← Table of contents
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Gordon, Lord George" to "Grasses", Volume 12, Slice 3

VOLUME XII SLICE III Gordon, Lord George to Grasses (continued 9)

Reading edition

Varying estimates have been made of the number of weeks’ supply of breadstuffs (wheat and flour) held by millers at various seasons of the year. A table compiled by the secretary of the National Association of British and Irish Millers from returns for 1902 made by 170 milling firms showed 4.7, 4.9, 4.9 and 5 weeks’ supply at the end of March, June, September and December respectively. These 170 mills were said to represent 46% of the milling capacity of the United Kingdom, and claimed to have ground 12,000,000 qrs. out of 25,349,000 qrs. milled in 1902. These were obviously large mills; it is probable that the other mills would not have shown anything like such a proportion of stock of either raw or finished material. A fair estimate of the stocks normally held by millers and bakers throughout the United Kingdom would be about four weeks’ supply. First-hand stocks vary considerably, but the limits are definite, ranging from 1,000,000 to 3,500,000 qrs., the latter being a high figure. The tendency is for first-hand stocks to decline, but two weeks’ supply must be a minimum. Farmers’ stocks necessarily vary with the size of the crop and the period of the year; they will range from 9 or 10 weeks on the 1st of September to a half week on the 1st of August. Taking all the stocks together, it is very exceptional for the stock of breadstuffs to fall below 7 weeks’ supply. Between the cereal years 1893-1894 and 1903-1904, a period of 570 weeks, the stocks of all kinds fell below 7 weeks’ supply in only 9 weeks; of these 9 weeks 7 were between the beginning of June and the end of August 1898. This was immediately after the Leiter collapse. In seven of these eleven years there is no instance of stocks falling below 8 weeks’ supply. In 21 out of these 570 weeks and in 39 weeks during the same period stocks dropped below 7½ and 8 weeks’ supply respectively. Roughly speaking the stock of wheat available for bread-making varies from a two to four months’ supply and is at times well above the latter figure.

The formation of a national reserve of wheat, to be held at the disposal of the state in case of urgent need during war, is beset by many practical difficulties. The father of the scheme was probably The Miller, a well-known National reserve. trade journal. In March and April 1886 two articles appeared in that paper under the heading “Years of Plenty and State Granaries,” in which it was urged that to meet the risk of hostile cruisers interrupting the supplies it would be desirable to lay up in granaries on British soil and under government control a stock of wheat sufficient for 12 or alternatively 6 months’ consumption. This was to be national property, not to be touched except when the fortune of war sent up the price of wheat to a famine level or caused severe distress. The State holding this large stock—a year’s supply of foreign grain would have meant at least 15,000,000 qrs., and have cost about £25,000,000 exclusive of warehousing—was in peace time to sell no wheat except when it became necessary to part with stock as a precautionary measure. In that case the wheat sold was to be replaced by the same amount of new grain. The idea was to provide the country with a supply of wheat until sufficient wheat-growing soil could be broken up to make it practically self-sufficing in respect of wheat. The original suggestion fell quite flat. Two years later Captain Warren, R.N., read a paper on “Great Britain’s Corn Supplies in War,” before the London Chamber of Commerce, and accepted national granaries as the only practicable safeguard against what appeared to him a great peril. The representatives of the shipping interest opposed the scheme, probably because it appeared to them likely to divert the public from insisting on an all-powerful navy. The corn trade opposed the project on account of its great practical difficulties. But constant contraction of the British wheat acreage kept the question alive, and during the earlier half of the ’nineties it was a favourite theme with agriculturists. Some influential members of parliament pressed the matter on the government, who, acting, no doubt, on the advice of their military and naval experts, refused either a royal commission or a departmental committee. While the then technical advisers of the government were divided on the advisability of establishing national granaries as a defensive measure, the balance of expert opinion was adverse to the scheme. Lord Wolseley, then commander-in-chief, publicly stigmatized the theory that Great Britain might in war be starved into submission as “unmitigated humbug.”

