France in eighteen hundred and two

ADAMS, John.

The sailor who led the mutiny on the Bounty against Lieutenant Bligh in 1789. Fearing the eventual reprisals of the British Government, he persuaded a number of his companions to leave Otaheite and seek fortune among the then unknown islands of the Southern Sea. They eventually settled at Pitcairn Island, and founded a colony.

John Adams was born in 1754 and died at Pitcairn Island, May 5, 1829, having fully earned the title by which he was known—“The Patriarch of Pitcairn.”

ANDRON.

A Greek sculptor, believed to have lived some time in the second century A.D.

BARNAVE, Antony Peter Joseph Marie.

His father was a Procurator of Parliament and his mother the daughter of a military officer. In those days professions were hereditary, and young Barnave was therefore destined for the Bar. In early life he showed signs of talent and an impetuous disposition; he was sixteen when he fought his first duel, and he published a remarkable book at the age of twenty.

In 1783 he was chosen by the lawyers of the Grenoble Bar to pronounce the speech before the vacation at the local Parliament. He chose for his subject “The Divisions of Political Power in a State.” This discourse excited much interest, not only in Dauphiny, but all over France; the speaker was then twenty-two years of age.

His political career did not commence until he was twenty-eight, when, having been elected Deputy to the States-General, he proceeded to Versailles.

Barnave was, a few days after the opening of that Assembly, named a Commissioner by the “Tiers Etat,” and he composed the first petition, or address, that body presented to the King. During the session of the Assembly he became more and more prominent; he was still a believer in the monarchical system, and—under a constitutional form of government—a strong supporter of the throne.

On October 25, 1790, Barnave was elected President of the Assembly.

A few weeks after the death of Mirabeau, April 2, 1791, the Royal Family fled from Paris and were arrested at Varennes: Barnave was commissioned with Pêthion to bring them back to Paris. The many hours he thus spent in their company greatly influenced him in their favour, and the Queen’s charm exercised an influence over him which dominated the remainder of his short life. The question of the inviolability of Royalty arose immediately after the King’s return, and Barnave made a moving and eloquent speech on this subject. The discussion of the new Constitution commenced on August 8, 1791. On the 14th the King took the oath, and on the 30th the Assembly was dissolved.

The public career of Barnave then terminated, and his final speech was made before a different tribunal. He returned to Grenoble in January 1792, and there wrote “The Introduction to the French Revolution.” On August 15 of the same year the Deputy La Rivière denounced the author of this book from the Tribune; on the 29th of the same month Barnave was arrested. After ten months’ imprisonment at Grenoble he was removed to Paris on November 3, 1793. He appeared on December 28 before the Revolutionary Tribunal; two days later he perished.

Barnave addressed the crowd from the scaffold, his last words being, as he pointed to the fatal knife, “This is the reward for all I have done for France and for Liberty.”

BARBŒUF (surnamed “Caius Gracchus”), François Noel.

In early life he was apprenticed to an architect, and when quite a young man he wrote articles for newspapers at Amiens. He hailed with joy the principles of the Revolution.

He was tried in 1790, in Paris, owing to the violence of his writings; although acquitted, he had to undergo another trial in 1792, under an accusation of embezzlement, when he was a second time acquitted and soon after appointed administrator of a Department; he did not return to Paris until Thermidor 1794.

He created the journal Le Tribun du Peuple, and developed in its pages, under the synonym “Caius Gracchus,” the doctrine of the absolute equality of mankind. Two years later Babœuf and his followers, now a numerous body, constituted themselves into a secret society, with the object of re-establishing the régime of 1793.

This society spread its emissaries over France, and early in 1796 was prepared for a rising. With the aid of 16,000 men, soldiers belonging to the garrison of Paris, and of artillery posted at Vincennes and at the Invalides, and of certain disaffected members of Grenadiers and police, together with a large number of the labouring classes—these conspirators planned to seize the Directorate, the Legislative Assembly, and the Military Staff of the Etat Major. Their arrangements were apparently perfect, but, as is usual in such cases, traitors among the plotters revealed the whole scheme to the Directorate. The heads of this conjuration, to the number of sixty-five, were arrested, and Babœuf himself was seized just as he was dictating the manifesto which was to be issued after the rising had taken place.

The trial of the conspirators lasted three months and was held at Vendôme. After the sentence of death was pronounced, Babœuf and his friend Dârtre stabbed themselves, but were nevertheless, like Robespierre and his friends, carried in an expiring condition to the scaffold and beheaded.

