Five or six years before the deaths of Cardinal Richelieu and his sovereign, Louis XIII—that is, about the year 1637-38—François Leguat appears to have been born in Bresse, a small province (represented at the present day by the department of Ain, on the Savoyard frontier) between the confluent streams of the Rhône and Saône rivers. Our author's ancestor, Pierre le Guat, is mentioned as the Seigneur of la Fougère, in the Histoire de Bresse et de Bugey, by Samuel Guichenon. Of his early days little is known; but, according to his own account, when over fifty years of age, he was driven into exile, in consequence of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), and with many others took refuge in Holland in the year 1689. At this time the Marquis Henri du Quesne, son of the celebrated naval commander of that name, was projecting, under the sanction of the States-General and the directors of the Dutch East India Company, the establishment of a colony of French Protestant refugees in the island of Mascaregne, now known as Ile de la Réunion. The Marquis had previously published a glowing description of this island (which he proposed to name Eden), the largest of the group discovered by the Portuguese in the preceding century, but as yet imperfectly explored and vaguely marked as Las Mascarenhas in the old maps and portulans; so that many refugees were desirous of becoming colonists in the new paradise of the southern hemisphere, and two ships were chartered for the purpose of taking possession of this hitherto supposed uninhabited island, to one of which Leguat was officially appointed as major.