In spite of official discouragement the agitation continued, and early in 1897 the council of the Central and Associated Chambers of Agriculture, at the suggestion to a great extent of Mr R. A. Yerburgh, M.P., nominated Yerburgh committee. a committee to examine the question of national wheat stores. This committee held thirteen sittings and examined fifty-four witnesses. Its report, which was published (L. G. Newman & Co., 12 Finsbury Square, London, E.C.) with minutes of the evidence taken, practically recommended that a national reserve of wheat on the lines already sketched should be formed and administered by the State, and that the government should be strongly urged to obtain the appointment of a royal commission, comprising representatives of agriculture, the corn trade, shipping, and the army and navy, to conduct an exhaustive inquiry into the whole subject of the national food-supply in case of war. This recommendation was ultimately carried into effect, but not till nearly five years had elapsed. Of two schemes for national granaries put before the Yerburgh committee, one was formulated by Mr Seth Taylor, a London miller and corn merchant, who reckoned that a store of 10,000,000 qrs. of wheat might be accumulated at an average cost of 40s. per qr.—this was in the Leiter year of high prices—and distributed in six specially constructed granaries to be erected at London, Liverpool, Hull, Bristol, Glasgow and Dublin. The cost of the granaries was put at £7,500,000. Mr Taylor’s scheme, all charges included, such as 2½% interest on capital, cost of storage (at 6d. per qr.), and 2s. per qr. for cost of replacing wheat, involved an annual expenditure of £1,250,000. The Yerburgh committee also considered a proposal to stimulate the home supply of wheat by offering a bounty to farmers for every quarter of wheat grown. This proposal has taken different shapes; some have suggested that a bounty should be given on every acre of land covered with wheat, while others would only allow the bounty on wheat raised and kept in good condition up to a certain date, say the beginning of the following harvest. It is obvious that a bounty on the area of land covered by wheat, irrespective of yield, would be a premium on poor farming, and might divert to wheat-growing land unsuitable for that purpose. The suggestion to pay a bounty of say 3s. to 5s. per qr. for all wheat grown and stacked for a certain time stands on a different basis; it is conceivable that a bounty of 5s. might expand the British production of wheat from say 7,000,000 to 9,000,000 qrs., which would mean that a bounty of £2,250,000 per annum, plus costs of administration, had secured an extra home production of 2,000,000 qrs. Whether such a price would be worth paying is another matter; the Yerburgh committee’s conclusion was decidedly in the negative. It has also been suggested that the State might subsidize millers to the extent of 2s. 6d. per sack of 280 ℔. per annum on condition that each maintained a minimum supply of two months’ flour. This may be taken to mean that for keeping a special stock of flour over and above his usual output a miller would be entitled to an annual subsidy of 2s. 6d. per sack. An extra stock of 10,000,000 sacks might be thus kept up at an annual cost of £1,250,000, plus the expenditure of administration, which would probably be heavy. With regard to this suggestion, it is very probable that a few large mills which have plenty of warehouse accommodation and depots all over the country would be ready to keep up a permanent extra stock of 100,000 sacks. Thus a mill of 10,000 sacks’ capacity per week, which habitually maintains a total stock of 50,000 sacks, might bring up its stock to 150,000 sacks. Such a mill, being a good customer to railways, could get from them the storage it required for little or nothing. But the bulk of the mills have no such advantages. They have little or no spare warehousing room, and are not accustomed to keep any stock, sending their flour out almost as fast as it is milled. It is doubtful therefore if a bounty of 2s. 6d. per sack would have the desired effect of keeping up a stock of 10,000,000 sacks, sufficient for two to three months’ bread consumption.

The controversy reached a climax in the royal commission appointed in 1903, to which was also referred the importation of raw material in war time. Its report appeared in 1905. To the question whether the unquestioned Royal commission, 1903-1905. dependence of the United Kingdom on an uninterrupted supply of sea-borne breadstuffs renders it advisable or not to maintain at all times a six months’ stock of wheat and flour, it returned no decided answer, or perhaps it would be more correct to say that the commission was hopelessly divided. The main report was distinctly optimistic so far as the liability of the country to harass and distress at the hands of a hostile naval power or combination of powers was concerned. But there were several dissentients, and there was hardly any portion of the report in chief which did not provoke some reservation or another. That a maritime war would cause freights and insurance to rise in a high degree was freely admitted, and it was also admitted that the price of bread must also rise very appreciably. But, provided the navy did not break down, the risk of starvation was dismissed. Therefore all the proposals for providing national granaries or inducing merchants and millers to carry bigger stocks were put aside as unpractical and unnecessary. The commission was, however, inclined to consider more favourably a suggestion for providing free storage for wheat at the expense of the State. The idea was that if the State would subsidize any large granary company to the extent of 6d. or 5d. per qr., grain now warehoused in foreign lands would be attracted to the British Isles. But on the whole the commission held that the main effect of the scheme would be to saddle the government with the rent of all grain stored in public warehouses in the United Kingdom without materially increasing stocks. The proposal to offer bounties to farmers to hold stocks for a longer period and to grow more wheat met with equally little favour.

To sum up the advantages of national granaries, assuming any sort of disaster to the navy, the possession of a reserve of even six months’ wheat-supply in addition to ordinary stocks would prevent panic prices. On the other hand, the difficulties in the way of forming and administering such a reserve are very great. The world grows no great surplus of wheat, and to form a six months’, much more a twelve months’, stock would be the work of years. The government in buying up the wheat would have to go carefully if they would avoid sending up prices with a rush. They would have to buy dearly, and when they let go a certain amount of stock they would be bound to sell cheaply. A stock once formed might be held by the State with little or no disturbance of the corn market, although the existence of such an emergency stock would hardly encourage British farmers to grow more wheat. The cost of erecting, equipping and keeping in good order the necessary warehouses would be, probably, much heavier than the most liberal estimate hitherto made by advocates of national granaries.