Babœuf’s principles were those of the most advanced Socialism, one of his precepts for the government of the Utopia of his dreams being, “Whoever pronounces the word ‘property’ shall be imprisoned as a dangerous madman.”

BARBAROUX, Charles Jean Marie.

As a very young man he showed scientific aptitude, and when quite a boy was in correspondence with Franklin. He became an advocate at the Bar of Marseilles, and had already obtained much success as a pleader when the Revolution broke out.

He was made secretary to the new Commune of Marseilles, and after quelling a Royalist insurrection at Arles, was despatched to Paris as Deputy for Marseilles. He became a member of the “Jacobin Club,” and an intimate friend and ally of Roland and his wife. He took an active part in the events of August 10, 1792, and was soon after named President of the “Elective Assembly,” and, later, a member of the Convention. From the outset of his legislative career he was an opponent of the Extreme Left; he denounced Robespierre and Marat, insisting upon the punishment of the authors of the bloody massacres of September. An excellent economist, Barbaroux treated in a masterly manner the question of commercial administration.

At the trial of Louis XVI. he voted against the execution of the monarch. A movement was set on foot to drive Barbaroux from the Convention, and on May 31 he was forced to fly from Paris. He was declared a traitor to his country. At Caen he had an interview with Charlotte Corday, and it is he who is supposed to have inspired this young girl with the idea of killing Marat.

He was a man of remarkable personal beauty, and unjustly accused of having carried on a guilty intrigue with Mme. Roland. He took refuge at Bordeaux, but was discovered and arrested. Although he shot himself twice, he retained sufficient appearance of life to enable the possibility of his public execution.

BARRAS, Jean Paul François, Comte de.

He entered the army at the age of eighteen, went with his regiment to the Ile de France in 1775, and eventually joined the French Indian Army at Pondicherry. After the capture of that town he took service under Suffren, and spent some time at the Cape of Good Hope, returning to France with the rank of captain.

He then proceeded to lead a life of debauchery and extravagance. Many ruined rakes perceived in the Revolution a chance, as they thought, of retrieving their fallen fortunes; among such was Barras. He was present at the attack on the Bastille in 1789, and at the sack of the Tuileries three years later. He was a member of the Convention, and voted for the instant execution of Louis XVI. without appeal.

As a delegate to the South of France he assisted in those sanguinary repressions of the revolt against the Republic in Provence. At Nice he arrested Brunet and Trogoff, whom he accused of ceding Toulon to the English. He was present at the siege and capture of that town, and helped to carry out horrible massacres of supposed traitors. Nevertheless, he was an object of distrust to Robespierre, who disliked the intense immorality of his private life, and doubted the sincerity of his Republicanism. Barras therefore directed his efforts towards the overthrow of the Montagne, and was the principal instigator of the events of Thermidor, which led to the fall of Robespierre.

Later he obtained control of the home military force—and the Presidency of the Convention. He declared Paris in a state of siege, and when the mob surrounded the Assembly, shouting for bread and the Constitution of 1793, he directed the armed force which dispersed the people.

To him Bonaparte owed the command, by which the latter, in the name of Barras, suppressed the attempted Royalist revolution.

During the Directorate, Barras reigned practically alone until the advent of Sièyes. He amassed a vast fortune, although during his official reign he squandered money lavishly upon his pleasures and lived in great state.

The Revolution of the 18th Brumaire annulled his political power, and he sought and obtained permission to leave Paris.

During the rest of his life he ceased to be a man of any public importance; he was frequently exiled, and perpetually intriguing with the Bourbons. After the second Restoration he returned to Paris, and settled at Chaillot, where he died at the age of seventy-four.

BARRÈRE DE VIEUZAC, Bertrand.

He studied law and was advocate to the Parliament of Toulouse. Later he returned to Tarbes, from whence he eventually went as Deputy to the States-General. Here he soon took a prominent place, defending the liberty of the press; and brought forward successfully numerous motions as to the confiscation of Crown lands and the declarations of the rights of citizens.

The National Assembly being dissolved, Barrère became a member of the Tribunal of Cassation, and in 1792 Deputy for the Department of the Upper Pyrenees. He publicly defended the September massacres on the ground of their being a necessity to save the State. He was elected President of the Convention of December 1792, his first act being to press for the immediate judgment of “Louis the Traitor,” as he termed the King, saying that “the tree of Liberty would never flourish until it had been watered by the blood of kings.” He voted the death of Louis XVI. without respite, and later in the year brought forward a project of ostracism against the Duke of Orleans and the Ministers Roland and Pache.

