AMELOT DE LA HOUSSAI, Nicholas, born at Orleans in 1634, was much esteemed at the court of France, and
Amelot, and appointed secretary of an embassy which that court
Amelotte. sent to the commonwealth of Venice, as appears by the
title of his Translation of Father Paul's History of the
Council of Trent; but he afterwards published writings
which gave such offence, that he was imprisoned in the
Bastille. The first works he printed were the History
of the Government of Venice, and that of the Uscocks,
a people of Croatia. In 1683 he published his transla-
tions into French of Machiavel's Prince, and Father
Paul's History of the Council of Trent, and Political
Discourses of his own upon Tacitus. These perform-
ances were well received by the public. He did not
prefix his own name to the two last mentioned works,
but concealed himself under that of La Mothe Josséval.
His translation of Father Paul was attacked by the
partisans of the pope's unbounded power and author-
ity. In France, however, it met with great success;
all the advocates for the liberty of the Gallican church
promoting the success of it to the utmost of their power,
though at the same time there were three memorials
presented to have it suppressed. When the second edi-
tion of this translation was published, it was violently
attacked by the Abbé St Real, in a letter he wrote to
Mr Bayle, dated October 17. 1685. Amelot defend-
ed himself in a letter to the same gentleman. In 1684,
he printed, at Paris, a French Translation of Baltasar
Gracian's Oracula Manual, with the title of l'Homme de
Cour. In 1686, he printed La Morale de Tacite de la
Flatterie; in which work he collected several particular
facts and maxims, which represent in a strong light the
artifices of court flatterers, and the mischievous effect
of their poisonous discourses. Frederick Leonard, a
bookseller at Paris, having proposed in the year 1692,
to print a collection of all the treaties of peace between
the kings of France and all the other princes of Eu-
rope, since the reign of Charles VII. to the year 1690,
Amelot published a small volume in duodecimo, con-
taining a preliminary discourse upon these treaties; where-
in he endeavours to show, that most princes, when they
enter into a treaty, think more how to evade than how
to perform the terms they subscribe to. He published
also an edition of Cardinal d'Ofiat's letters in 1697, with
several observations of his own; which, as he tells us
in his advertisement, may serve as a supplement to the
history of the reigns of Henry III. and Henry IV. kings
of France. He wrote several other works; and died
at Paris in 1706, at the age of 73. Amelot was at one
time confined in the Bastille, probably on account of his
political writings.