(G. F. Z.)

GRANBY, JOHN MANNERS, Marquess of (1721-1770), British soldier, was the eldest son of the third duke of Rutland. He was born in 1721 and educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, and was returned as member of parliament for Grantham in 1741. Four years later he received a commission as colonel of a regiment raised by the Rutland interest in and about Leicester to assist in quelling the Highland revolt of 1745. This corps never got beyond Newcastle, but young Granby went to the front as a volunteer on the duke of Cumberland’s staff, and saw active service in the last stages of the insurrection. Very soon his regiment was disbanded. He continued in parliament, combining with it military duties, making the campaign of Flanders (1747). Promoted major-general in 1755, three years later he was appointed colonel of the Royal Horse Guards (Blues). Meanwhile he had married the daughter of the duke of Somerset, and in 1754 had begun his parliamentary connexion with Cambridgeshire, for which county he sat until his death. The same year that saw Granby made colonel of the Blues, saw also the despatch of a considerable British contingent to Germany. Minden was Granby’s first great battle. At the head of the Blues he was one of the cavalry leaders halted at the critical moment by Sackville, and when in consequence that officer was sent home in disgrace, Lieut.-General Lord Granby succeeded to the command of the British contingent in Ferdinand’s army, having 32,000 men under his orders at the beginning of 1760. In the remaining campaigns of the Seven Years’ War the English contingent was more conspicuous by its conduct than the Prussians themselves. On the 31st of July 1760 Granby brilliantly stormed Warburg at the head of the British cavalry, capturing 1500 men and ten pieces of artillery. A year later (15th of July 1761) the British defended the heights of Vellinghausen with what Ferdinand himself styled “indescribable bravery.” In the last campaign, at Gravenstein und Wilhelmsthal, Homburg and Cassel, Granby’s men bore the brunt of the fighting and earned the greatest share of the glory.

Returning to England in 1763 the marquess found himself the popular hero of the war. It is said that couriers awaited his arrival at all the home ports to offer him the choice of the Ordnance or the Horse Guards. His appointment to the Ordnance bore the date of the 1st of July 1763, and three years later he became commander-in-chief. In this position he was attacked by “Junius,” and a heated discussion arose, as the writer had taken the greatest pains in assailing the most popular member of the Grafton ministry. In 1770 Granby, worn out by political and financial trouble, resigned all his offices, except the colonelcy of the Blues. He died at Scarborough on the 18th of October 1770. He had been made a privy councillor in 1760, lord lieutenant of Derbyshire in 1762, and LL.D. of Cambridge in 1769.

Two portraits of Granby were painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, one of which is now in the National Gallery. His contemporary popularity is indicated by the number of inns and public-houses which took his name and had his portrait as sign-board.

GRAN CHACO, an extensive region in the heart of South America belonging to the La Plata basin, stretching from 20° to 29° S. lat., and divided between the republics of Argentine, Bolivia and Paraguay, with a small district of south-western Matto Grosso (Brazil). Its area is estimated at from 250,000 to 425,000 sq. m., but the true Chaco region probably does not exceed 300,000 sq. m. The greater part is covered with marshes, lagoons and dense tropical jungle and forest, and is still unexplored. On its southern and western borders there are extensive tracts of open woodland, intermingled with grassy plains, while on the northern side in Bolivia are large areas of open country subject to inundations in the rainy season. In general terms the Gran Chaco may be described as a great plain sloping gently to the S.E., traversed in the same direction by two great rivers, the Pilcomayo and Bermejo, whose sluggish courses are not navigable because of sand-banks, barriers of overturned trees and floating vegetation, and confusing channels. This excludes that part of eastern Bolivia belonging to the Amazon basin, which is sometimes described as part of the Chaco. The greater part of its territory is occupied by nomadic tribes of Indians, some of whom are still unsubdued, while others, like the Matacos, are sometimes to be found on neighbouring sugar estates and estancias as labourers during the busy season. The forest wealth of the Chaco region is incalculable and apparently inexhaustible, consisting of a great variety of palms and valuable cabinet woods, building timber, &c. Its extensive tracts of “quebracho Colorado” (Loxopterygium Lorentzii) are of very great value because of its use in tanning leather. Both the wood and its extract are largely exported. Civilization is slowly gaining footholds in this region along the southern and eastern borders.

