 Prison escapee, high-stakes politician, shipwreck survivor, Grotius was a remarkable man who led a remarkable life. Born on 10 April 1583 in Delft, Holland—Easter Sunday, as his biographers invariably note—his family was moderately prosperous, well-educated and ambitious. From these nourishing if not particularly distinguished origins, Grotius soon proved himself exceptional. When he was eight, he began writing skillful elegies in Latin; by eleven, he was a student in the Faculty of Letters at the University of Leiden. In 1598, at the tender age of fifteen, he accompanied the leading Dutch politician of the day, Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, on an embassy to the royal court of France. There King Henry IV, impressed by his extraordinary learnedness, hailed him as “the miracle of Holland”. And three years later, when the United Provinces decided to reinforce their autonomy from Spain by retaining an official Latin historiographer to chronicle their history, they chose Grotius over Dominicus Baudius, a full professor of rhetoric at Leiden, for the position.