Lyon [though probably Brussels]: , 1658. Supporting the assassination of Oliver Cromwell, translated to encourage the assassination of Cardinal Mazarin First edition in French of the pro-tyrannicide Killing no Murder, first published in English the previous year to advocate the assassination of Oliver Cromwell, and here published to encourage the assassination of Cardinal Mazarin. Drawing on classical writers including Aristotle, Plato, and Xenophon, and modern writers including Hugo Grotius, the authors provide a basis for tyrannicide as a lawful act, and sets out to prove that Cromwell "was a tyrant on a par with Caligula and Nero. However stable, his reign was an abrogation of law which constituted the enslavement of the English people and threatened the outright corruption of English society. In such circumstances the private citizen was perfectly within his rights in seeking to exact the punishment for which responsibility ought normally to rest with God and the magistrate. Tyranny being the suspension of the normal course of law, tyrannicide could not be regarded as an act of murder" (ODNB, William Sexby). The pamphlet was published pseudonymously under "William Allen", and the author has never been satisfactorily identified. The two most likely claimants are Colonel Silius Titus and Edward Sexby, both of whom claimed authorship; most probably they collaborated. This French translation was produced by Jacques Carpentier de Marigny (1615-1670), a great enemy of Cardinal Mazarin, who was then the de facto ruler of France. Marigny had been involved in The Fronde uprising against Mazarin, and was horrified at the alliance between Mazarin and Cromwell. Marigny apparently hoped that the pamphlet's support of tyrannicide would inspire the killing of Mazarin. Marigny was linked to the exiled Stuart king Charles II, who made him a Knight Baronet of England in 1658, apparently in reward for the translation (Lutaud p. 82) - if so an extraordinary instance of a monarch promoting the assassination of a ruler. The tract had an extraordinarily long life. Editions in English appeared again during the Glorious Revolution and the Jacobite uprising of the 1740s. Further editions in French were published at the time of the French Revolution and Napoleonic period, justifying the execution of Louis XVI and aimed against Napoleon. These are ironic reincarnations given the authors' views, but the arguments of the tract could readily be applied to any monarch, even those the authors would have found legitimate. French editions were published in 1793, 1800, 1804, and 1856. This copy is the true first edition of 1658, a duodecimo in 94 pages; the 1793 edition fictitiously uses the same imprint and date, but is readily distinguishable as a sextodecimo in 172 pages. Duodecimo (118 x 78 mm). Contemporary red morocco, spine gilt in compartments and lettered "A9", panelled in gilt, plain white endpapers with front pastedown lifting revealing the use of a leaf from Commentationes ac vigiliae in Pandectar, 1544, as binding material. Spine darkened, cover edges with indentation of old ties; a very fresh, clean copy. Barbier II, 7132; Brunet I, p. 189-190; Graesse VI, p. 187; Quérard I, p. 37. Olivier Lutaud, Des révolutions d'Angleterre à la Révolution française: Le tyrannicide et 'Killing No Murder', 1973, especially chapter 4, "La traduction française de 1658".
