VOLUME IV SLICE II Bohemia to Borgia, Francis (continued 7)
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Napoleon was equally dissatisfied with his brother’s conduct as lieutenant-general of France, while he himself was conducting the campaign of 1814 in the east of France. On the 30th of March, Joseph empowered Marmont to make a truce with the assailants of Paris if they should be in overpowering strength. On the surrender of the capital Joseph at once retired. The part which he played during the Hundred Days (1815) was also insignificant. It is strange that, four days after Waterloo, Napoleon should have urged him to inspirit the Chamber of Deputies with a view to a national resistance (Lettres nouvelles de Napoléon). In point of fact Joseph did little beyond seeking to further the emperor’s plans of escape to America. After the surrender of his brother to the captain of H.M.S. “Bellerophon” at Rochefort, Joseph went to the United States. Settling in Bordentown, New Jersey, he adopted the title of comte de Survilliers, and sought to promote plans for the rescue of his brother from St Helena. In 1830 he pleaded, but unsuccessfully, for the recognition of the claims of the duke of Reichstadt (king of Rome) to the French throne. He afterwards visited England, and for a time resided at Genoa and Florence. In the latter city, the cradle of his race, he died on the 28th of July 1844. In person he somewhat resembled Napoleon, but utterly lacked his strength and energy. He was fitted for an embassy or judgeship, but was too mild, supine and luxurious for the tasks thrust upon him by his brother. Yet his correspondence and memoirs prove that he retained for Napoleon warm feelings of affection.
Of the many works dealing with Joseph Bonaparte we may cite Baron A. du Casse, Mémoires et correspondance politique et militaire du roi Joseph (10 vols., Paris, 1854), and Les Rois frères de Napoléon (1883); J.S.C. Abbott, History of Joseph Bonaparte (New York, 1869); G. Bertin, Joseph Bonaparte in America; Joseph Bonaparte jugé par ses contemporains (anon.); the Memoirs of Count Miot de Melito (translation, edited by General Fleischmann, 2 vols., 1881); R.M. Johnston, The Napoleonic Empire in Southern Italy (2 vols., with an excellent bibliography, London, 1904); Correspondence of Napoleon with Joseph Bonaparte (2 vols., New York, 1856); Baron A. du Casse, Histoire des ... traités de Mortfontaine, de Lunéville et d’Amiens, &c. (1855-1857); F. Masson, Napoléon et sa famille (4 vols., Paris, 1889-1900).
II. Lucien (1775-1840), prince of Canino, was born at Ajaccio on the 21st of May 1775. He followed his elder brothers to the schools of Autun and Brienne. At that time he wished to enter the French army, but, being debarred 2. Lucien Bonaparte by defective sight, was destined for the church, and with this aim in view went to the seminary at Aix in Provence (1786). His excitable and volatile disposition agreed ill with the discipline of the place, and on the outbreak of the Revolution in 1789 he eagerly espoused the democratic and anti-clerical movement then sweeping over France. On returning to Corsica he became the leading speaker in the Jacobin club at Ajaccio. Pushing even Napoleon to more decided action, Lucien urged his brothers to break with Paoli, the leader of the more conservative party, which sought to ally itself with England as against the regicide republic of France. He headed a Corsican deputation which went to France in order to denounce Paoli and to solicit aid for the democrats; but, on the Paolists gaining the upper hand, the Bonapartes left the island and joined Lucien at Toulon. In the south of France he worked hard for the Jacobinical cause, and figured as “Brutus” in the Jacobin club of the small town of St Maximin (then renamed Marathon). There on the 4th of May 1794 he married Mlle Catherine Boyer, though he was a minor and had not the consent of his family—an act which brought him into a state almost approaching disgrace and penury. The coup d’état of Thermidor (July 28, 1794) compelled the young disciple of Robespierre hurriedly to leave St Maximin, and to accept a small post at St Chamans. There he was arrested and imprisoned for a time until Napoleon’s influence procured his release, and further gained for him a post as commissioner in the French army campaigning in Germany. Lucien soon conceived a dislike for a duty which opened up no vista for his powers of oratory and political intrigue, and repaired to Corsica. In the hope of being elected a deputy of the island, he refused an appointment offered by Napoleon in the army of Egypt in 1798. His hopes were fulfilled, and in 1798 he entered the Council of Five Hundred at Paris. There his vivacious eloquence brought him into prominence, and he was president of that body on the eventful day of the 19th of Brumaire (November 10) 1799, when Napoleon overthrew the national councils of France at the palace of St Cloud. The refusal of Lucien to put the vote of outlawry, for which the majority of the council clamoured, his opportune closing of the sitting, and his appeal to the soldiers outside to disperse les représentants du poignard, turned the scale in favour of his brother.
By a strange irony this event, the chief event of Lucien’s life, was fatal to the cause of democracy of which he had been the most eager exponent. In one of his earlier letters to his brother Joseph, Lucien stated that he had detected in Napoleon “an ambition not altogether egotistic but which surpassed his love for the general weal; ... in case of a counter-revolution he would try to ride on the crest of events.” Napoleon having by his help triumphed over parliamentary institutions in France, Lucien’s suspicion of his brother became a dominant feeling; and the relations between them became strained during the period of the consulate (1799-1804). He accepted office as minister of the interior, but was soon deprived of it owing to political and personal differences with the First Consul. In order to soften the blow, Napoleon appointed him ambassador to the court of Madrid (November 1800). There again Lucien displeased his brother. France and Spain were then about to partition Portugal, and the Spanish forces were beginning to invade that land, when the court of Lisbon succeeded, owing (it is said) to the free use of bribes, in inducing Godoy, the Spanish minister, and Lucien Bonaparte to sign the preliminaries of peace on the 6th of June 1801 at Badajoz. The First Consul, finding his plans of seizing Lisbon frustrated, remonstrated with his brother, who thereupon resigned his post, and returned to Paris, there taking part in the opposition which the Tribunate offered to some of Napoleon’s schemes. Lucien’s next proceeding completed the breach between the two brothers. His wife had died in 1800; he became enamoured of a Mme Jouberthou in the early summer of 1802, made her his mistress, and finally, despite the express prohibition of the First Consul, secretly married her at his residence of Plessis (on October 23, 1803). At that time Napoleon was pressing Lucien for important reasons of state to marry the widow of the king of Etruria, and on hearing of his brother’s action he ordered him to leave French territory. Lucien departed for Italy with his wife and infant son, after annoying Napoleon by bestowing on her publicly the name of Bonaparte. He also charged Joseph never to try to reconcile Napoleon to him.
For some years he lived in Italy, chiefly at Rome, showing marked hostility to the emperor. In December 1807 the latter sought to come to an arrangement by which Lucien would take his place as a French prince, provided that he would annul his marriage. This step Lucien refused to take; and after residing for some time at his estate of Canino, from which he took the papal title of prince of Canino, he left for America. Captured by a British ship, he was taken to Malta and thence to England, where he resided under some measure of surveillance up to the peace of 1814. Returning to Rome, he offered Napoleon his help during the Hundred Days (1815), stood by his side at the “Champ de Mai” at Paris, and was the last to defend his prerogatives at the time of his second abdication. He spent the rest of his life in Italy, and died at Rome on the 29th of June 1840. His family comprised four sons and six daughters. He wrote an epic, Charlemagne, ou l’Église délivreé (2 vols., 1814), also La Vérité sur les Cent Jours and Memoirs, which were not completed.
For sources see T. Jung, Lucien Bonaparte et ses mémoires (3 vols., Paris, 1882-1883); an anonymous work, Le Prince Lucien Bonaparte et sa famille (Paris, 1888); F. Masson, Napoléon et sa famille (4 vols., Paris, 1897-1900), and H. Houssaye, ”1815” (3 vols., Paris, 1899-1905).
III. Marianne Elisa (1777-1820) was born at Ajaccio on the 3rd of January 1777. Owing to the efforts of her brothers she entered the establishment of St Cyr near Paris as a “king’s scholar.” On its disruption by the 3. Elisa. revolutionists in 1792 Napoleon took charge of her and brought her back to Ajaccio. She shared the fortunes of the family in the south of France, and on the 5th of May 1797 married Felix Bacciochi, a well-connected Corsican. In 1805, after the foundation of the French empire, Napoleon bestowed upon her the principality of Piombino and shortly afterwards Lucca; in 1808 her importunities gained for her the grand duchy of Tuscany. Bacciochi being almost a nullity, her pride and ability had a great influence on the administration and on Italian affairs in general. Her relations with Napoleon were frequently strained; and in 1813-1814 she abetted Murat in his enterprises (see Murat). After her brother’s fall she retired, with the title of countess of Compignano, first to Bologna and afterwards to Santo Andrea near Trieste, where she died on the 6th of August 1820.
See J. Turquan, Les Sœurs de Napoléon (Paris, 1896); P. Marmothan, Élisa Bonaparte (Paris, 1898); E. Rodocanachi, Élisa Bonaparte en Italie (Paris, 1900); F. Masson, Napoléon et sa famille (4 vols., Paris, 1897-1900).
IV. Louis (1778-1846) was born at Ajaccio on the 2nd of September 1778. His elder brother Napoleon supervised his education with much care, gaining for him scholarships to the royal military schools of France, and during 4. Louis Bonaparte. the time when the elder brother was a lieutenant in garrison at Auxonne Louis shared his scanty fare. In 1795 Napoleon procured for him admission to the military school at Châlons, and wrote thus of the boy:—“I am very pleased with Louis; he fulfils my hopes; intelligence, warmth, good health, talent, good address, kindness—he possesses all these qualities.” Louis went through the Italian campaign of 1796-97 with Napoleon and acted as his aide-de-camp in Egypt in 1798-99. In 1802 the First Consul married him to Hortense Beauharnais, a forced union which led to most deplorable results. In 1804 Louis was raised to the rank of general, and entered the council of state in order to perfect his knowledge of administrative affairs. In the next year he became governor of Paris and undertook various military and administrative duties.
