Cover created by Transcriber and placed in the Public Domain.

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed, except as noted below.

Unusual and archaic spellings were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.

Page 32: “spacious and extensive” was printed as “entensive” but changed here.

Page 60: “1746” is a misprint; the correct date must be in the 1600's, perhaps “1646”.

Page 63: “1798” may be a misprint for “1796”.

Page 65: “1745” is a misprint; the correct year is “1645”.

Page 75: “wo to the vanquished” was printed that way.

Page 100: “Vauban” was printed as “Vanban” but changed here.