Jean baptiste tavernier biography of abraham

TAVERNIER, Jean Baptiste (1605–1689), the celebrated traveller and pioneer of French trade with India, was born (1605) at Paris, where his father Gabriel and uncle Melchior, Protestants from Antwerp, pursued with reputation and success the profession of geographers and engravers. The conversations he heard in his father's house inspired Jean Baptiste with an early desire to travel, and in his sixteenth year he had already visited England, the Low Countries, and Germany, and seen something of war with the imperialist Colonel Hans Brenner, whom he met at Nuremberg. Four and a half years in the household of Brenner's uncle, the viceroy of Hungary (1624-29), and a briefer connexion in 1629 with the duke of Rethel and his father the duke of Nevers, prince of Mantua, gave him the habit of courts, which was invaluable to him in later years, and at the defence of Mantua in 1629, and in Germany in the following year