After the victory of Austerlitz (December 2, 1805) Napoleon began to plan the formation of a ring of states surrounding, and in close alliance with, the French empire. He destined Louis for the throne of Holland, and proclaimed him king of that country on the 6th of June 1806. From the first the emperor reproached him with being too easy with his subjects and with courting popularity too much. The increasing rigour of the continental system brought the two brothers to an open rupture. Their relations were embittered by a violent jealousy which Louis conceived against his wife. In 1808 the emperor offered Louis the throne of Spain then vacant; but on Louis refusing to accept it the honour went to Joseph. The dispute between Louis and the emperor continued. In the latter part of 1809 Napoleon virtually resolved to annex Holland, in order to stop the trade which the Dutch secretly carried on with England. At the close of the year Louis went to Paris, partly in order to procure a divorce from Hortense and partly to gain better terms for Holland. He failed in both respects. In January 1810 Napoleon annexed the island of Walcheren, alleging that Louis had not done his share in defending the interests of France at the time of the British Walcheren expedition (1809). The French troops also occupied Breda and Bergen-op-Zoom. Louis gave way on all the points in dispute; but his acquiescence only postponed the crisis. After the collapse of negotiations with Great Britain in the spring of 1810, the emperor again pressed Louis hard, and finally sent French troops against the Dutch capital. Thereupon Louis, despairing of offering resistance, fled from his kingdom and finally settled at Töplitz in Bohemia. On the 9th of July 1810 Napoleon annexed Holland to the French empire. Louis spent the rest of his life separated from his wife, and in 1815 gained the custody of his elder son. He lived chiefly at Rome, concerning himself with literary and philosophic studies and with the fortunes of his sons. Their devotion to the national and democratic cause in Italy in 1830-1831 gave him much pleasure, which was overclouded by the death of the elder, Napoleon Louis, in the spring campaign of 1831 in the Romagna. The failure of his other son, Charles Louis Napoleon (afterwards Napoleon III.), to wrest the French crown from Louis Philippe by the attempts at Strassburg and Boulogne also caused him much disappointment. He died on the 25th of July 1846 and was buried at St Leu. Under more favourable conditions Louis would have gained a name for kindness and philanthropy, proofs of which did indeed appear during his reign in Holland and gained him the esteem of his subjects; but his morbid sensitiveness served to embitter his relations both of a domestic and of a political nature and to sour his own disposition. His literary works are unimportant. His sons were Napoleon Charles (1802-1807), Napoleon Louis (1804-1831), and Charles Louis Napoleon (1808-1873), afterwards emperor of the French as Napoleon III. (q.v.).
The chief works on the life and reign of Louis are le comte de Saint-Leu, Documents historiques et reflexions sur le gouvernement de Hollande 3 vols., 2nd ed., Paris, 1820); F. Rocquain, Napoleon Ier et le Roi Louis, d’après les documents conservés aux archives nationales (Paris, 1875); Baron A. du Casse, Les Rois frères de Napoléon (Paris, 1883); A Garnier, La Cour de Hollande sous le règne de Louis Bonaparte, par un auditeur (Paris and Amsterdam, 1823); T. Jorissen, Napoléon 1′er et le roi de Hollande (1806-1813) d’après des documents authentiques et inedits (Paris and The Hague, 1868); V. Loosjes, Louis Bonaparte, Koning van Holland (Amsterdam, 1888); L. Wichers, De Regeering van Koning Lodewijk Napoleon (1806-1810) (Utrecht, 1892); F. Masson, Napoléon et sa famille (4 vols., Paris, 1897-1900).
V. Marie Pauline (1780-1825), the gayest and most beautiful member of the family, was born at Ajaccio on the 20th October 1780. At seventeen years of age she married General Leclerc, a staff officer of Napoleon, and 5. Pauline. accompanied him to St Domingo, where he died of yellow fever in 1802. Returning to Paris she espoused Prince Camillo Borghese (August 23, 1803) and went to reside with him in Rome. She soon tired of him, returned to Paris and gratified her whims in ways that caused some scandal. In 1806 she received the title of duchess of Guastalla. Her offhand treatment of the new empress, Marie Louise, in 1810 led to her removal from court. Nevertheless in 1814 she repaired with “Madame Mère” to Elba, and is said to have expressed a wish to share Napoleon’s exile in St Helena. She died in 1825 of cancer. Canova’s statue of her as Venus reclining on a couch is well known.
See J. Turquan, Les Sœurs de Napoléon: les princesses Élisa, Pauline et Caroline (Paris, 1896); F. Masson, Napoléon et sa famille (4 vols., Paris, 1897-1900).
VI. Maria Annunciata Caroline (1782-1839) was born at Ajaccio on the 25th of March 1782. Early in 1800 she married Joachim Murat, whose interests she afterwards advanced with all the power of her ambitious and 6. Caroline Murat. intriguing nature. He became governor of Paris, marshal of France (1804), grand duke of Berg and of Cleves (1806), lieutenant of the emperor in Spain (1808), and early in the summer of that year king of Naples. The distance of this capital from Paris displeased Caroline; her relations with Napoleon became strained, and she associated herself with the equivocal movements of her husband in 1814-1815. Before his tragic end at Pizzo on the 13th of October 1815, she had retired to Austrian territory and was placed under some measure of restraint. Finally she lived at Trieste with her sister Elisa. She died on the 18th of May 1839.
See J. Turquan, Caroline Murat, reine de Naples (Paris, 1899); F. Masson, Napoléon et sa famille (4 vols., Paris, 1897-1900). See also under Murat, Joachim.
VII. Jerome (1784-1860) was born at Ajaccio on the 15th of November 1784; he shared the fortunes of the family in the early years of the French Revolution, was then educated at Juilly and was called to the side of his 7. Jerome Bonaparte. brother, then First Consul of France, in 1800. Many stories are told illustrating his impetuous but affectionate nature. While in the Consular Guard he fought a duel with the younger brother of General Davout and was wounded. Soon afterwards he was transferred to the navy and cruised in the West Indies, until, when blockaded by a British cruiser, he left his ship and travelled through the United States. At Baltimore he fell in love with Miss Elizabeth Patterson, and, though a minor, married her. This disregard of discipline and of the laws of France greatly annoyed Napoleon; and when in 1805 Jerome brought his wife to Europe, the emperor ordered her to be excluded from his states. Jerome vainly sought to bend his brother’s will in an interview at Alexandria. In May 1805 he received command of a small squadron in the Mediterranean, while his wife proceeded to Camberwell, where she gave birth to a son. In November Jerome sailed in a squadron commanded by Admiral Willaumez, which was to ravage the West Indies; but it was scattered by a storm. After damaging British commerce in the North Atlantic, Jerome reached France with his ship in safety in August 1806. Napoleon made him a prince of France, and gave him command of a division of South Germans in the campaign of 1806. After Jena, Jerome received the surrender of several Prussian towns. An imperial decree having annulled the Patterson marriage, the emperor united Jerome to the princess Catherine of Württemberg; and in pursuance of the terms of the treaty of Tilsit (July 7, 1807) raised him to the throne of the new kingdom of Westphalia. There Jerome, though frequently rebuked by the emperor, displayed his fondness for luxury, indulged in numerous amours and ran deeply into debt. In some respects his kingdom benefited by the connexion with France. Feudalism was abolished; the Code Napoléon was introduced; the Jews were freed from repressive laws; and education received some impulse in its higher departments. But the unpopularity of Jerome’s rule was shown by the part taken by the peasants in the abortive rising headed by Baron Wilhelm von Dörnberg and other Westphalian officers in April 1809. Despite heavy taxation, the state debt increased greatly; and the sending of a contingent to Russia in 1812 brought the state to the verge of bankruptcy. In the early part of that campaign Jerome was entrusted with an important movement which might have brought the southern Russian army into grave danger; on his failure (which was probably due to his lack of energy) the emperor promptly subjected him to the control of Marshal Davout, and Jerome returned to Cassel. In 1813, on the fall of the Napoleonic régime in Germany, Jerome retired to France, and in 1814 spent some time in Switzerland and at Trieste. Returning to France in 1815, he commanded a division on the French left wing at Waterloo and attacked Hougomont with great pertinacity. On Napoleon’s second abdication Jerome proceeded to Württemberg, was threatened with arrest unless he gave up his wife and child, and was kept under surveillance at Goppingen; finally he was allowed to proceed to Augsburg, and thereafter resided at Trieste, or in Italy or Switzerland. His consort died in 1835. He returned to France in 1847, and after the rise of Louis Napoleon to power, became successively governor of the Invalides, marshal of France and president of the senate. He died on the 24th of June 1860. His children were Jerome Napoleon (see XIV.), Mathilde (see XII.) and Napoleon Joseph Charles Paul (born in 1822); the last was afterwards known as Prince Napoleon (see XI. below) and finally became the heir to the fortunes of the Napoleonic dynasty.
The chief works relating to Jerome Bonaparte are: Baron Albert du Casse, Mémoires et correspondance du roi Jérôme et de la reine Cathérine (7 vols., Paris, 1861-1866) and Les Rois frères de Napoléon (1883); M.M. Kaisenberg, Konig Jerome Napoleon; W.T.R. Saffell, The Bonaparte-Patterson Marriage; August von Schlossberger, Briefwechsel der Konigin Katharina und des Konigs Jerome von Westfalen mit Konig Friedrich von Württemberg (Stuttgart, 1886-1887), supplemented by du Casse in Corresp. inédite de la reine Cathérine de Westphalie (Paris, 1888-1893); A. Martinet, Jérôme Napoléon, roi de Westfalie (Paris, 1902); P.W. Sergeant, The Burlesque Napoleon (1905); F. Masson, Napoléon et sa famille (4 vols., Paris, 1897-1900).
(J. Hl. R.)
The fortunes of the Bonaparte family may be further followed under the later biographies of its leading members, mainly descendants of Lucien (II. above) and Jerome (VII. above).