GRAND ALLIANCE, WAR OF THE (alternatively called the War of the League of Augsburg), the third1 of the great aggressive wars waged by Louis XIV. of France against Spain, the Empire, Great Britain, Holland and other states. The two earlier wars, which are redeemed from oblivion by the fact that in them three great captains, Turenne, Condé and Montecucculi, played leading parts, are described in the article Dutch Wars. In the third war the leading figures are: Henri de Montmorency-Boutteville, duke of Luxemburg, the former aide-de-camp of Condé and heir to his daring method of warfare; William of Orange, who had fought against both Condé and Luxemburg in the earlier wars, and was now king of England; Vauban, the founder of the sciences of fortification and siegecraft, and Catinat, the follower of Turenne’s cautious and systematic strategy, who was the first commoner to receive high command in the army of Louis XIV. But as soldiers, these men—except Vauban—are overshadowed by the great figures of the preceding generation, and except for a half-dozen outstanding episodes, the war of 1689-97 was an affair of positions and manœuvres.

It was within these years that the art and practice of war began to crystallize into the form called “linear” in its strategic and tactical aspect, and “cabinet-war” in its political and moral aspect. In the Dutch wars, and in the minor wars that preceded the formation of the League of Augsburg, there were still survivals of the loose organization, violence and wasteful barbarity typical of the Thirty Years’ War; and even in the War of the Grand Alliance (in its earlier years) occasional brutalities and devastations showed that the old spirit died hard. But outrages that would have been borne in dumb misery in the old days now provoked loud indignation, and when the fierce Louvois disappeared from the scene it became generally understood that barbarity was impolitic, not only as alienating popular sympathies, but also as rendering operations a physical impossibility for want of supplies.

Thus in 1700, so far from terrorizing the country people into submission, armies systematically conciliated them by paying cash and bringing trade into the country. Formerly, wars had been fought to compel a people Character of the war. to abjure their faith or to change sides in some personal or dynastic quarrel. But since 1648 this had no longer been the case. The Peace of Westphalia established the general relationship of kings, priests and peoples on a basis that was not really shaken until the French Revolution, and in the intervening hundred and forty years the peoples at large, except at the highest and gravest moments (as in Germany in 1689, France In 1709 and Prussia in 1757) held aloof from active participation in politics and war. This was the beginning of the theory that war was an affair of the regular forces only, and that intervention in it by the civil population was a punishable offence. Thus wars became the business of the professional soldiers in the king’s own service, and the scarcity and costliness of these soldiers combined with the purely political character of the quarrels that arose to reduce a campaign from an “intense and passionate drama” to a humdrum affair, to which only rarely a few men of genius imparted some degree of vigour, and which in the main was an attempt to gain small ends by a small expenditure of force and with the minimum of risk. As between a prince and his subjects there were still quarrels that stirred the average man—the Dragonnades, for instance, or the English Revolution—but foreign wars were “a stronger form of diplomatic notes,” as Clausewitz called them, and were waged with the object of adding a codicil to the treaty of peace that had closed the last incident.

Other causes contributed to stifle the former ardour of war. Campaigns were no longer conducted by armies of ten to thirty thousand men. Large regular armies had come into fashion, and, as Guibert points out, instead of small armies charged with grand operations we find grand armies charged with small operations. The average general, under the prevailing conditions of supply and armament, was not equal to the task of commanding such armies. Any real concentration of the great forces that Louis XIV. had created was therefore out of the question, and the field armies split into six or eight independent fractions, each charged with operations on a particular theatre of war. From such a policy nothing remotely resembling the crushing of a great power could be expected to be gained. The one tangible asset, in view of future peace negotiations, was therefore a fortress, and it was on the preservation or capture of fortresses that operations in all these wars chiefly turned. The idea of the decisive battle for its own sake, as a settlement of the quarrel, was far distant; for, strictly speaking, there was no quarrel, and to use up highly trained and exceedingly expensive soldiers in gaining by brute force an advantage that might equally well be obtained by chicanery was regarded as foolish.

The fortress was, moreover, of immediate as well as contingent value to a state at war. A century of constant warfare had impoverished middle Europe, and armies had to spread over a large area if they desired to “live on the country.” This was dangerous in the face of the enemy (cf. the Peninsular War), and it was also uneconomical. The only way to prevent the country people from sending their produce into the fortresses for safety was to announce beforehand that cash would be paid, at a high rate, for whatever the army needed. But even promises rarely brought this about, and to live at all, whether on supplies brought up from the home country and stored in magazines (which had to be guarded) or on local resources, an army had as a rule to maintain or to capture a large fortress. Sieges, therefore, and manœuvres are the features of this form of war, wherein armies progressed not with the giant strides of modern war, but in a succession of short hops from one foothold to the next. This was the procedure of the average commander, and even when a more intense spirit of conflict was evoked by the Luxemburgs and Marlboroughs it was but momentary and spasmodic.

The general character of the war being borne in mind, nine-tenths of its marches and manœuvres can be almost “taken as read”; the remaining tenth, the exceptional and abnormal part of it, alone possesses an interest for modern readers.

