The father of Tavernier was a map and chart maker of Antwerp in Brabant, who removed with his family into France while our traveller was still in his childhood. Though born of Protestant parents, some of his biographers have imagined that Tavernier must have been a Catholic, at least in the early part of his life, before his intercourse with the English and Dutch had sapped the foundations of his faith, and left him without any! But the truth appears to be, that although educated in the dominions of a Catholic king, surrounded by priests, and within the hearing of the mass-bells, he, as well as the rest of the family, one graceless nephew excepted, always remained faithful to the Protestant cause. However this may be, Tavernier, who was constantly surrounded by the maps of foreign lands, and by persons who conversed of little else, very early conceived the design of “seeing the world,” and being furnished with the necessary funds by his parents or friends, commenced his long wanderings by a visit to England, from whence he passed over into Flanders, in order to behold his native city. The rumour of the wars then about to burst forth in Germany kindled the martial spirit in the mind of our youthful traveller, who, moving through Frankfort and Augsburg towards Nuremburg, fell in with _Hans Brenner_, a colonel of cavalry, son to the governor of Vienna, and was easily prevailed upon to join his corps, then marching into Bohemia. His adventures in these wars he himself considered unworthy of being recorded. It is simply insinuated that he was present at the battle of Prague, some time after which he became a page to the governor of Raab, then viceroy of Hungary. In this situation he had remained four years and a half, when the young Prince of Mantua arrived at Raab on his way to Vienna, and with the consent of the viceroy took Tavernier along with him in quality of interpreter.