VIII. Charles Lucien Jules Laurent (1803-1857), prince of Canino, son of Lucien Bonaparte, was a scientist rather than a politician. He married his cousin, Zénaïde Bonaparte, daughter of Joseph, in 1822. At the age of twenty-two Descendants of Lucien: 8. Charles. he began the publication of an American Ornithology (4 vols., Philadelphia, 1825-1833), which established his scientific reputation. A series of other works in zoology followed: Iconographia della fauna Italica (3 vols., Rome, 1832-1841), Catalogo metodico degli uccelli europei (1 vol., Bologna, 1842), Catalogo metodico dei pesci europei (1 vol., Naples, 1845, 4to), Catalogo metodico dei mammiferi europei (1 vol., Milan, 1845), Telachorum tabula analytica (Neufchatel, 1838). He was elected honorary member of the academy of Upsala in 1833, of that of Berlin in 1843, and correspondent of the Institute of France in 1844. Towards 1847 he took part in the political agitation in Italy, and presided over scientific congresses, notably at Venice, where he declared himself in favour of the independence of Italy and the expulsion of the Austrians. He entered the Junto of Rome in 1848 and was elected deputy by Viterbo to the national assembly. The failure of the revolution forced him to leave Italy in July 1849. He gained Holland, then France, where he turned again to science. His principal works were, Conspectus systematis ornithologiae, mastozologiae, erpetologiae et amphibologiae, Ichthyologiae (Leiden, 1850), Tableau des oiseaux-mouches (Paris, 1854), Ornithologie fossile (Paris, 1858). Eight children survived him: Joseph Lucien Charles Napoleon, prince of Canino (1824-1865), who died without heirs; Lucien Louis Joseph Napoleon, born in 1828, who took holy orders in 1853 and became a cardinal in 1868; Julie Charlotte Zénaïde Pauline Laetitia Désirée Bartholomée, who married the marquis of Roccagiovine; Charlotte Honorine Josephine, who married Count Primoli; Marie Désirée Eugénie Josephine Philomène, who married the count Campello; Auguste Amélie Maximilienne Jacqueline, who married Count Gabrielli; Napoleon Charles Grégoire Jacques Philippe, born in 1839, who married the princess Ruspoli, by whom he had two daughters; and Bathilde Aloyse Léonie, who married the comte de Cambacérès. The branch is now extinct.
IX. Louis Lucien (1813-1891), son of Lucien Bonaparte, was born at Thorngrove, Worcestershire, England, on the 4th of January 1813. He passed his youth in England, not going to France until 1848, when, after the revolution, 9. Louis Lucien. he was elected deputy for Corsica on the 28th of November 1848; his election having been invalidated, he was returned as deputy for the Seine in June 1849. He sat in the right of the Legislative Assembly, but had no direct part in the coup d’état of his cousin on the 2nd of December 1851. Napoleon III. named him senator and prince, but he took hardly any part in politics during the Second Empire, and after the proclamation of the Third Republic in 1870 he withdrew to England. There he busied himself with philology, and published notably some works on the Basque language: Grammaire basque, Remarques sur plusieurs assertions concernant la langue basque (1876), Observations sur le basque Fontarabie (1878). He died on the 3rd of November 1891, leaving no children.
X. Pierre Napoleon (1815-1881), son of Lucien Bonaparte, was born at Rome on the 12th of September 1815. He began his life of adventure at the age of fifteen, joining the insurrectionary bands in the Romagna (1830-1831); 10. Pierre. was then in the United States, where he went to join his uncle Joseph, and in Colombia with General Santander (1832). Returning to Rome he was taken prisoner by order of the pope (1835-1836). He finally took refuge in England. At the revolution of 1848 he returned to France and was elected deputy for Corsica to the Constituent Assembly. He declared himself an out-and-out republican and voted even with the socialists. He pronounced himself in favour of the national workshops and against the loi Falloux. His attitude contributed greatly to give popular confidence to his cousin Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III.), of whose coup d’état on the 2nd of December 1851 he disapproved; but he was soon reconciled to the emperor, and accepted the title of prince. The republicans at once abandoned him. From that time on he led a debauched life, and lost all political importance. He turned to literature and published some mediocre poems. In January 1870 a violent incident brought him again into prominence. As the result of a controversy with Paschal Grousset, the latter sent him two journalists to provoke him to a duel. Pierre Bonaparte took them personally to account, and during a violent discussion he drew his revolver and killed one of them, Victor Noir. This crime greatly excited the republican press, which demanded his trial. The High Court acquitted him, and criticism then fell upon the government. Pierre Bonaparte died in obscurity at Versailles on the 7th of April 1881. He had married the daughter of a Paris working-man, Justine Eleanore Ruffin, by whom he had, before his marriage, two children: (1) Roland Napoleon, born on the 19th of May 1858, who entered the army, was excluded from it in 1886, and then devoted himself to geography and scientific explorations; (2) Jeanne, wife of the marquis de Vence.
XI. Napoleon Joseph Charles Paul, commonly known as Prince Napoleon, or by the sobriquet of “Plon-Plon,”1 (1822-1891), was the second son of Jerome Bonaparte, king of Westphalia, by his wife Catherine, princess Descendants of Jerome: 11. Prince Napoleon (Plon-Plon). of Württemberg, and was born at Trieste on the 9th of September 1822. He soon rendered himself popular by his advanced democratic ideas, which he expressed on all possible occasions. After the French revolution of 1848 he was elected to the National Assembly as a representative of Corsica, and (his elder brother, Jerome Napoleon Charles, dying in 1847) assumed the name of Jerome. Notwithstanding his ostensible opposition to the coup d’état of 1851, he was designated, upon the establishment of the Empire, as successor to the throne if Napoleon III. should die childless, and received a liberal dotation, but was allowed no share in public affairs. Privately he professed himself the representative of the Napoleonic tradition in its democratic aspect, and associated mainly with men of advanced political opinions. At court he represented the Liberal party against the empress Eugénie. In 1854 he took part in the Crimean campaign as general of division. His conduct at the battle of the Alma occasioned imputations upon his personal courage, but they seem to have been entirely groundless. Returning to France he undertook the chief direction of the National Exhibition of 1855, in which he manifested great capacity. In 1858 he was appointed minister for the Colonies and Algeria, and his administration aroused great hopes, but his activity was diverted into a different channel by his sudden marriage in January 1859 with the princess Marie Clotilde of Savoy, daughter of Victor Emmanuel, a prelude to the war for the liberation of Italy. In this war Prince Napoleon commanded the French corps that occupied Tuscany, and it was expected that he would become ruler of the principality, but he refused to exert any pressure upon the inhabitants, who preferred union with the Italian kingdom. The next few years were chiefly distinguished by remarkable speeches which displayed the prince in the unexpected character of a great orator. Unfortunately his indiscretion equalled his eloquence: one speech (1861) sent him to America to avoid a duel with the duke d’Aumale; another (1865), in which he justly but intemperately protested against the Mexican expedition, cost him all his official dignities. Nevertheless he was influential in effecting the reform by which in 1869 it was sought to reconcile the Empire with Liberal principles. The fatal war of 1870 was resolved upon during his absence in Norway, and was strongly condemned by him. After the first disasters he undertook an ineffectual mission to Italy to implore the aid of his father-in-law; and after the fall of the Empire lived in comparative retirement until in 1879 the death of Napoleon III.’s son, the Prince Imperial (see XIII. below), made him direct heir to the Napoleonic succession. His part as imperial pretender was unfortunate and inglorious: his democratic opinions were unacceptable to the imperial party, and before his death he was virtually deposed in favour of his son Prince Napoleon Victor, who, supported by Paul de Cassagnac and others, openly declared himself a candidate for the throne in 1884. He died at Rome on the 17th of March 1891. In the character of his intellect, as in personal appearance, he bore an extraordinary resemblance to the first Napoleon, possessing the same marvellous lucidity of insight, and the same gift of infallibly distinguishing the essential from the non-essential. He was a warm friend of literature and art, and in a private station would have achieved high distinction as a man of letters.
His eldest son, Prince Napoleon Victor Jérome Frédéric (b. 1862), became at his death the recognized head of the French Bonapartist party. The second son, Prince Louis Napoleon, an officer in the Russian army, showed a steadier disposition, and was more favoured in some monarchist quarters; in 1906 he was made governor of the Caucasus.
XII. Mathilde Letitia Wilhelmine (1820-1904), daughter of Jerome, and sister of Prince Napoleon (XI.), was born at Trieste on the 20th of May 1820; after being almost betrothed to her cousin Louis Napoleon, in 1840 she 12. Mathilde. was married to Prince Anatole Demidov. His conduct, however, led to a separation within five years, and the tsar Nicholas compelled him to make Princess Mathilde a handsome allowance. After the election of Louis Napoleon to the presidency of the republic she took up her residence in Paris, and did the honours of the Élysée till his marriage. She continued to live in Paris, having great influence as a friend and patron of men of art and letters, till her death on the 2nd of January 1904.
XIII. Napoleon Eugene Louis Jean Joseph (1856-1879), Prince Imperial, only son of the emperor Napoleon III. and the empress Eugénie, was born at Paris on the 16th of March 1856. He was a delicate boy, but when the 13. Prince Imperial: son of Napoleon III. war of 1870 broke out his mother sent him to the army, to win popularity for him, and the government journals vaunted his bravery. After the first defeats he had to flee from France with the empress, and settled in England at Chislehurst, completing his military education at Woolwich. On the death of his father on the 9th of January 1873 the Imperialists proclaimed him Napoleon IV., and he became the official Pretender. He was naturally inactive, but he was influenced by his mother on the one hand, and by the Bonapartist leaders in France on the other. They thought that he should win his crown by military prestige, and he was persuaded to attach himself as a volunteer to the English expedition to Zululand in February 1879. It was a blunder to have allowed him to go, and the blunder ended in a tragedy, for while out on a reconnaissance with a few troopers they were surprised by Zulus, and the Prince Imperial was killed (June 1, 1879). His body was brought back to England, and buried at Chislehurst.