In pursuance of a new aggressive policy in Germany Louis XIV. sent his troops, as a diplomatic menace rather than for conquest, into that country in the autumn of 1688. Some of their raiding parties plundered the country as far south as Augsburg, for the political intent of their advance suggested terrorism rather than conciliation as the best method. The league of Augsburg at once took up the challenge, and the addition of new members (Treaty of Vienna, May 1689) converted it into the “Grand Alliance” of Spain, Holland, Sweden, Savoy and certain Italian states, Great Britain, the emperor, the elector of Brandenburg, &c.

“Those who condemned the king for raising up so many enemies, admired him for having so fully prepared to defend himself and even to forestall them,” says Voltaire. Louvois had in fact completed the work of organizing the French army on a regular and permanent basis, and had made it not merely the best, but also by far the most numerous in Europe, for Louis disposed in 1688 of no fewer than 375,000 soldiers and 60,000 sailors. The infantry was uniformed and drilled, and the socket bayonet and the flint-lock musket had been introduced. The only relic of the old armament was the pike, which was retained for one-quarter of the foot, though it had been discarded by the Imperialists in the course of the Turkish wars described below. The first artillery regiment was created in 1684, to replace the former semi-civilian organization by a body of artillerymen susceptible of uniform training and amenable to discipline and orders.

In 1689 Louis had six armies on foot. That in Germany, which had executed the raid of the previous autumn, was not in a position to resist the principal army of the coalition so far from support. Louvois therefore ordered it Devastation of the Palatinate, 1689. to lay waste the Palatinate, and the devastation of the country around Heidelberg, Mannheim, Spires, Oppenheim and Worms was pitilessly and methodically carried into effect in January and February. There had been devastations in previous wars, even the high-minded Turenne had used the argument of fire and sword to terrify a population or a prince, while the whole story of the last ten years of the great war had been one of incendiary armies leaving traces of their passage that it took a century to remove. But here the devastation was a purely military measure, executed systematically over a given strategic front for no other purpose than to delay the advance of the enemy’s army. It differed from the method of Turenne or Cromwell in that the sufferers were not those people whom it was the purpose of the war to reduce to submission, but others who had no interest in the quarrel. It differed from Wellington’s laying waste of Portugal in 1810 in that it was not done for the defence of the Palatinate against a national enemy, but because the Palatinate was where it was. The feudal theory that every subject of a prince at war was an armed vassal, and therefore an enemy of the prince’s enemy, had in practice been obsolete for two centuries past; by 1690 the organization of war, its causes, its methods and its instruments had passed out of touch with the people at large, and it had become thoroughly understood that the army alone was concerned with the army’s business. Thus it was that this devastation excited universal reprobation; and that, in the words of a modern French writer, the “idea of Germany came to birth in the flames of the Palatinate.”

As a military measure this crime was, moreover, quite unprofitable; for it became impossible for Marshal Duras, the French commander, to hold out on the east side of the middle Rhine, and he could think of nothing better to do than to go farther south and to ravage Baden and the Breisgau, which was not even a military necessity. The grand army of the Allies, coming farther north, was practically unopposed. Charles of Lorraine and the elector of Bavaria—lately comrades in the Turkish war (see below)—invested Mainz, the elector of Brandenburg Bonn. The latter, following the evil precedent of his enemies, shelled the town uselessly instead of making a breach in its walls and overpowering its French garrison, an incident not calculated to advance the nascent idea of German unity. Mainz, valiantly defended by Nicolas du Blé, marquis d’Uxelles, had to surrender on the 8th of September. The governor of Bonn, baron d’Asfeld, not in the least intimidated by the bombardment, held out till the army that had taken Mainz reinforced the elector of Brandenburg, and then, rejecting the hard terms of surrender offered him by the latter, he fell in resisting a last assault on the 12th of October. Only 850 men out of his 6000 were left to surrender on the 16th, and the duke of Lorraine, less truculent than the elector, escorted them safely to Thionville. Boufflers, with another of Louis’s armies, operated from Luxemburg (captured by the French in 1684 and since held) and Trarbach towards the Rhine, but in spite of a minor victory at Kochheim on the 21st of August, he was unable to relieve either Mainz or Bonn.

In the Low Countries the French marshal d’Humières, being in superior force, had obtained special permission to offer battle to the Allies. Leaving the garrison of Lille and Tournay to amuse the Spaniards, he hurried from Maubeuge to oppose the Dutch, who from Namur had advanced slowly on Philippeville. Coming upon their army (which was commanded by the prince of Waldeck) in position behind the river Heure, with an advanced post in the little walled town of Walcourt, he flung his advanced guard against the bridge and fortifications of this place to clear the way for his deployment beyond the river Heure (27th August). After wasting a thousand brave men in this attempt, he drew back. For a few days the two armies remained face to face, cannonading one another at intervals, but no further fighting occurred. Humières returned to the region of the Scheldt fortresses, and Waldeck to Brussels. For the others of Louis’ six armies the year’s campaign passed off quite uneventfully.