The triumph of the Montagne over the Girondins caused Barrère to join forces with the former. Terror for his own life made him ruthless in the destruction of the lives of others.

He became in July 1793 a member of the Committee of Public Safety, and, soon after, chief of that body, and its principal acts were carried out by his order and at his instigation. By his command the royal tombs at St. Denis were destroyed, Paoli declared a traitor, the expulsion of those English who arrived in France after July 14, 1789, decreed, as well as instant confiscation of all property belonging to the émigrés. He caused the Château de Caen to be razed to the ground, sent troops to punish Lyons, created a revolutionary army, and promulgated the decree, “Terror is the order of the day.” He also planned the speedy execution of the Queen, and proposed that every Frenchman who had not already made his declaration of adhesion to the Republic should be transported, and all persons accused of spreading false news brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal. He implored the Assembly to treat with the utmost severity all enemies of the nation, saying: “Have pity on them to-day and they will massacre you to-morrow. It is only the dead who cannot return.”

Until the fall of Robespierre, Barrère was his lieutenant and obedient servant; but after the coup d’état against Robespierre, Barrère was violent and condemnatory against the “conspirator whose projects had up to then been veiled in mystery.” Nevertheless, Barrère did not succeed in escaping; he was arrested, with Callot, D’Herbois and Billaud, on March 2, 1795. He and they were condemned to transportation, but later on Barrère obtained a re-trial of his case, and was removed to another prison, from which he succeeded in making his escape. He evaded re-arrest until the law of amnesty for political prisoners was passed. He remained in obscurity till 1815, when, during “the hundred days,” he was elected a Deputy.

After the second Restoration he was banished as a regicide, and retired to Brussels, where he resided until 1830, when he returned to France and there remained until his death, at the age of eighty-six years, in 1841.

BLANCHARD DE DA MUSSE, François Gabriel Ursin.

A pupil and friend of Delisle de Salés. He was called to the Bar at Rennes, capital of Brittany, and became Councillor of the Parliament of that town. He was one of those arrested suspects saved by the Revolution of Thermidor, 1794.

After the 18th Brumaire his well-known honesty and amiability of character caused his nomination as a judge of the High Court at Trèves and later Nantes. In 1815 he was, as a Liberal, deprived of his functions, but reinstated the following year.

He wrote much poetry and several philosophical treatises.

BRISSOT DE WARVILLE, Jean Pierre.

The thirteenth child of a wealthy innkeeper, Brissot early showed signs of talent, and his first book, Théories des Lois criminelles, evoked a complimentary letter from the aged Voltaire, to whom the work was dedicated.

In Paris, Brissot entered a lawyer’s office, where Robespierre was his fellow clerk. But he soon abandoned law for journalism, and became a well-known pamphleteer. He visited England, and his book upon English literature was at one time considered a classic.

On his return from England he was falsely accused of being the author of a lampoon upon the Queen of France, and imprisoned in the Bastille. Here he remained four months, but was released by the influence of Mdme. de Genlis and the Duke of Orleans. He was advised to take refuge in London. He joined the Abolition of Slavery League, and resolved to establish a similar League in France under the title of Les Amis des Noirs. He went to America to study the question of slavery.

On his return from America he devoted all his talents and his efforts to add to the impetus of the French Revolution.

Brissot was elected one of the members for Paris in the National Assembly. An honest man and a true patriot, he fought against anarchy. He was an opponent of the massacres of September, and of the King’s trial.

Constantly attacked by the Robespierre faction, he was arrested at Moulins; incarcerated in the Abbaye at Paris; condemned to death with twenty-one of his friends on October 12, 1793, and executed on the following day.

Brissot was one of the writers who exercised great influence in those various publications which aided the advance of the French Revolution, and accelerated that movement. His books on law and legislature, his innumerable pamphlets, his speeches at the Assembly and Convention, attest his earnest devotion to the Revolutionary cause in its infancy.

BOURDON DE L’OISE, François Louis.

He commenced his career as a lawyer, became Procureur of the Parliament of Paris, and eventually embraced the Revolutionary cause in 1789, taking part in the attack on the Tuileries, August 10, 1792.

He became a member of the Convention by a trick. Another François Louis Bourdon, to whom he was in no way related, was elected both by the Department of l’Oise and also that of the Loiret as a Member of the Convention. This Bourdon chose to represent the Loiret; and his namesake, whom the electors had never seen, profiting by the similarity of names, presented himself to the Convention, took his seat without any difficulty, and held it without question.