XIV. The Bonapartes of Baltimore are a branch of the family settled in America, descended from Jerome Bonaparte (VII.) by his union with Elizabeth (b. 1785), daughter of William Patterson, a Baltimore merchant, probably descended from the Robert Paterson who was the original of Sir Walter Scott’s “Old Mortality.” The marriage took place at Baltimore on the 24th of December 1803, but it was greatly disliked by Napoleon, who refused to recognize its legality. However, it was valid according to American law, and Pope Pius VII. refused to declare it void. Nevertheless Jerome was forced by his brother to separate himself from his wife, whom he had brought to Europe, and after a stay in England Madame Patterson, or Madame Bonaparte, as she was usually called, returned to Baltimore. She died in 1879. Jerome’s only child by this marriage was Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte (1805-1870), who was born in England, but resided chiefly in Baltimore, and is said to have shown a marked resemblance to his uncle, the great emperor. He was on good terms with Jerome, who for some time made him a large allowance, and father and son occasionally met. His elder son, also called Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte (1832-1893), entered the French army, with which he served in the Crimea and in Italy.
Charles Joseph Bonaparte (b. 1851), younger son of the first Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte, and a grandson of Jerome, king of Westphalia, attained a distinguished place in American politics. Born at Baltimore on the 9th of June 1851 and educated at Harvard University, he became a lawyer in 1874 and has been president of the National Municipal League and has filled other public positions. He was secretary of the navy in President Roosevelt’s cabinet from July 1905 to December 1906, and then attorney-general of the United States until March 1909.
1 Derived, it is supposed, from the nickname “Plomb-plomb,” or “Craint-plomb” (fear-lead), given him by his soldiers in the Crimea.
BONAR, HORATIUS (1808-1889), Scottish Presbyterian divine, was born in Edinburgh on the 19th of December 1808, and educated at the high school and university of his native city. After a term of mission work at Leith, he was appointed parish minister of Kelso in 1837, and at the Disruption of 1843 became minister of the newly formed Free Church, where he remained till 1866, when he went to the Chalmers memorial church, Edinburgh. He had in 1853 received the D.D. degree from Aberdeen University, and in 1883 he was moderator of the general assembly of his church. He died on the 31st of July 1889. Bonar was a prolific writer of religious literature, and edited several journals, including the Christian Treasury, the Presbyterian Review and the Quarterly Journal of Prophecy; but his best work was done in hymnology, and he published three series of Hymns of Faith and Hope between 1857 and 1866 (new ed., 1886). Nearly every modern hymnal contains perhaps a score of his hymns, including “Go, labour on,” “I heard the voice of Jesus say,” “Here, O my Lord, I see Thee face to face,” “When the weary, seeking rest.”
See Horatius Bonar, D.D., a Memorial (1889).
BONAVENTURA, SAINT (John of Fidanza), Franciscan theologian, was born in 1221 at Bagnarea in Tuscany. He was destined by his mother for the church, and is said to have received his cognomen of Bonaventura from St Francis of Assisi, who performed on him a miraculous cure. He entered the Franciscan order in 1243, and studied at Paris possibly under Alexander of Hales, and certainly under Alexander’s successor, John of Rochelle, to whose chair he succeeded in 1253. Three years earlier his fame had gained for him permission to read upon the Sentences, and in 1255 he received the degree of doctor. So high was his reputation that in the following year he was elected general of his order. It was by his orders that Roger Bacon was interdicted from lecturing at Oxford, and compelled to put himself under the surveillance of the order at Paris. He was instrumental in procuring the election of Gregory X., who rewarded him with the titles of cardinal and bishop of Albano, and insisted on his presence at the great council of Lyons in the year 1274. At this meeting he died.
Bonaventura’s character seems not unworthy of the eulogistic title, “Doctor Seraphicus,” bestowed on him by his contemporaries, and of the place assigned to him by Dante in his Paradiso. He was formally canonized in 1482 by Sixtus IV., and ranked as sixth among the great doctors of the church by Sixtus V. in 1587. His works, as arranged in the Lyons edition (7 vols., folio), consist of expositions and sermons, filling the first three volumes; of a commentary on the Sentences of Lombardus, in two volumes, celebrated among medieval theologians as incomparably the best exposition of the third part; and of minor treatises filling the remaining two volumes, and including a life of St Francis. The smaller works are the most important, and of them the best are the famous Itinerarium Mentis ad Deum, Breviloquium, De Reductione Artium ad Theologiam, Soliloquium, and De septem itineribus aeternitatis, in which most of what is individual in his teaching is contained.
In philosophy Bonaventura presents a marked contrast to his great contemporaries, Thomas Aquinas and Roger Bacon. While these may be taken as representing respectively physical science yet in its infancy, and Aristotelian scholasticism in its most perfect form, he brings before us the mystical and Platonizing mode of speculation which had already to some extent found expression in Hugo and Richard of St Victor, and in Bernard of Clairvaux. To him the purely intellectual element, though never absent, is of inferior interest when compared with the living power of the affections or the heart. He rejects the authority of Aristotle, to whose influence he ascribes much of the heretical tendency of the age, and some of whose cardinal doctrines—such as the eternity of the world—he combats vigorously. But the Platonism he received was Plato as understood by St Augustine, and as he had been handed down by the Alexandrian school and the author of the mystical works passing under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite. Bonaventura accepts as Platonic the theory that ideas do not exist in rerum natura, but as thoughts of the divine mind, according to which actual things were formed; and this conception has no slight influence upon his philosophy. Like all the great scholastic doctors he starts with the discussion of the relations between reason and faith. All the sciences are but the handmaids of theology; reason can discover some of the moral truths which form the groundwork of the Christian system, but others it can only receive and apprehend through divine illumination. In order to obtain this illumination the soul must employ the proper means, which are prayer, the exercise of the virtues, whereby it is rendered fit to accept the divine light, and meditation which may rise even to ecstatic union with God. The supreme end of life is such union, union in contemplation or intellect and in intense absorbing love; but it cannot be entirely reached in this life, and remains as a hope for futurity. The mind in contemplating God has three distinct aspects, stages or grades—the senses, giving empirical knowledge of what is without and discerning the traces (vestigia) of the divine in the world; the reason, which examines the soul itself, the image of the divine Being; and lastly, pure intellect (intelligentia), which, in a transcendent act, grasps the Being of the divine cause. To these three correspond the three kinds of theology—theologia symbolica, theologia propria and theologia mystica. Each stage is subdivided, for in contemplating the outer world we may use the senses or the imagination; we may rise to a knowledge of God per vestigia or in vestigiis. In the first case the three great properties of physical bodies—weight, number, measure,—in the second the division of created things into the classes of those that have merely physical existence, those that have life, and those that have thought, irresistibly lead us to conclude the power, wisdom and goodness of the Triune God. So in the second stage we may ascend to the knowledge of God, per imaginem, by reason, or in imagine, by the pure understanding (intellectus); in the one case the triple division—memory, understanding and will,—in the other the Christian virtues—faith, hope and charity,—leading again to the conception of a Trinity of divine qualities—eternity, truth and goodness. In the last stage we have first intelligentia, pure intellect, contemplating the essential being of God, and finding itself compelled by necessity of thought to hold absolute being as the first notion, for non-being cannot be conceived apart from being, of which it is but the privation. To this notion of absolute being, which is perfect and the greatest of all, objective existence must be ascribed. In its last and highest form of activity the mind rests in the contemplation of the infinite goodness of God, which is apprehended by means of the highest faculty, the apex mentis or synderesis. This spark of the divine illumination is common to all forms of mysticism, but Bonaventura adds to it peculiarly Christian elements. The complete yielding up of mind and heart to God is unattainable without divine grace, and nothing renders us so fit to receive this gift as the meditative and ascetic life of the cloister. The monastic life is the best means of grace.
Bonaventura, however, is not merely a meditative thinker, whose works may form good manuals of devotion; he is a dogmatic theologian of high rank, and on all the disputed questions of scholastic thought, such as universals, matter, the principle of individualism, or the intellectus agens, he gives weighty and well-reasoned decisions. He agrees with Albertus Magnus in regarding theology as a practical science; its truths, according to his view, are peculiarly adapted to influence the affections. He discusses very carefully the nature and meaning of the divine attributes; considers universals to be the ideal forms pre-existing in the divine mind according to which things were shaped; holds matter to be pure potentiality which receives individual being and determinateness from the formative power of God, acting according to the ideas; and finally maintains that the intellectus agens has no separate existence. On these and on many other points of scholastic philosophy the Seraphic Doctor exhibits a combination of subtilty and moderation which makes his works peculiarly valuable.
Editions.—7 vols., Rome, 1588-1596; 7 vols., Lyons, 1668; 13 vols., Venice, 1751 ff.; by A.C. Peltier, 15 vols., Paris, 1863 ff.; 10 vols., Rome, 1882-1892. K.J. Hefele edited the Breviloquium and the Itin. Mentis (3rd ed., Tübingen, 1862); two volumes of selections were issued by Alix in 1853-1856.
Literature.—W.A. Hollenberg, Studien zu Bonaventura (1862); F. Nitzsch, art. in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyk. für prot. Theol., where a list of monographs is given, to which add one by De Chévancé (1899).
(R. Ad.; X.)
BONCHAMPS, CHARLES MELCHIOR ARTUS, Marquis de (c. 1760-1793), Vendéan leader, was born at Jouverteil, Anjou. He gained his first military experience in the American War of Independence, and on his return to France was made a captain of grenadiers in the French army. He was a staunch upholder of the monarchy, and at the outbreak of the French Revolution resigned his command and retired to his château at St Florent. In the spring of 1793 he was chosen leader by the insurgents of the Vendée, and to his counsels may be attributed in great measure the success of the peasants’ arms. He was present at the taking of Bressuire, Thouars and Fontenay, at which last place he was wounded; but dissensions among their leaders weakened the insurgents, and at the bloody battle of Cholet (October 1793) the Vendéans sustained a severe defeat and Bonchamps was mortally wounded. He died the next day. It is said that his last act was the pardoning of five thousand republican prisoners, whom his troops had sworn to kill in revenge for his death. A statue of him by David d’Angers stands in the church of St Florent.
