The Theatre of Agriculture and Field Husbandry

its clarity, like the rising Sun, has dissolved all these clouds. In the same way, the season has arrived to publish these observations of mine on Agriculture: so that serving as a guide to your people for cultivating their land, they may recover from their losses with all the more ease, just as more relief is felt through help that is opportunely employed. Earlier would not have been suitable, for to what purpose would one wish to teach the cultivation of the Earth in such a disordered time, when its fruits were a burden even to those who harvested them, for fear of fostering their own ruin by providing food for their enemies? During the French Wars of Religion, farmers often feared a good harvest because it would only attract looting soldiers.

Ecclesiastes chapter 5, verse 9.

Another consideration has made me resolve upon this: It is the service I owe to Your Majesty, as your natural subject. It is said in Holy Scripture, THAT THE KING IS ESTABLISHED WHEN THE FIELD IS PLOWED original: "QUE LE ROI CONSISTE, QUAND LE CHAMP EST LABOURÉ." This is a 17th-century interpretation of Ecclesiastes 5:9, which in the King James Version reads: "Moreover the profit of the earth is for all: the king himself is served by the field."; from which it follows that by promoting the cultivation of the Earth, I shall perform the service of my Prince: which I desire above all else, so that in an abundance of prosperity Your Majesty may remain long in this World. And since, SIRE, for the establishment of the repose of your subjects you have taken such pains, and overcome so many and such diverse and thorny difficulties, and since, following your laudable intentions, you desire to see them provided with all sorts of goods for living comfortably, it makes me hope that my discourses, tending toward this goal, will be agreeable to you: and that it will please Your Majesty, to whom with all humility and reverence I consecrate them, to receive them with your favorable eye. They contain nothing but Earth and Plowing; yet they are not for that reason abject and contemptible, but rather of very great importance, as they are recognized to be when contemplating their effects. For nothing greater can be presented to men than that which leads them toward the preservation of their life. There is more, SIRE, in that this is speaking to Your Majesty of your own affairs: because your Kingdom, which holds the most distinguished rank in the Universal Earth, being Land subject to cultivation, deserves to be cultivated with Art and Industry Industrie: in this period, it refers to diligence, ingenuity, and skillful labor, to make it resume its ancient luster and splendor, which the civil wars had snatched away. By means of which treatment, and