He first distinguished himself by the ferocity of his utterances. He voted for the death of Louis XVI. without an appeal to the people, and denounced all the more moderate Deputies, such as Brissot, as being Royalists at heart. He defended the Reign of Terror, violently attacking the Abbé Grégoire for his desire to Christianise the Revolution.

As he later showed signs of pity towards the Royal insurgents in La Vendée, Robespierre and Hébert accused him of moderation, and caused him to be excluded from the Jacobin Club. Bourdon, alarmed, threw his influence in the scale against Robespierre in the Thermidor contra-Revolution, and went so far as to suggest that every Deputy who resisted the decree for Robespierre’s arrest should be shot upon the spot. He was one of the escort that accompanied Robespierre and his partisans to the scaffold.

From this time Bourdon declared himself the enemy of the Revolutionary system, and the protector of priests and nobles. Nevertheless, when sent to Chârtres to discover traces of those who were supposed to have plotted against the Convention, Bourdon showed excessive and merciless cruelty. He eventually became a Member of the Council of the Five Hundred, and realised a large fortune by dealing in assignats and in the national property.

The Directorate contained many of his mortal enemies, who inscribed his name upon the list of those to be transported to Cayenne, and he was arrested and deported; shortly after his arrival at Simamari Bourdon expired, broken down by impotent rage, remorse and despair.

BITANBÉ, Paul Jeremie.

Descended from a Huguenot family, banished from France by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He was a learned student, and a voluminous writer.

His translation of the Iliad, published in Berlin in 1762, brought him the patronage of Frederick the Great, who allowed him to settle in France, in order that he might perfect his knowledge of the French language. He published various translations from the Greek in Paris, and was naturalised as a French citizen.

He was arrested during the Terror, and, together with his wife, suffered a lengthy imprisonment; the 9th Thermidor brought his release.

He was one of the principal members of the new Institut, and there represented literature and the fine arts. His writings are somewhat marred by the fact that they were composed by a man who had not thoroughly grasped the intricacies of the French language.

LE BON, Josephe.

He made his first studies at an Oratorian College, and eventually became a member of that congregation. At the age of eighteen, he was already a teacher of rhetoric in the College of Béaune in Burgundy, and enjoyed a great reputation for piety and learning. His sympathy with the Revolution caused him to become a “Constitutional” parish priest at Vernois, and a year later he was appointed to a cure of souls near Arras.

Robespierre, St. Just, and Le Bas were his intimate friends: at their persuasion he abandoned Christianity, married, and adopted a political career. He was appointed Mayor of Arras and Syndic for the whole Department of Pas de Calais, and, at first, showed much judgment and great moderation.

In 1793 he was despatched on a mission to the Pas du Calais, and was at first so indulgent, that Suffray, his neighbour and enemy, denounced him to the Committee of Public Safety as a protector of the aristocrats and a persecutor of patriots. He was recalled to Paris, but under Robespierre’s guarantee and his own promise to redeem the past, was sent back to the Pas de Calais with unlimited powers, and the order to crush the anti-revolutionary movement in the towns of this Department. He carried out these orders without mercy. Terrified by these responsibilities and by the fact that the Austrian army occupied the neighbouring frontier, he imagined enemies of the Republic on every side, and wherever he went blood flowed freely. So great, however, were his cruelties that he was again accused. But Barrère declared that Le Bon had saved Cambrai by his energy, and for a time the accusation lapsed; his severities, however, made his enemies thirst for revenge. In May 1795, a committee was appointed to inquire into his conduct, and the report they returned was:

1. That he had been guilty of public assassination.

2. Of oppressing citizens.

3. Exercising personal vengeance in his summary executions of accused persons.

He was then tried and found guilty of an “unlimited abuse of the guillotine.”

Le Bon exclaimed, as they dressed him in the red garment reserved for murderers upon their road to the scaffold; “It is not I who should wear this garment, but those whose orders I obeyed.” He showed pitiable cowardice at his execution, and his cries and groans rent the air.

Lamartine says of Le Bon:

BEAUHARNAIS, Eugène, Duke de Leuchtenberg, Prince of Eichstadt, Viceroy of Italy.

His father was executed by order of the Revolutionary Tribunal in 1794, and his mother would have shared the same fate but for the fall of Robespierre. At the age of fourteen he was taken by General Hoche, who had been his father’s friend, to join the army in Brittany. His mother’s marriage to Napoleon in 1796 changed the course of his existence. In 1797 he was created sub-lieutenant, and from that time was the constant companion of his stepfather; and for the future that stepfather’s fortunes were his own.