BOND, SIR EDWARD AUGUSTUS (1815-1898), English librarian, was born at Hanwell on the 31st of December 1815, the son of a schoolmaster. He was educated at Merchant Taylors’ school, and in 1832 obtained a post in the public record office. In 1838 he became an assistant in the manuscript department of the British Museum, where he attracted the notice of his chief, Sir Frederick Madden, the most eminent palaeographer of his day, and in 1852 he was made Egerton librarian. In 1856 he became assistant keeper of MSS., and in 1867 was promoted to the post of keeper. His work in reorganizing the manuscript department was of lasting value, and to him is due the classified catalogue of MSS., and the improved efficiency and punctuality of publication of the department. In 1878 he was appointed principal librarian. Under his supervision were erected the new buildings of the “White Wing,” which provide accommodation for prints, drawings, manuscripts and newspapers, and the purchase of the Stowe MSS. was concluded while he remained in office. He founded, in conjunction with Sir E. Maunde Thompson, the Palaeographical Society, and first made classical palaeography an exact science. He was made LL.D. of Cambridge in 1879, created C.B. in 1885, and K.C.B. the day before his death on the 2nd of January 1898. He was the editor of four volumes of facsimiles of Anglo-Saxon charters from 679 to the Conquest, The Speeches in the Trial of Warren Hastings (1859-1861), and a number of other interesting historic documents.
BOND,1 in English law, an obligation by deed. Its design is to secure that the obligor, i.e. the person giving the bond, will either pay a sum of money, or do or refrain from doing some act; and for this purpose the obligor binds himself in a penalty to the obligee, with a condition added that, if the obligor pays the sum secured—which is usually half the penalty—or does or refrains from doing the specified act, the bond shall be void: otherwise it shall remain in full force. This condition is known as the defeasance because it defeats or undoes the bond. The form of a common money bond runs as follows:—
Know All Men by these presents that I, A.B. (name, address and description of obligor), am bound to C.D. (name, address and description of obligee) in the sum of £[2000] to be paid to the said (obligee), his executors, administrators or assigns or to his or their attorney or attorneys, for which payment I bind myself by these presents. Sealed with my seal. Dated this day of 19 .
The condition of the above-written bond is such that if the above A.B., his heirs, executors or administrators, shall on the day of pay to the above-named C.D., his heirs, executors, administrators or assigns the sum of £[1000], with interest for the same from the date of the above-written bond at the rate of per cent per annum without any deduction, then the above-written bond shall be void: otherwise the bond shall remain in full force.
Signed, sealed and delivered by the above-named A.B. in the presence of (witness)
Recitals are frequently added to explain the circumstances under which the bond is given.
If the condition is not performed, i.e. if the obligor does not pay the money by the day stipulated, or do or refrain from doing the act provided for, the bond becomes forfeit or absolute at law, and charges the obligor and his estate (see Conveyancing Act 1881, s. 59). In old days, when a bond was forfeit, the whole penalty was recoverable at law and payment post diem could not be pleaded to an action on it, but the court of chancery early interposed to prevent oppression. It held the penalty of a bond to be the form, not the substance of it, a pledge merely to secure repayment of the sum bona fide advanced, and would not permit a man to take more than in conscience he ought, i.e. in case of a common money bond, his principal, interest and expenses. This equitable relief received statutory recognition by an act of 1705, which provided that, in case of a common money bond, payment of the lesser sum with interest and costs shall be taken in full satisfaction of the bond. An obligee of a common money bond can, since the date of the Judicature Act, obtain summary judgment under O. xiv. (R.S.C. 1883) by specially endorsing his writ under O. iii. R. 6.
Bonds were, however, and still are given to secure performance of a variety of matters other than the payment of a sum of money at a fixed date. They may be given and are given, for instance, to guarantee the fidelity of a clerk, of a rent collector, or of a person in an office of public trust, or to secure that an intended husband will settle a sum on his wife in the event of her surviving him, or that a building contract shall be carried out, or that a rival business shall not be carried on by the obligor except within certain limits of time and space. The same object can often be attained—and more conveniently attained—by a covenant than by bond, and covenants have in the practice of conveyancers largely superseded bonds, but there are cases where security by bond is still preferable to security by covenant. Thus under a bond to secure an annuity, if the obligor makes default, judgment may be entered for the penalty and stand as security for the future payments without the necessity of bringing a fresh action for each payment. In cases of bonds with special conditions, such as those instanced above, the remedy of the obligee for breach of the condition is prescribed by an act of 1696, the procedure under which is preserved by the Judicature Act (O. xxii. R. 1, O. xiii. R. 14). The obligee assigns the particular breaches of which he complains, damages in respect of such breaches are assessed, and, on payment into court by the obligor of the amount of such damages, the court enters a stay of execution. A difficulty which has much exercised and still exercises the courts is to determine, in these cases of special conditions, whether the sum for which the bond is given is a true penalty or only liquidated damages. There is nothing to prevent the parties to a bond from agreeing the damages for a breach, and if they have done so, the court will not interfere, as it will in the case of a penalty. The leading case on the subject is Kemble v. Farren (1829; 6 Bing. 148).
Bonds given to secure the doing of anything which is contrary to the policy of the law are void. Such, for instance, is a bond given to a woman for future cohabitation (as distinguished from past cohabitation), or a marriage brocage bond, that is, a bond given to procure a marriage between parties. (See the matrimonial agency case, Hermann v. Charlesworth, 1905, 2 K.B. 123). It was not without design that Shakespeare laid the scene of Shylock’s suit on Antonio’s bond in a Venetian court; the bond would have had short shrift in an English court.
Post Obit Bonds.—A post obit bond is one given by an expectant heir or legatee, payable on or after the death of the person from whom the obligor has expectations. Such a bond, if the obligee has exacted unconscionable terms, may be set aside.
Bottomry Bonds.—A bottomry bond is a contract of hypothecation by which the owner of a ship, or the master as his agent, borrows money for the use of the ship to meet some emergency, e.g. necessary repairs, and pledges the ship (or keel or bottom of the ship, partem pro toto) as security for repayment. If the ship safely accomplishes her voyage, the obligee gets his money back with the agreed interest: if the ship is totally lost, he loses it altogether.
Lloyd’s Bonds.—Lloyd’s bonds are instruments under the seal of a railway company, admitting the indebtedness of the company to the obligee to a specified amount for work done or goods supplied, with a covenant to pay him such amount with interest on a future day. They are a device by which railway companies were enabled to increase their indebtedness without technically violating their charter. The name is derived from the counsel who settled the form of the bond.
Debenture Bonds.—Debenture bonds are bonds secured only by the covenant of the company without any floating or fixed charge on the assets. (See Debentures and Debenture Stock.)
Recognizance.—A recognizance differs from a bond in being entered into before a court of record and thereby becoming an obligation of record.
Heritable bond is a Scots law term, meaning a bond for money, joined with a conveyance of land, and held by a creditor as security for his debt.
For goods “in bond” see Bonded Warehouse.
(E. Ma.)
1 This word, meaning “that which binds,” is a phonetic variant of “band,” and is derived from the Teutonic root seen in bindan, to bind; it must be distinguished from the obsolete “bond,” meaning originally a householder. In the laws of Canute this word is used as equal to the Old English ceorl (see Churl), and thus, as the churl’s position became less free after the Norman Conquest, the “bond” approximated to the “villein,” and still later to the “serf.” The word is in Old English bonda, and appears in “husband” (q.v.), and is derived from the root of the verb búa, to dwell, to have a house, the Latin colere, and thus in origin is cognate with German Bauer and English “boor.” The transition in meaning to the idea of serfdom, and hence to slavery, is due to an early confusion with “bond,” from “bind.” The same wrong connexion appears in the transition of meaning in “bondage,” properly “tenure in villeinage,” but now used as synonymous with “slavery.” A trace of the early meaning still survives in “bondager” (q.v.).
BONDAGER, a word meaning generally a servant, but specially used in the south of Scotland and Northumberland as the term for a female outworker whom a married farm-labourer, living in a cottage attached to the farm, undertakes as a condition of his tenancy to supply for field-labour, sometimes also to board and lodge. The origin of the system was a dearth of field-labour.
BONDE, GUSTAF, Count (1620-1667), Swedish statesman. He is remarkable for being the persistent advocate of a pacific policy at a time when war on the slightest provocation was the watchword of every Swedish politician. Even the popular Polish adventure of Charles X. was strenuously opposed by Bonde, though when once it was decided upon he materially assisted the king to find the means for carrying it on. He was also in favour of strict economy coupled with the recovery of the royal domains which had fallen into the hands of the nobles, though his natural partiality for his fellow-peers came out clearly enough when in 1655 he was appointed a member of Charles X.’s land-recovery commission. In 1659 he succeeded Herman Fleming as lord high treasurer, and was one of the council of regency appointed to govern Sweden during the minority of Charles XI. In 1661 he presented to the senate a plan which aimed at rendering Sweden altogether independent of foreign subsidies, by a policy of peace, economy and trade-development, and by further recovery of alienated estates. His budget in the following year, framed on the same principles, subsequently served as an invaluable guide to Charles XI. Bonde’s extraordinary tenacity of purpose enabled him for some years to carry out his programme, despite the opposition of the majority of the senate and his co-regents, who preferred the more adventurous methods of the chancellor Magnus de la Gardie, ultimately so ruinous to Sweden. But the ambition of the oligarchs, and the fear and jealousy of innumerable monopolists who rose in arms against his policy of economy, proved at last too strong for Bonde, while the costly and useless expedition against Bremen in 1665, undertaken contrary to his advice, completed the ruin of the finances. In his later years Bonde’s powers of resistance were weakened by sickness and mortification at the triumph of reckless extravagance, and he practically retired from the government some time before his death.
See Martin Veibull, Sveriges Storhetstid (Stockholm, 1881).
