"[2] Born at the Château of Saint-Maury, near Pons, in present-day Charente-Maritime, his father was Jean d'Aubigné, who was involved in the 1560 Huguenot Amboise conspiracy to seize power by staging a palace coup, kidnapping King Francis II of France, and arresting his Catholic advisors.

Aubigné studied in Paris, Orléans, Geneva (under the tutelage of Theodore Beza) and Lyon before joining the Huguenot Henry of Navarre as both soldier and counsellor.

His career at camp and court, however, was a somewhat chequered one, owing to the roughness of his manner and the keenness of his criticisms, which made him many enemies and severely tried the king's patience.

[3] Aubigné was outlawed in 1620 and fled to Geneva where he lived for the rest of his life, though the Queen Mother arranged for a sentence of death to be recorded against him more than once for high treason.

Aubigné devoted the period of his exile to study, and supervising the fortifications of Bern and Basel which were designed as a defence of the Republic of Geneva against the Crown of France.

[3] During the 1627–1628 Siege of La Rochelle, the poet's eldest son and heir, Constant d'Aubigné, leaked the plans of King Charles I of England and the Duke of Buckingham to send an English fleet to aid the city's Huguenot rebels to Cardinal de Richelieu, the Minister of State to King Louis XIII of France.

Thou know’st the rime demands repose, So if my line disclose distress, The soldier and my restlessness And teen, Pardon, dear Lady mine, For since mid war I bear love’s pain ‘Tis meet my verse, as I, show sign, Of powder, gun-match and sulphur stain.

Written over some three decades, the alexandrine verse of this epic poem relies on multiple genres as well as stylistic familiarity with the work of the opposing, Catholic poets of the Pléiade, headed by Pierre de Ronsard.

In the first of two liminal paratexts, the introduction "Aux Lecteurs," Aubigné endorses the account (also found in his autobiographical Sa Vie à Ses Enfants), that the inception of the Tragiques came to him as an ecstatic vision during a near-death experience.