Note 12 — Book I. LETTERS TO MAXIMILIAN.

By Nove Busbecq probably means the town which d’Aubigné (Histoire, vol. ii. bk. ii. ch. ix.) calls Nonnai, now Annonay, 24 French miles from Lyons. D’Aubigné says the distance is nine leagues, which roughly corresponds with Busbecq’s twelve miles. See note, vol. i. page 80. Annonay was a town in the Vivarais, one of the districts which were the strongholds of the Protestant cause, and was itself a Protestant town. For an account of the sieges it underwent, and of the civil war in the Vivarais, see Poncer, Mémoires sur Annonay. On this occasion the town was summoned on October 22nd, and blockaded till December 8th, so the news in the text was premature. Dr. Dale, the English representative at the French Court, mentions the raising of the siege of ‘Noue,’ in a letter dated December 23rd.—Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series, 1572-74, p. 583.