libraries.) HISTORY OF JULIUS CÆSAR. [Illustration: colophon] VOL. II. THE WARS IN GAUL. NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE. 1866. PUBLISHER’S NOTE. It is, perhaps, not without interest, in publishing the second volume of the History of Julius Cæsar, written by the Emperor Napoleon III., to call to memory the names of Sovereigns and Princes who have employed themselves upon the same subject. _The King of France, Charles VIII._, showed an especial admiration for the _Commentaries_ of Cæsar, and the celebrated monk, Robert Gaguin, presented to him, in 1480, the translation he had made in French of the eight books of the War in Gaul. We are informed of this in the edition of the _translation_ by the learned monk, printed in 1500. This edition, in large 4to, is from the press of Antoine Verard. (See J. Ch. Brunet, _Manuel du Libraire et de l’Amateur de Livres_, fourth edition, tom. I., p. 518, and the _Biographie Universelle_, article _Charles VIII._) _Charles V._, who professed a great admiration for Cæsar, left a copy of the _Commentaries_ filled with marginal notes, written with his own hand. It was at his instigation that the Viceroy of Sicily, Ferdinand Gonzaga, sent a scientific mission into France to study Cæsar’s campaigns on the localities. The forty plans which were made by the members of this commission, and among which that of Alise is found, were published in 1575, in the edition of James Strada. _The Sultan Soliman II._, contemporary of Charles V., whom he had taken for his model, sent through all Europe to procure as many copies of Cæsar’s _Commentaries_ as could be found, which he ordered to be collated, and caused a translation to be made into the Turkish language for his own daily reading. _The King of France, Henri IV._, translated the two first books of Cæsar’s _Commentaries_. The manuscript of this translation was deposited in the Bibliothèque du Roi, and M. des Noyers took it thence to deliver it to Louis XIII., who, in his turn, translated the two last books of the _Commentaries_. These two translations were joined together, and printed at the Louvre in 1630.