Simultaneously with these operations, the Jacobite cause was being fought to an issue in Ireland. War began early in 1689 with desultory engagements between the Orangemen of the north and the Irish regular army, most of which the earl The war in Ireland, 1689-1691. of Tyrconnel had induced to declare for King James. The northern struggle after a time condensed itself into the defence of Derry and Enniskillen. The siege of the former place, begun by James himself and carried on by the French general Rosen, lasted 105 days. In marked contrast to the sieges of the continent, this was resisted by the townsmen themselves, under the leadership of the clergyman George Walker. But the relieving force (consisting of two frigates, a supply ship and a force under Major-general Percy Kirke) was dilatory, and it was not until the defenders were in the last extremity that Kirke actually broke through the blockade (July 31st). Enniskillen was less closely invested, and its inhabitants, organized by Colonel Wolseley and other officers sent by Kirke, actually kept the open field and defeated the Jacobites at Newtown Butler (July 31st). A few days later the Jacobite army withdrew from the north. But it was long before an adequate army could be sent over from England to deal with it. Marshal Schomberg (q.v.), one of the most distinguished soldiers of the time, who had been expelled from the French service as a Huguenot, was indeed sent over in August, but the army he brought, some 10,000 strong, was composed of raw recruits, and when it was assembled in camp at Dundalk to be trained for its work, it was quickly ruined by an epidemic of fever. But James failed to take advantage of his opportunity to renew the war in the north, and the relics of Schomberg’s army wintered in security, covered by the Enniskillen troops. In the spring of 1690, however, more troops, this time experienced regiments from Holland, Denmark and Brandenburg, were sent, and in June, Schomberg in Ireland and Major-general Scravemore in Chester having thoroughly organized and equipped the field army, King William assumed the command himself. Five days after his arrival he began his advance from Loughbrickland near Newry, and on the 1st of July he engaged James’s main army on the river Boyne, close to Drogheda. Schomberg was killed and William himself wounded, but the Irish army was routed.

No stand was made by the defeated party either in the Dublin or in the Waterford district. Lauzun, the commander of the French auxiliary corps in James’s army, and Tyrconnel both discountenanced any attempt to defend Limerick, where the Jacobite forces had reassembled; but Patrick Sarsfield (earl of Lucan), as the spokesman of the younger and more ardent of the Irish officers, pleaded for its retention. He was left, therefore, to hold Limerick, while Tyrconnel and Lauzun moved northward into Galway. Here, as in the north, the quarrel enlisted the active sympathies of the people against the invader, and Sarsfield not only surprised and destroyed the artillery train of William’s army, but repulsed every assault made on the walls that Lauzun had said “could be battered down by rotten apples.” William gave up the siege on the 30th of August. The failure was, however, compensated in a measure by the arrival in Ireland of an expedition under Lord Marlborough, which captured Cork and Kinsale, and next year (1691) the Jacobite cause was finally crushed by William’s general Ginckell (afterwards earl of Athlone) in the battle of Aughrim in Galway (July 12th), in which St Ruth, the French commander, was killed and the Jacobite army dissipated. Ginckell, following up his victory, besieged Limerick afresh. Tyrconnel died of apoplexy while organizing the defence, and this time the town was invested by sea as well as by land. After six weeks’ resistance the defenders offered to capitulate, and with the signing of the treaty of Limerick on the 1st of October the Irish war came to an end. Sarsfield and the most energetic of King James’s supporters retired to France and were there formed into the famous “Irish brigade.” Sarsfield was killed at the battle of Neerwinden two years later.

The campaign of 1690 on the continent of Europe is marked by two battles, one of which, Luxemburg’s victory of Fleurus, belongs to the category of the world’s great battles. It is described under Fleurus, and the present article only deals summarily with the conditions in which it was fought. These, though they in fact led to an encounter that could, in itself, fairly be called decisive, were in closer accord with the general spirit of the war than was the decision that arose out of them.

Luxemburg had a powerful enemy in Louvois, and he had consequently been allotted only an insignificant part in the first campaign. But after the disasters of 1689 Louis re-arranged the commands on the north-east frontier so as to allow Humières, Luxemburg and Boufflers to combine for united action. “I will take care that Louvois plays fair,” Louis said to the duke when he gave him his letters of service. Though apparently Luxemburg was not authorized to order such a combination himself, as senior officer he would automatically take command if it came about. The whole force available was probably close on 100,000, but not half of these were present at the decisive battle, though Luxemburg certainly practised the utmost “economy of force” as this was understood in those days (see also Neerwinden). On the remaining theatres of war, the dauphin, assisted by the duc de Lorge, held the middle Rhine, and Catinat the Alps, while other forces were in Roussillon, &c., as before. Catinat’s operations are briefly described below. Those of the others need no description, for though the Allies formed a plan for a grand concentric advance on Paris, the preliminaries to this advance were so numerous and so closely interdependent that on the most favourable estimate the winter would necessarily find the Allied armies many leagues short of Paris. In fact, the Rhine offensive collapsed when Charles of Lorraine died (17th April), and the reconquest of his lost duchy ceased to be a direct object of the war.