He was only twenty-four when he became ruler of Italy, and showed extraordinary intelligence and moderation during his Vice-Royalty. After the signature of the Treaty of Pressburg, he married in 1806 Princess Louisa of Bavaria, and Napoleon bestowed upon him the titles of “Prince of the Empire, adopted son and heir-presumptive to the crown of Italy.”

After the fall of Napoleon, Prince Eugène retired with his wife and family to Bavaria, and was created Duke de Leuchtenberg by the King, his father-in-law. He spent a few years in seclusion, devoting himself to the education of his children. He died suddenly from an accident when only forty-three years of age.

His sons and daughters made brilliant alliances, his eldest son marrying Donna Maria della Gloria, Queen Regnant of Portugal; his younger son, Olga, daughter of the Emperor Nicholas. Of his daughters, the eldest became Queen of Sweden, the second Princess Hohenzollern, and the third Empress of Brazil.

The present Russian semi-Imperial family of Leuchtenberg is descended from Prince Eugène.

BARLOW, Joel.

He served as chaplain to a regiment during the American War of Independence, and attained some celebrity by the patriotic songs he composed.

In 1788 he abandoned the clerical profession and sailed for Europe as agent of the Ohio Company. He settled in Paris, where he identified himself with the Revolutionary party, and was intimate with the leaders of the Girondins.

In 1791 he published several pamphlets and poems in favour of the Revolution, and in 1792 he addressed “A letter to the National Convention” begging them to abolish royalty, and presented in person an address to that Assembly from English Republicans. When the Abbé Gregoire went to Savoy on a special mission from the Convention, Barlow accompanied him and made many speeches at Chambéry against the King of Savoy.

On his return to Paris he was appointed American Consul at Tripoli; in 1805, after another long stay in Paris, he returned to America; in 1811 he was sent as American Minister to Paris. The following year he started to join the Duke de Bassano in Russia, which the French had just invaded, but falling ill on his way to Wilna he expired in a miserable village near Cracow.

CAMBACÈRES and Prince of Parma, Jean Jaques Régis, Duc de.

He belonged to an ancient family of the Long Robe, and many of his ancestors and family connections had been distinguished lawyers and churchmen. He was intended for the magistrature, and made law his chief study. In 1789 he proceeded to Paris and became a popular leader during the first years of the Revolution. He was elected a member of the Convention in 1792. Through the next two stormy years Cambacères, by the exercise of extreme prudence, kept himself free from suspicion, although he was never identified with the extreme party, and opposed the execution of Louis XVI. He was President of the Assembly in 1794, and a member of the Committee of Public Safety. He was Minister of Justice during the Directory, and when Napoleon Bonaparte assumed the head of affairs after the eighteenth Brumaire he appointed Cambacères as Second Consul, with power to act for the First Consul during the latter’s absence.

When Napoleon assumed the title of Emperor Cambacères was created Arch-Chancellor, with perpetual Presidency of the Senate. He held this position during the whole of the reign of Napoleon I. None of his councillors were esteemed more highly by the Emperor than Cambacères; his advice was usually moderate and sensible. He opposed the Austrian marriage and the Russian campaign. It was he who in 1814 conducted Marie Louise and her child to Blois and delivered them over to the Austrian commissioners. Her flight from Paris was contrary to his advice.

During “the hundred days” he resumed his position as Chancellor. The Second Restoration banished him from France as a regicide. In 1818 the decree of his banishment was reversed, and he returned to Paris, where he died six years later at the age of seventy-one.

CARNOT, Lazare Nicholas Marguerite.

Educated in Paris at a military school he joined the army with the grade of lieutenant in 1773. He was soon distinguished by his scientific attainments as well as his literary talents.

When the Revolution broke out Carnot addressed many memorials to the Assembly on the subject of financial reform. Had his proposals been then carried out national bankruptcy might have been prevented.

He became a Deputy in 1791, and after the events of August 10, 1792, Carnot was despatched to the Republican army of the Rhine. During the next two years he commanded armies on the frontier, and gained many brilliant victories. He took no part in the atrocities of the Terror, but has been unjustly accused both by his contemporaries and by posterity of having approved the massacres at Avignon and the executions at Lyons. As a member of the Committee of Public Safety his name is attached to the decrees ordering these cruel punishments, but he was at this time fighting on the banks of the Rhine. He hated Robespierre and Robespierre detested him, often saying, “We need Carnot now for the war, but as soon as the war is over his head shall fall.”