BONDED WAREHOUSE, a warehouse established by the state, or by private enterprise, in which goods liable to duty are lodged until the duty upon them has been paid. Previous to the establishment of bonded warehouses in England the payment of duties on imported goods had to be made at the time of importation, or a bond with security for future payment given to the revenue authorities. The inconveniences of this system were many; it was not always possible for the importer to find sureties, and he had often to make an immediate sale of the goods, in order to raise the duty, frequently selling when the market was depressed and prices low; the duty, having to be paid in a lump sum, raised the price of the goods by the amount of the interest on the capital required to pay the duty; competition was stifled from the fact that large capital was required for the importation of the more heavily taxed articles; there was also the difficulty of granting an exact equivalent drawback to the exporter, on goods which had already paid duty. To obviate these difficulties and to put a check upon frauds on the revenue, Sir Robert Walpole proposed in his “excise scheme” of 1733, the system of warehousing, so far as concerned tobacco and wine. The proposal, however, was very unpopular, and it was not till 1803 that the system was actually adopted. By an act of that year imported goods were to be placed in warehouses approved by the customs authorities, and importers were to give “bonds” for payment of duties when the goods were removed. It was from this that the warehouses received the name of “bonded” or “bonding.” The Customs Consolidation Act 1853 dispensed with the giving of bonds, and laid down various provisions for securing the payment of customs duties on goods warehoused. These provisions are contained in the Customs Consolidation Act 1876, and the amending statutes, the Customs and Inland Revenue Act 1880, and the Revenue Act 1883. The warehouses are known as “king’s warehouses,” and by s. 284 of the act of 1876 are defined as “any place provided by the crown or approved by the commissioners of customs, for the deposit of goods for security thereof, and the duties due thereon.” By s. 12 of the same act the treasury may appoint warehousing ports or places, and the commissioners of customs may from time to time approve and appoint warehouses in such ports or places where goods may be warehoused or kept, and fix the amount of rent payable in respect of the goods. The proprietor or occupier of every warehouse so approved (except existing warehouses of special security in respect of which security by bond has hitherto been dispensed with), or some one on his behalf, must, before any goods be warehoused therein, give security by bond, or such other security as the commissioners may approve of, for the payment of the full duties chargeable on any goods warehoused therein, or for the due exportation thereof (s. 13). All goods deposited in a warehouse, without payment of duty on the first importation, upon being entered for home consumption, are chargeable with existing duties on like goods under any customs acts in force at the time of passing such entry (s. 19). The act also prescribes various rules for the unshipping, landing, examination, warehousing and custody of goods, and the penalties on breach. The system of warehousing has proved of great advantage both to importers and purchasers, as the payment of duty is deferred until the goods are required, while the title-deeds, or warrants, are transferable by endorsement.
While the goods are in the warehouse (“in bond”) the owner may subject them to various processes necessary to fit them for the market, such as the repacking and mixing of tea, the racking, vatting, mixing and bottling of wines and spirits, the roasting of coffee, the manufacture of certain kinds of tobacco, &c., and certain specific allowances are made in respect of waste arising from such processes or from leakage, evaporation and the like.
BONDU, a French protectorate in West Africa, dependent on the colony of Senegal. Bondu lies between the Faleme river and the upper course of the Gambia, that is between 13° and 15° N., and 12° and 13° W. The country is an elevated plateau, with hills in the southern and central parts. These are generally unproductive, and covered with stunted wood; but the lower country is fertile, and finely clothed with the baobab, the tamarind and various valuable fruit-trees. Bondu is traversed by torrents, which flow rapidly during the rains but are empty in the dry season, such streams being known in this part of West Africa as marigots. The inhabitants are mostly Fula, though the trade is largely in the hands of Mandingos. The religion and laws of the country are Mahommedan, though the precepts of that faith are not very rigorously observed. Mungo Park, the first European traveller to visit the country, passed through Bondu in 1795, and had to submit to many exactions from the reigning prince. The royal residence was then at Fatteconda; but when Major W. Gray, a British officer who attempted to solve the Niger problem, visited Bondu in 1818 it had been removed to Bulibani, a small town, with about 3000 population, surrounded by a strong clay wall. In August 1845 the king of Bondu signed a treaty recognizing French sovereignty over his country. The treaty was disregarded by the natives, but in 1858 Bondu came definitely under French control. The country has since enjoyed considerable prosperity (see Senegal).
See A. Rançon, Le Bondou: étude de géographie et d’histoire soudaniennes de 1681 à nos jours (Bordeaux, 1894).
BONE, HENRY (1755-1834), English enamel painter, was born at Truro. He was much employed by London jewellers for small designs in enamel, before his merits as an artist were well known to the public. In 1800 the beauty of his pieces attracted the notice of the Royal Academy, of which he was then admitted as an associate; in 1811 he was made an academician. Up to 1831 he executed many beautiful miniature pieces of much larger size than had been attempted before in England; among these his eighty-five portraits of the time of Queen Elizabeth, of different sizes, from 5 by 4 to 13 by 8 in. are most admired. They were disposed of by public sale after his death. His Bacchus and Ariadne, after Titian, painted on a plate, brought the great price of 2200 guineas.
BONE (a word common in various forms to Teutonic languages, in many of which it is confined to the shank of the leg, as in the German Bein), the hard tissue constituting the framework of the animal skeleton. For anatomy see Skeleton and Connective Tissues.
Bone Diseases and Injuries.—The more specific diseases affecting the bones of the human body are treated under separate headings; in this article inflammation of bone and fractures are dealt with.
Ostitis (ὀστέον, bone), or inflammation of bone, may be acute or chronic. Acute ostitis is one of the most serious diseases which can be met with in young people. It is due to the cultivation of virulent germs in the delicate growing Ostitis. tissue of the bone and in the marrow. Another name for it is septic osteomyelitis, which has the advantage of expressing the cause as well as the exact seat (μυελός, marrow) of the inflammation. The name of the micro-organism causing the inflammation is Staphylococcus pyogenes aureus, which means that the germs collect in clusters like grapes, that they are of the virulent pus-producing kind, and that they have a yellow tinge. As a rule, the germs find their way to the bone by the blood-stream, which they have entered through the membrane lining the mouth or gullet, or some other part of the alimentary canal. In the pre-antiseptic days they often entered the sawn bone during the amputation of a limb, and were not infrequently the cause of blood-poisoning and death. When the individual is well and strong, and there has been no hurt, strain or accident to lower the power of resistance of the bone, the staphylococci may circulate harmlessly in the blood, until they are gradually eaten up by the white corpuscles; but if a bone has been injured it offers a likely and attractive focus to the wandering germs.
The disease is infective. That is to say, the micro-organisms having begun to germinate in the damaged bone find their way by the blood-stream into other tissues, and developing after their kind, are apt to cause blood-poisoning. Should a surgeon prick his finger whilst operating on a case of septic osteomyelitis his blood also might be poisoned, and he would run the risk of losing his finger, his hand, or even his life. The starting-point of the disease is the delicate growing tissue recently deposited between the main part of the shaft of the bone (diaphysis) and the cartilaginous end. And it often happens that the earliest complaint of pain is just above or below the knee; just above the ankle, the elbow or the wrist. If the surgeon is prompt in operating he may find the disease limited to that spot. In the case of infants, the germs are very apt to make their way into the neighbouring joint, giving rise to the very serious disease known as acute arthritis of infants.
Probably the first sign of there being anything amiss with the limb will be a complaint of aches or pains near a joint; and these pains are apt to be miscalled rheumatic. Perhaps they occur during convalescence from scarlet or typhoid fever, or after exposure to injury, or to wet or cold, or after unusual fatigue. The part becomes swollen, hot, red and excessively tender; the tenderness, however, is not in the skin but in the bone, and in the engorged membrane around it, the periosteum. The temperature may run up to 104°, and may be associated with convulsions or shiverings. The patient’s nights are disturbed, and very likely he has violent delirium. If the case is allowed to drift on, abscess forms, and death may ensue from septic pneumonia, or pericarditis, or from some other form of blood-poisoning.
As soon as the disease is recognized an incision should be made down to the bone, and the affected area should be scraped out, and disinfected with a solution of corrosive sublimate. A considerable area of the bone may be found stripped bare by sub-periosteal abscess, and necrosis is likely to ensue. Perhaps the shaft of the bone will have to be opened up in the chief part of its length in order that it may be cleared of germs and pus. The surgeon is more apt to err on the side of doing too little in these serious cases than too much. It may be that the whole of that piece of bone (diaphysis) which lies between the joint-ends is found loose in a large abscess cavity, and in some cases immediate amputation of the limb may be found necessary in order to save life; in other cases, amputation may be called for later because of long-continued suppuration and grave constitutional disturbance. Several bones may be affected at the same time, and large pieces of them may be killed outright (multiple necrosis) by inflammatory engorgement and devastating abscess.
Septic ostitis may be confounded with erysipelas and rheumatism, but the central thickening and tenderness should suffice to distinguish it.
Chronic ostitis and periostitis denote long-continued and increased vascular supply. This may be due to injury, syphilis or rheumatism. The disease is found chiefly in the shafts of the bones. There is a dull pain in the bone, which is worse at night, and the inflamed piece of bone is thickened and tender. The lump thus formed is called a hard node, and its outline shows clearly by X-rays. The affected limb should be rested and kept elevated. Leeches and fomentations may ease the pain, and iodide of potassium is the most useful medicine.
Chronic inflammation of tuberculous origin affects the soft, cancellated tissue of such bones as the vertebrae, and the bones of the hands and feet, as well as the spongy ends of the long bones. In tuberculous ostitis the presence of the bacilli in the spongy tissue causes an escape of colourless corpuscles from the blood, which, collecting around the bacilli, form a small greyish white heap, a tubercle. These tubercles may be present in large numbers at the expense of the living tissue, and a rarefying ostitis is thus produced. Later the tubercles break down and form tuberculous abscesses, which slowly, and almost painlessly, find escape upon the surface. They should not be allowed to open spontaneously, however, as the wounds are then likely to become infected with pus-producing germs, and fuel being added to the fire, as it were, destruction advances with increased rapidity. The treatment for these tuberculous foci is to place the limb or the part at absolute rest upon a splint, to give plenty of fresh air to the patient, and to prescribe cod-liver oil and iron. And when it is seen that in spite of the adoption of these measures the tuberculous abscess is advancing towards the surface, the surgeon should cut down upon the part, scrape out the foci, and disinfect with some strong antiseptic lotion. Consideration should also be given to the treatment by injection of tuberculin.
Caries (rottenness, decay) is the name given to tuberculous disease of bone when the tubercles are running together and are breaking down the cancellous tissue. In short, caries generally means tuberculous ostitis, though syphilitic ulceration of bone has also received the same name.