Luxemburg began operations by drawing in from the Sambre country, where he had hitherto been stationed, to the Scheldt and “eating up” the country between Oudenarde and Ghent in the face of a Spanish army concentrated Fleurus, 1690. at the latter place (15th May-12th June). He then left Humières with a containing force in the Scheldt region and hurried back to the Sambre to interpose between the Allied army under Waldeck and the fortress of Dinant which Waldeck was credited with the intention of besieging. His march from Tournay to Gerpinnes was counted a model of skill—the locus classicus for the maxim that ruled till the advent of Napoleon—“march always in the order in which you encamp, or purpose to encamp, or fight.” For four days the army marched across country in close order, covered in all directions by reconnoitring cavalry and advanced, flank and rear guards. Under these conditions eleven miles a day was practically forced marching, and on arriving at Jeumont-sur-Sambre the army was given three days’ rest. Then followed a few leisurely marches in the direction of Charleroi, during which a detachment of Boufflers’s army came in, and the cavalry explored the country to the north. On news of the enemy’s army being at Trazegnies, Luxemburg hurried across a ford of the Sambre above Charleroi, but this proved to be a detachment only, and soon information came in that Waldeck was encamped near Fleurus. Thereupon Luxemburg, without consulting his subordinate generals, took his army to Velaine. He knew that the enemy was marking time till the troops of Liége and the Brandenburgers from the Rhine were near enough to co-operate in the Dinant enterprise, and he was determined to fight a battle at once. From Velaine, therefore, on the morning of the 1st of July, the army moved forward to Fleurus and there won one of the most brilliant victories in the history of the Royal army. But Luxemburg was not allowed to pursue his advantage. He was ordered to hold his army in readiness to besiege either Namur, Mons, Charleroi or Ath, according as later orders dictated; and to send back the borrowed regiments to Boufflers, who was being pressed back by the Brandenburg and Liége troops. Thus Waldeck reformed his army in peace at Brussels, where William III. of England soon afterwards assumed command of the Allied forces in the Netherlands, and Luxemburg and the other marshals stood fast for the rest of the campaign, being forbidden to advance until Catinat—in Italy—should have won a battle.

In this quarter the armed neutrality of the duke of Savoy had long disquieted the French court. His personal connexions with the imperial family and his resentment against Louvois, who had on some occasion treated him with Staffarda. his usual patronizing arrogance, inclined him to join the Allies, while on the other hand he could hope for extensions of his scanty territory only by siding with Louis. In view of this doubtful condition of affairs the French army under Catinat had for some time been maintained on the Alpine frontier, and in the summer of 1690 Louis XIV. sent an ultimatum to Victor Amadeus to compel him to take one side or the other actively and openly. The result was that Victor Emmanuel threw in his lot with the Allies and obtained help from the Spaniards and Austrians in the Milanese. Catinat thereupon advanced into Piedmont, and won, principally by virtue of his own watchfulness and the high efficiency of his troops, the important victory of Staffarda (August 18th, 1690). This did not, however, enable him to overrun Piedmont, and as the duke was soon reinforced, he had to be content with the methodical conquest of a few frontier districts. On the side of Spain, a small French army under the duc de Noailles passed into Catalonia and there lived at the enemy’s expense for the duration of the campaign.

In these theatres of war, and on the Rhine, where the disunion of the German princes prevented vigorous action, the following year, 1691, was uneventful. But in the Netherlands there were a siege, a war of manœuvres and a cavalry combat, each in its way somewhat remarkable. The siege was that of Mons, which was, like many sieges in the former wars, conducted with much pomp by Louis XIV. himself, with Boufflers and Vauban under him. On the surrender of the place, which was hastened by red-hot shot (April 8th), Louis returned to Versailles and divided his army between Boufflers and Luxemburg, the former of whom departed to the Meuse. There he attempted by bombardment to enforce the surrender of Liége, but had to desist when the elector of Brandenburg threatened Dinant. The principal armies on either side faced one another under the command respectively of William III. and of Luxemburg. The Allies were first concentrated to the south of Namur, and Luxemburg hurried thither, but neither party found any tempting opportunity for battle, and when the cavalry had consumed all the forage available in the district, the two armies edged away gradually towards Flanders. The war of manœuvre continued, with a slight balance of advantage on Luxemburg’s side, until September, when William returned to England, leaving Waldeck in command of the Allied army, with orders to distribute it in winter quarters amongst the garrison towns. This gave the momentary opportunity for which Luxemburg had been watching, and at Leuze (20th Sept.) he fell upon the cavalry of Waldeck’s rearguard and drove it back in disorder with heavy losses until the pursuit was checked by the Allied infantry.