Carnot became one of the five Directors, and in that capacity gave Napoleon Bonaparte command of the army of Italy. During that campaign the other four Directors opposed Carnot; he was stripped of his office and even of his seat in the Institut, a body he had virtually founded, was impeached and forced to fly for his life to Switzerland. He remained in exile until the events of the 18th Brumaire, when he was recalled and appointed Minister of War and Tribune. He was opposed to the creation of a life consulate, and later on to that of an Empire.

From 1807 to 1813 he retired into private life, employing his leisure in scientific studies and the education of his children. The disasters of 1813 brought him out of his retreat, and he again offered his services to the Emperor.

Napoleon appointed him Governor of Antwerp on January 24, 1814, which place he defended with so much ability that it was still in the possession of the French at the conclusion of the war. He again retired into private life, but when Napoleon returned from Elba he made Carnot Minister of the Interior. He held his appointment for less than three months, but during that short period brought about many educational reforms which are still in use.

After Waterloo, Carnot was a member of the Provisional Government, but as soon as the Bourbons returned he was banished and outlawed. The Emperor Alexander gave him a passport to Poland. He eventually fixed his residence with his family at Magdeburg in Prussia, where he died at the age of seventy.

CHAPTAL, Comte de Chanteloup, Jean Antoine.

A celebrated chemist. His uncle, a rich physician at Montpellier, gave him his first education. He studied chemistry at the University of Montpellier, received the title of Doctor in 1777, and went to Paris. In 1781 he returned to his native town a celebrated man.

The State of Languedoc founded in his honour a Professorship of Chemistry at the School of Medicine. Chaptal had adopted the theories of Lavoisier. The young professor considered chemistry, then in its infancy, likely to become the most useful and practical of sciences. By his uncle’s death he inherited a large fortune, and he devoted the whole of it to constructing various laboratories, where experiments could be carried out, and large establishments in which scientific productions might be manufactured.

By his inventive studies, and assisted by his large fortune, manufactories of alum, soda, and saltpetre were successfully established, and the Government recompensed this work by giving him a patent of nobility and the Grand Cordon of the Order of St. Michael.

Chaptal adopted all the ideas of the Revolution, although he disapproved its excesses. He was in consequence arrested; but his scientific knowledge was too important to the Government, and he was liberated and appointed Director of the Saltpetre Manufactory at Grenoble. After this he directed also the re-organisation of the School of Medicine. During the Consulate, Chaptal succeeded Lucien Bonaparte as Minister of the Interior, and in that capacity rendered great service to the State; he was appointed Treasurer of the Senat, under the title of Count Chanteloup. When Napoleon returned from Elba, Chaptal accepted the portfolio of Minister of Commerce. After the Restoration, Louis XVIII. erased his name from the list of Peers of France, but a few years later his peerage was restored. He was a member of the Academy of Sciences, and wrote several important scientific works in his old age.

Before his death, at the age of seventy-five, he had many pecuniary misfortunes, and died in comparative poverty.

CIMAROSA, Domenico.

The son of a poor mason, he was but seven years of age when his father was killed by a fall from a scaffold. In her distress the boy’s mother applied to a charitable monk for help. This good man gave Cimarosa a few Latin lessons, and was so struck by the child’s intelligence that he decided to adopt him. This monk was organist of the convent, and taught his pupil music. Discovering the boy’s extraordinary aptitude for musical composition, he obtained his admission into the Conservatory at Santa Maria di Loretto.

At the age of twenty-four Cimarosa produced his first opera at Naples. His next ten years were a succession of triumphs, and he produced innumerable operas and other musical compositions. In 1787 the Empress Catherine offered him the title of Imperial Composer, with a high salary. He journeyed to Russia, was treated with great distinction, and many operas written by him in Russia were performed during his five years’ stay in that country. He returned to Naples in 1793.

In 1799 he joined the Revolutionary party in Italy, was thrown into prison, and but for the intercession of the Russian Ambassador would have been executed. Upon his release he took refuge at Venice, where he died.

He composed over a hundred operas, many of which still hold the stage.

CLOOTZ (surnamed ANACHARSIS), Jean Baptiste, Baron de.

He was educated in Paris, possessed considerable natural intelligence, but was led astray by the violent excitability of his nature. He had confused dreams of social regeneration, and declared that his life was to be devoted to the reformation of the world.

He inherited a vast fortune, renounced his title of baron, taking the romantic name of Anacharsis, travelled over Germany, Italy and England, preaching his extraordinary doctrines, and spending money with unbridled extravagance.