Fractures.—A bone may be broken at the part where it is struck (fracture from direct violence), or it may break in consequence of a strain applied to it (fracture from indirect violence), or the fracture may be due to muscular action Fracture. as when a violent cough causes a rib to break. In the first case the fracture is generally transverse and in the second more or less oblique. The fully developed bone is broken fairly across; the soft bones of young people may simply be bent—green stick or willow fracture. Fractures are either simple or compound. A simple fracture is analogous to the subcutaneous laceration in the soft parts, and a compound one to an open wound in the soft parts. The wound of the soft parts in the compound fracture may be due either to the force which caused the fracture, as in the case of a cart-wheel going over a limb, first wounding the soft parts and then fracturing the bone, or to the sharp point of the fractured bone coming out through the skin. In either case there is a communication between the external air and injured bone, and the probability arises of the germs of suppuration finding their way to the seat of fracture. This greatly increases the risks of the case, for septic inflammation and suppuration may lead to delayed union, to death of large pieces of the bone (necrosis), and to osteomyelitis and to blood-poisoning. In the treatment of a fracture, every care should be taken to prevent any sharp fragment coming near the skin. Careless handling has often been the means of a simple fracture being converted into a compound one.
In most cases of fracture crepitus can be made out; this is the feeling elicited when two rough osseous surfaces are rubbed together. When a bone is merely bent there is, of course, no crepitus. It is also absent in fractures in which the broken extremities are driven into one another (impacted fracture). In order to get firm bony union it is necessary to secure accurate apposition of the fragments. Putting the broken ends together is termed “setting the fracture,” and the needful amount of rest is obtained by the use of splints. As a rule, it is also advisable to fix with the splint the joint above or below the fracture. In cases in which a splintering of the bone into a joint has taken place, more especially in those cases in which tendons have been injured, there may be a good deal of effusion into the joint and the tendon sheaths, and this may be organized into fibrous tissue leading to permanent stiffness. This is particularly apt to occur in old people. Care must be taken in such instances by gentle exercises, and by passive movement during the process of cure, to keep the joint and tendons free. To take a common example,—in fracture close to the wrist joint, it is necessary to arrange the splint so that the patient can move his fingers and thumb, and the splint must be taken off every day, in order that the wrist and fingers may be gently bent, straightened and exercised.
The treatment of fractures has undergone considerable improvement of late years. Simple fractures are not kept so long at rest in splints, but are constantly “taken down” in order that massage and movements of the limb may be resorted to. This, of course, is done with the utmost gentleness, and with the result that swelling, pain and other evidences of the serious injury quickly disappear, whilst a more rapid and complete recovery is ensured. Stiff hands and feet after fracture are much less frequently met with. By the aid of the X-rays it is now easy for the surgeon to assure himself that fractured surfaces have been well adjusted and are in close apposition. But if they are not in a satisfactory position, and it be found impracticable to assure their close adjustment by ordinary methods, the surgeon now, without undue loss of time, cuts down upon the broken ends and fixes them together by a strong wire suture, which remains permanently in the tissues. If the fracture be associated with an open wound of the part (compound fracture), and the broken ends are found incapable of easy adjustment, immediate wiring together of the fragments is now considered to be a necessary part of the primary treatment. The French surgeon, Just Lucas-Championnière, has done more than any one else to show the advantage of discreet movements, of massage and of exercises in the treatment of fractures.
Special Fracture in Young People.—The long bones of children and growing persons consist of a shaft with cartilaginous ends in which bone is developed. As the result of injury, the end of the bone may become detached, a variety of fracture known as diastasis. Such a fracture—however well treated—may be followed by arrest of growth of the bone or by stiffness of the neighbouring joint.
Delayed union means that consolidation is taking place very slowly, if at all. This may be due to local or constitutional causes, but provided the bones are in good position, nothing further than patience, with massage, and with due attention to general health-measures, is necessary.
An ununited fracture is one in which after many weeks or months no attempt has been made by nature to consolidate the parts. This may be due to the ends not having been brought close enough together; to the seat of fracture having been constantly disturbed; to muscle or tendon being interposed between the broken ends, or to the existence of some constitutional defect in the patient. Except in the last-named condition, the treatment consists in cutting down to the broken ends; freshening them up by sawing off a thin slice, and by adjusting and fixing them by a wire or screw. Ununited fracture of the leg-bones in children is a most unsatisfactory and rebellious condition to deal with.
There is still a difference of opinion as to the best way of treating a recent fracture of the patella (knee-cap). Many surgeons are still content to follow the old plan of fixing the limb on a back-splint, or in plaster of Paris splints, and awaiting the result. It is beyond question that a large percentage of these cases recover with a perfectly useful limb—especially if the fibrous bond of union between the pieces of the broken knee-cap is adequately protected against being stretched by bending the leg at too early a date. But in some cases the fragments have been eventually found wide apart, the patient being left with an enfeebled limb. Still, at any rate, this line of treatment was unassociated with risk. But after Lister showed (1883) that with due care and cleanliness the knee-joint could be opened, and the fragments of the broken patella secured in close apposition by a stout wire suture, the treatment of the injury underwent a remarkable change. The great advantage of Lister’s treatment was that the fragments, being fixed close together by the wire stitch, became solidly united by bone, and the joint became as sound as it was before. Some surgeons, however, objected to the operation—in spite of the excellence of the results obtainable by it—because of the undoubted risk which it entailed of the joint becoming invaded by septic micro-organisms. As a sort of compromise, Professor A.E.J. Barker introduced the method, which he deemed to be less hazardous, of holding the fragments close together by means of a strong silver wire passed round them vertically by a large needle without actually laying open the joint. But experience has shown that in the hands of careful and skilful surgeons Lister’s operation of openly wiring the fragments gives a perfect result with a comparatively small risk. Other surgeons secure the fragments in close contact for bony union by passing a silk or metal suture around them circumferentially. Many years ago Lister remarked that the careful selection of one’s patients is an antiseptic measure—by which he meant that if a surgeon intended to get the most perfect results for his operative work, he must carefully consider whether any individual patient is physically adapted for the performance upon him of any particular operation. This aphorism implies that not every patient with a broken knee-cap is suited for the opening of his knee-joint, or even for the subcutaneous adjustment of the broken fragments. An operative procedure which is admirably suited for one patient might result in disaster when adopted for another, and it is an important part of the surgeon’s business to know what to advise in each individual case.
(E. O.*)
Industrial Applications of Bones.—By the increasing inventiveness of man, the industrial utilization of animal bone has been so developed that not one of the constituents fails to reappear in commerce. Composed of mineral matter—phosphates, &c.—fat and gelatinous substances, the phosphates are used as artificial manures, the fat is worked up by the soap-maker and chandler, and the gelatinous matter forms the basis of the gelatin and glue of commerce; while by the dry distillation of bones from which the gelatin has been but partially removed, there are obtained a carbonaceous residue—animal charcoal—and a tarry distillate, from which “bone oil” and bone pitch are obtained. To these by-products there must be added the direct uses of bone—for making buttons, knife-handles, &c.—when an estimate is desired of the commercial importance of these components of the animal frame.
While most of the world’s supply of bones goes to the glue and gelatin works, the leg and thigh bones, termed “marrows” and “knuckles,” are used for the manufacture of bone articles. The treatment which they receive is very different from that practised in the glue-works. The ends are removed by a saw, and the bones are steeped in a 1% brine solution for three to four days, in order to separate the fibrous matter. The bones are now heated with water, and allowed to simmer for about six hours. This removes a part of the fat and gelatinous matter; the former rises as a scum, the latter passes into solution, and the bones remain sufficiently firm to be worked up by the lathe, &c. The fat is skimmed off, and, after bleaching, reappears as a component of fine soaps, or, if unbleached, the oil is expressed and is used as an adulterant of other oils, while the stearine or solid matter goes to the candle-maker; the gelatinous water is used (after filtration) for making size for cardboard boxes; while the bones are scrubbed, dried, and then transferred to the bone-worker.
The glue-worker first removes the fat, which is supplied to the soap and candle trades; the bones are now treated for glue (q.v.); and the residue is worked up for manures, &c. These residues are ground to a fine or coarse meal, and supplied either directly as a fertilizer or treated with sulphuric acid to form the more soluble superphosphates, which are more readily assimilated by growing plants. In some places, especially South America, the residues are burned in a retort to a white ash, the “bone-ash” of commerce, which contains some 70-80% of tricalcium phosphate, and is much used as a manure, and in the manufacture of high-grade superphosphates. In the gelatin industry (see Gelatin) the mineral matter has to be recovered from its solution in hydrochloric acid. To effect this, the liquors are freed from suspended matter by filtration, and then run into vats where they are mixed with milk of lime, or some similar neutralizer. The slightly soluble bicalcium phosphate, CaHPO4, is first precipitated, which, with more lime, gives ordinary tricalcium phosphate, Ca3(PO4)2. The contents of the vats are filter-pressed, and the cakes dried on plates supported on racks in heated chambers. This product is a very valuable manure, and is also used in the manufacture of phosphorus.
Instead of extracting all the gelatinous matter from degreased bones, the practice of extracting about one half and carbonizing the residue is frequently adopted. The bones are heated in horizontal cast-iron retorts, holding about 5 cwt., and the operation occupies about twelve to thirteen hours. The residue in the retorts is removed while still red-hot to air-tight vessels in which it is allowed to cool. It is then passed through grinding mills, and is subsequently riddled by revolving cylindrical sieves. The yield is from 55 to 60% of the bones carbonized, and the product contains about 10% of carbon and about 75% of calcium phosphate, the remainder being various inorganic salts and moisture (6-7%). Animal charcoal has a deep black colour, and is much used as a filtering and clarifying material. The vapours evolved during carbonization are condensed in vertical air condensers. The liquid separates into two layers: the upper tarry layer is floated off and redistilled; the distillate is termed “bone oil,”1 and mainly consists of many fatty amines and pyridine derivatives, characterized by a most disgusting odour; the residue is “bone pitch,” and finds application in the manufacture of black varnishes and like compositions. The lower layer is ammoniacal liquor; it is transferred to stills, distilled with steam, and the ammonia received in sulphuric acid; the ammonium sulphate, which separates, is removed, drained and dried, and is principally used as a manure. Both during the carbonization of the bones and the distillation of the tar inflammable gases are evolved; these are generally used, after purification, for motive or illuminating purposes.
