An ornate rectangular woodcut headpiece featuring symmetrical floral scrolls, foliage, and decorative flourishes.

TO THE KING

A decorative woodcut drop cap 'S' set within a square frame filled with intricate vine and leaf patterns.

SIRE,

These excellent and heroic titles of Restorer and Preserver of his Kingdom, which Your Majesty has gloriously acquired through the general Peace, are the effects of your holy vows and wishes, and of the particular graces with which God has adorned and decorated you. Having blessed your laborious toils, He has given you this contentment: to accomplish such a great work against the expectations of the entire world, to the honor of your flourishing name and the very great profit of your people. By this means, your people remain in public security, each under his fig tree This is a biblical allusion to 1 Kings 4:25, symbolizing a time of peace, prosperity, and national stability., cultivating his land as if at your feet, under the shelter of Your Majesty, who has Justice and Peace at your sides. Thus, your people, SIRE, delivered from the fury and fear of cruel wars when they were as if on the brink of a precipice, and now enjoying through your means this so inestimable good of Peace, it is also to Your Majesty—after God—that they must give thanks for their life, their property, and their rest, as to their Father, their Benefactor Bien-facteur: one who does good for others; a patron, and their Liberator. These horrible confusions and disorders having thus passed, and this good time of Peace and Justice having returned through the happiness of your Reign, which—