The French Revolution filled him with delirious joy; it appeared to realise all his mad projects. On June 19, 1790, he presented himself at the bar of the Assembly to read an address in which he requested that all strangers residing in Paris might be admitted to the Grand Federation which was to take place on July 14 of the same year. He called himself “the Ambassador of Humanity” to France, and gave large sums to the “nation” for the fitting out of a regiment “to fight in the holy war against tyranny.”

The events of August 10 seem to have shaken Clootz’s reason. Not content with attacking all the kings and princes of the earth, he delivered a violent tirade against the Almighty, declaring himself the personal enemy of God. He publicly abjured all religion. He complimented the Convention upon their victories near the Rhine, and requested the members to put prices upon the heads of the Duke of Brunswick and the King of Prussia. A decree of August 20, 1792, having granted him the title of citizen, he repaired to the Bar of the Assembly and delivered a long speech of thanks, and in the praise of regicide. After he became a member of the Convention he wearied his co-Deputies by long rambling speeches. He voted for the death of the King “in the name of the whole generation of mankind,” adding, “he personally condemned Frederick William of Prussia to death.”

Robespierre was his secret enemy, and by his (Robespierre’s) influence Clootz was excluded from the club of the Jacobins and arrested, the only accusation against him being that he was rich and of noble birth. Clootz was condemned to death with his supposed accomplices. He received his sentence with calmness, and passed his remaining hours preaching materialism to his fellow victims. At the scaffold he requested permission to suffer last, as he wished to make some observations while watching the heads of his companions fall.

He wrote several books, as strange in their contents as was his own character.

CONDORCET, Jean Antoine Nicolas de Carinton, Marquis de.

A member of a very ancient and noble family: being her only surviving son, his mother devoted him to the Virgin, making him wear girl’s clothes until the age of eleven.

He became one of the most illustrious mathematicians and philosophers of France. He was not quite twenty-two when he presented his celebrated essay, “Sur le calcul intégral” before the Academy. He was elected member of the Academy of Science after composing an eulogy on the death of La Fontaine in 1771.

During the next fifteen years he published many books of historical and philosophical interest.

Turgot inspired Condorcet with a taste for political economy.

In 1789, notwithstanding his great position in the world of literature and politics, Condorcet was not elected a member of the States-General. But in 1791 he was a Deputy for Paris in the second Assembly. He voted against the execution of Louis XVI.

Condorcet was shortly after denounced as an Academician, a conspirator, and an enemy of the people. He was also accused of having attacked the “sublime efforts of the Committee of Public Safety,” and on October 3 the Convention ordered his arrest. For a time various friends concealed the illustrious refugee in their houses, but he was obliged to fly on April 6, 1794, from his last hiding-place. Hunger drove him into a baker’s shop to buy bread, where the whiteness of his hands, the fineness of his linen, and the fact that he was carrying a volume of Horace excited suspicion, and he was arrested. He committed suicide the same night in prison, swallowing poison contained in a ring. He was fifty years of age.

Condorcet was one of the most illustrious of Frenchmen, a true friend of liberty, a gentleman, an honest man, an elegant speaker, a brilliant writer, and a distinguished geometrician; he fell a victim, with many others almost equally distinguished, to the fury of those revolutionary demagogues who deprived France of most of the benefits she might have received from the Revolution of 1789.

CONDÉ, Prince Louis Joseph de Bourbon.

The son of that Duke de Bourbon (afterwards Prince de Condé) who succeeded the Regent Duke of Orleans as Prime Minister to Louis XV. This Prince died in 1739, when his only son was three years of age.

From his earliest childhood the young Prince de Condé was devoted to military studies. His guardian, the Count de Charolais, gave him an excellent general education. The Prince made a good classical scholar, and through life was fond of making quotations of Greek and Latin authors. He wrote an admirable history of the life of his ancestor, the great Condé.

During the Seven Years War he showed military genius and personal courage, and the victory of Johannesburg was principally due to his efforts (1762). He married at the age of seventeen Mlle. de Soubise, by whom he had a son and a daughter. She died when her husband was twenty-seven and she but twenty-five years old.

His disposition was noble and generous, and his political views distinctly liberal. He violently opposed the suggestions of Count St. Germain (the War Minister) that Russian discipline, including the caning of soldiers, should be introduced into the French army. Deserving officers, not of noble birth, found in him a friend and protector, as he used his influence to assist their promotion.