(C. E.*)
1 Bone oil, also known as Dippel’s oil, was originally produced by the distillation of stags’ horns; it is of interest in the history of chemistry, since from it were isolated in 1846 by T. Anderson pyridine and some of its homologues.
BONE BED, a term loosely used by geologists when speaking generally of any stratum or deposit which contains bones of whatever kind. It is also applied to those brecciated and stalagmitic deposits on the floor of caves, which frequently contain osseous remains. In a more restricted sense it is used to connote certain thin layers of bony fragments, which occur upon well-defined geological horizons. One of the best-known of these is the Ludlow Bone Bed, which is found at the base of the Downton Sandstone in the Upper Ludlow series. At Ludlow itself, two such beds are actually known, separated by about 14 ft. of strata. Although quite thin, the Ludlow Bone Bed can be followed from that town into Gloucestershire for a distance of 45 m. It is almost made up of fragments of spines, teeth and scales of ganoid fish. Another well-known bed, formerly known as the “Bristol” or “Lias” Bone Bed, exists in the form of several thin layers of micaceous sandstone, with the remains of fish and saurians, which occur in the Rhaetic Black Paper Shales that lie above the Keuper marls in the south-west of England. It is noteworthy that a similar bone bed has been traced on the same geological horizon in Brunswick, Hanover and Franconia. A bone bed has also been observed at the base of the Carboniferous limestone series in certain parts of the south-west of England.
BONE-LACE, a kind of lace made upon a cushion from linen thread; the pattern is marked out with pins, round which are twisted the different threads, each wound on its own bobbin. The lace was so called from the fact that bobbins were formerly made of bone.
BONER (or Bonerius), ULRICH (fl. 14th century), German-Swiss writer of fables, was born in Bern. He was descended of an old Bernese family, and, as far as can be ascertained, took clerical orders and became a monk; yet as it appears that he subsequently married, it is certain that he received the “tonsure” only, and was thus entitled to the benefit of the clerici uxoriati, who, on divesting themselves of the clerical garb, could return to secular life. He is mentioned in records between 1324 and 1349, but neither before nor after these dates. He wrote, in Middle High German, a collection of fables entitled Der Edelstein (c. 1349), one hundred in number, which were based principally on those of Avianus (4th century) and the Anonymus (edited by I. Nevelet, 1610). This work he dedicated to the Bernese patrician and poet, Johann von Rinkenberg, advocatus (Vogt) of Brienz (d. c. 1350). It was printed in 1461 at Bamberg; and it is claimed for it that it was the first book printed in the German language. Boner treats his sources with considerable freedom and originality; he writes a clear and simple style, and the necessarily didactic tone of the collection is relieved by touches of humour.
Der Edelstein has been edited by G.F. Benecke (Berlin, 1816) and Franz Pfeiffer (Leipzig, 1844); a translation into modern German by K. Pannier will be found, in Reclam’s Universal-Bibliothek (Leipzig, 1895). See also G.E. Lessing in Zur Geschichte und Literatur (Werke, ix.); C. Waas, Die Quellen der Beispiele Boners (Giessen, 1897).
BO’NESS, or Borrowstounness, a municipal and police burgh and seaport of Linlithgowshire, Scotland. Pop. (1891) 6295; (1901) 9306. It lies on the southern shore of the Firth of Forth, 17 m. W. by N. of Edinburgh, and 24 m. by rail, being the terminus of the North British railway’s branch line from Manuel. In the 18th century it ranked next to Leith as a port, but the growth of Grangemouth, higher up the firth, seriously affected its shipping trade, which is, however, yet considerable, coal and pig-iron forming the principal exports, and pit props from the Baltic the leading import. It has an extensive harbour (the area of the dock being 7¾ acres). The great industries are coal-mining—some of the pits extending for a long distance beneath the firth—iron-founding (with several blast furnaces) and engineering, but it has also important manufactures of salt, soap, vitriol and other chemicals. Shipbuilding and whaling are extinct. Traces of the wall of Antoninus which ran through the parish may still be made out, especially near Inveravon. Blackness, on the coast farther east, was the seaport of Linlithgow till the rise of Bo’ness, but its small export trade now mainly consists of coal, bricks, tiles and lime. Its castle, standing on a promontory, is of unknown age. James III. of Scotland is stated to have consigned certain of the insurgent nobles to its cells; and later it was used as a prison in which many of the Covenanters were immured. It was one of the four castles that had to be maintained by the Articles of Union, but when its uselessness for defensive purposes became apparent, it was converted into an ammunition depot. Kinneil House, 1 m. south of Bo’ness, a seat of the duke of Hamilton, formerly a keep, was fortified by the regent Arran, plundered by the rebels in Queen Mary’s reign, and reconstructed in the time of Charles II. Dr John Roebuck (1718-1794), founder of the Carron Iron Works, occupied it for several years from 1764. It was here that, on his invitation, James Watt constructed a model of his steam-engine, which was tested in a now disused colliery. Though Roebuck lost all his money in the coal-mines and salt works which he established at Bo’ness, the development of the mineral resources of the district may be regarded as due to him.
BONFIGLI, BENEDETTO, 15th century Italian painter, was born at Perugia. Until near the middle of the 15th century the Umbrian school was far behind those of Florence and the North, but in the person of Perugino and some of his followers it suddenly advanced into the very first rank. Among the latter none holds a more distinguished place than Benedetto Bonfigli. The most important of his extant works are a series, in fresco, of the life of St Louis of Toulouse, in the communal palace of Perugia.
BONFIRE (in Early English “bone-fire,” Scottish “bane-fire”), originally a fire of bones, now any large fire lit in the open air on an occasion of rejoicing. Though the spelling “bonfire” was used in the 16th century, the earlier “bone-fire” was common till 1760. The earliest known instance of the derivation of the word occurred as ban fyre ignis ossium in the Catholicon Anglicum, A.D. 1483. Other derivations, now rejected, have been sought for the word. Thus some have thought it Baal-fire, passing through Bael, Baen to Bane. Others have declared it to be boon-fire by analogy with boen-harow, i.e. “harrowing by gift,” the suggestion being that these fires were “contribution” fires, every one in the neighbourhood contributing a portion of the material, just as in Northumberland the “contributed Ploughing Days” are known as Bone-daags.
Whatever the origin of the word, it has long had several meanings-(a) a fire of bones, (b) a fire for corpses, a funeral pile, (c) a fire for immolation, such as that in which heretics and proscribed books were burnt, (d) a large fire lit in the open air, on occasions of national rejoicing, or as a signal of alarm such as the bonfires which warned England of the approach of the Armada. Throughout Europe the peasants from time immemorial have lighted bonfires on certain days of the year, and danced around or leapt over them. This custom can be traced back to the middle ages, and certain usages in antiquity so nearly resemble it as to suggest that the bonfire has its origin in the early days of heathen Europe. Indeed the earliest proof of the observance of these bonfire ceremonies in Europe is afforded by the attempts made by Christian synods in the 7th and 8th centuries to suppress them as pagan. Thus the third council of Constantinople (A.D. 680), by its 65th canon, orders: “Those fires that are kindled by certaine people on new moones before their shops and houses, over which also they use ridiculously and foolishly to leape, by a certaine antient custome, we command them from henceforth to cease.” And the Synodus Francica under Pope Zachary, A.D. 742, forbids “those sacrilegious fires which they call Nedfri (or bonefires), and all other observations of the Pagans whatsoever.” Leaping over the fires is mentioned among the superstitious rites used at the Palilia (the feast of Pales, the shepherds’ goddess) in Ovid’s Fasti, when the shepherds lit heaps of straw and jumped over them as they burned. The lighting of the bonfires in Christian festivals was significant of the compromise made with the heathen by the early Church. In Cornwall bonfires are lighted on the eve of St John the Baptist and St Peter’s day, and midsummer is thence called in Cornish Goluan, which means both “light” and “festivity.” Sometimes effigies are burned in these fires, or a pretence is made of burning a living person in them, and there are grounds for believing that anciently human sacrifices were actually made in the bonfires. Spring and midsummer are the usual times at which these bonfires are lighted, but in some countries they are made at Hallowe’en (October 31) and at Christmas. In spring the 1st Sunday in Lent, Easter eve and the 1st of May are the commonest dates.
See J.G. Frazer, Golden Bough, vol. iii., for a very full account of the bonfire customs of Europe, &c.
BONGARS, JACQUES (1554-1612), French scholar and diplomatist, was born at Orleans, and was brought up in the reformed faith. He obtained his early education at Marburg and Jena, and returning to France continued his studies at Orleans and Bourges. After spending some time in Rome he visited eastern Europe, and subsequently made the acquaintance of Ségur Pardaillan, a representative of Henry, king of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV. of France. He entered the service of Pardaillan, and in 1587 was sent on a mission to many of the princes of northern Europe, after which he visited England to obtain help from Queen Elizabeth for Henry of Navarre. He continued to serve Henry as a diplomatist, and in 1593 became the representative of the French king at the courts of the imperial princes. Vigorously seconding the efforts of Henry to curtail the power of the house of Habsburg, he spent health and money ungrudgingly in this service, and continued his labours until the king’s murder in 1610. He then returned to France, and died at Paris on the 29th of July 1612. Bongars wrote an abridgment of Justin’s abridgment of the history of Trogus Pompeius under the title Justinus, Trogi Pompeii Historiarum Philippicarum epitoma de manuscriptis codicibus emendatior et prologis auctior (Paris, 1581). He collected the works of several French writers who as contemporaries described the crusades, and published them under the title Gesta Dei per Francos (Hanover, 1611). Another collection made by Bongars is the Rerum Hungaricarum scriptores varii (Frankfort, 1600). His Epistolae were published at Leiden in 1647, and a French translation at Paris in 1668-1670. Many of his papers are preserved in the library at Bern, to which they were presented in 1632, and a list of them was made in 1634. Other papers and copies of instructions are now in several libraries in Paris; and copies of other instructions are in the British Museum.