The Prince de Condé spent twenty years of his life in embellishing and improving his magnificent residence at Chantilly and the surrounding domain. Here he entertained the German Emperor, Joseph II., the Emperor Paul, when Grand Duke Cesarovitch, Gustavus, King of Sweden, the Duke of Brunswick, and many other potentates. He was a generous landlord and a public benefactor during the famine (1775); he bought up, at any and every price, all the grain he could possibly obtain, this corn being re-sold to the people at the usual price given in prosperous years for wheat.

Governor of Burgundy, that province owed to his efforts new roads and bridges, the encouragement of local art, and the foundation of useful and literary institutions. In 1787, as President of the Assembly of Notables, his discourses were in favour of order, economy and reform. Nevertheless, he was one of the first objects of attack by the Revolutionary party, and menaced on every side. Very shortly after the destruction of the Bastille he departed with his family from France. He went first to Austrian Flanders, and later to Turin, where he helped to combine the movement which brought about the counter revolution in Lyons and Southern France. He was chosen to command the body of French noblemen and gentlemen known as L’armée du Rhin or Des Emigrés.

A decree of the Assembly, 1791, deprived him of an annuity of £24,000 a year (granted by the State to the House of Condé in exchange for the territory of Clemontain). His property at Chantilly was confiscated, and, as he was without resources, he sold all his plate, diamonds and jewels.

When the civil war began he commanded a body of five thousand men. At the close of the first campaign he possessed no funds beyond a sum of money the Empress Catherine sent him as a present. Shortly after this he entered regularly into the service of the Emperor of Austria and received the pay of an ordinary general.

In the campaign of 1793 the Prince de Condé performed many brilliant feats of strategy, entering Alsace and occupying Berstein; the enemy drove his troops to Hagenau, and he marched on foot at the head of his regiment and retook Berstein by a bayonet charge. During the two following campaigns, Condé’s army was occupied only in guarding the Rhine. He suffered from the jealousy and malevolence of the Austrian commanders, and was supplied with bad provisions and spoilt flour; but the Prince ordered his table to be served with similar bread to that of the soldiers.

During the whole of this time (in 1795) Condé was negotiating with Pichegru, who commanded the Republican army on the opposite bank of the Rhine. They agreed that Condé should pass over the Rhine with his army and join Pichegru; they were to march jointly on Paris and restore the monarchy. The Prince, being subordinate to the Austrian Commander-in-Chief, Werhmer, considered it a point of honour to communicate this scheme to his superior officer. The Cabinet of Vienna refused to assent to Condé’s arrangement with the Republican general, unless Strasburg and the other Alsatian fortresses were occupied by the Imperial troops. The Prince refused his consent, and Pichegru, whose first condition had been “no Austrian soldier shall set his foot on French soil,” naturally refused to entertain the proposal for an instant. The project was, therefore, abandoned.

The forces of Condé, consisting of 10,000 men, were now an integral part of the regular Austrian army. The passage of Moreau over the Rhine caused the retreat of the Austrians, and although Condé and his troops invariably distinguished themselves, and at the battle of Biberach saved the Austrian army from a crushing defeat, the advance of Moreau was never seriously checked.

After the peace of Campo-Formio in the following year, Condé and his remaining followers took service under Paul I. of Russia. In 1799 Paul abandoned the Austrian alliance, and made peace with France; the army of the Emigrés then passed over to the English. Condé fought in Bavaria and defended the passage of the Inn. But after the battle of Hohenlinden the whole of his remaining forces were disbanded. In 1801 the Prince joined his son, the Duke de Bourbon, in England, the British Government providing them with a small allowance.

Condé settled in the ancient abbey of Malmesbury, where he found a devoted companion in his second wife, the Dowager Princess of Monaco. In 1804 the news reached him of the assassination of his grandson, the Duke d’Enghien, the last male heir of his race. In 1813 he lost his wife, at the very moment when his long and cruel exile was about to terminate.

He landed at Calais with Louis XVIII. in May 1814. Notwithstanding his great age (he was nearly eighty) he was the only member of the royal family who did not instantly attempt flight from Paris on the return of Napoleon from Elba.

“We should fight,” he cried, as the carriage in which he had been forcibly seated was bearing him away towards the frontier.

On his return after Waterloo he spent the remaining five years of his life at the Palais Bourbon (now the Chamber of the French Legislature) and at a small château at Chantilly, the last relic of its ancient splendour.

He died in Paris, aged eighty two, and was, by order of Louis XVIII., buried at St. Denis, in the vault of the Kings of France.

DANTON, George Jacques.