In 16922 the Rhine campaign was no more decisive than before, although Lorge made a successful raid into Württemberg in September and foraged his cavalry in German territory till the approach of winter. The Spanish campaign was unimportant, but on the Alpine side the Allies under the duke of Savoy drove back Catinat into Dauphiné, which they ravaged with fire and sword. But the French peasantry were quicker to take arms than the Germans, and, inspired by the local gentry—amongst whom figured the heroine, Philis de la Tour du Pin (1645-1708), daughter of the marquis de la Charce—they beset every road with such success that the small regular army of the invaders was powerless. Brought practically to a standstill, the Allies soon consumed the provisions that could be gathered in, and then, fearing lest the snow should close the passes behind them, they retreated.

In the Low Countries the campaign as before began with a great siege. Louis and Vauban invested Namur on the 26th of May. The place was defended by the prince de Barbançon (who had been governor of Luxemburg Siege of Namur, 1692. when that place was besieged in 1684) and Coehoorn (q.v.), Vauban’s rival in the science of fortification. Luxemburg, with a small army, manœuvred to cover the siege against William III.’s army at Louvain. The place fell on the 5th of June,3 after a very few days of Vauban’s “regular” attack, but the citadel held out until the 23rd. Then, as before, Louis returned to Versailles, giving injunctions to Luxemburg to “preserve the strong places and the country, while opposing the enemy’s enterprises and subsisting the army at his expense.” This negative policy, contrary to expectation, led to a hard-fought battle. William, employing a common device, announced his intention of retaking Namur, but set his army in motion for Flanders and the sea-coast fortresses held by the French. Luxemburg, warned in time, hurried towards the Scheldt, and the two armies were soon face to face again, Luxemburg about Steenkirk. Steenkirk, William in front of Hal. William then formed the plan of surprising Luxemburg’s right wing before it could be supported by the rest of his army, relying chiefly on false information that a detected spy at his headquarters was forced to send, to mislead the duke. But Luxemburg had the material protection of a widespread net of outposts as well as a secret service, and although ill in bed when William’s advance was reported, he shook off his apathy, mounted his horse and, enabled by his outpost reports to divine his opponent’s plan, he met it (3rd August) by a swift concentration of his army, against which the Allies, whose advance and deployment had been mismanaged, were powerless (see Steenkirk). In this almost accidental battle both sides suffered enormous losses, and neither attempted to bring about, or even to risk, a second resultless trial of strength. Boufflers’s army returned to the Sambre and Luxemburg and William established themselves for the rest of the season at Lessines and Ninove respectively, 13 m. apart. After both armies had broken up into their winter quarters, Louis ordered Boufflers to attempt the capture of Charleroi. But a bombardment failed to intimidate the garrison, and when the Allies began to re-assemble, the attempt was given up (19th-21st Oct.). This failure was, however, compensated by the siege and capture of Furnes (28th Dec. 1692-7th Jan. 1693).

In 1693, the culminating point of the war was reached. It began, as mentioned above, with a winter enterprise that at least indicated the aggressive spirit of the French generals. The king promoted his admiral, Tourville, and Catinat, the roturier, to the marshalship, and founded the military order of St Louis on the 10th of April. The grand army in the Netherlands this year numbered 120,000, to oppose whom William III. had only some 40,000 at hand. But at the very beginning of operations Louis, after reviewing this large force at Gembloux, broke it up, in order to send 30,000 under the dauphin to Germany, where Lorge had captured Heidelberg and seemed able, if reinforced, to overrun south Germany. But the imperial general Prince Louis of Baden took up a position near Heilbronn so strong that the dauphin and Lorge did not venture to attack him. Thus King Louis sacrificed a reality to a dream, and for the third time lost the opportunity, for which he always longed, of commanding in chief in a great battle. He himself, to judge by his letter to Monsieur on the 8th of June, regarded his action as a sacrifice of personal dreams to tangible realities. And, before the event falsified predictions, there was much to be said for the course he took, which accorded better with the prevailing system of war than a Fleurus or a Neerwinden. In this system of war the rival armies, as armies, were almost in a state of equilibrium, and more was to be expected from an army dealing with something dissimilar to itself—a fortress or a patch of land or a convoy—than from its collision with another army of equal force.

Thus Luxemburg obtained his last and greatest opportunity. He was still superior in numbers, but William at Louvain had the advantage of position. The former, authorized by his master this year Neerwinden. “non seulement d’empêcher les ennemis de rien entreprendre, mais d’emporter quelques avantages sur eux,” threatened Liége, drew William over to its defence and then advanced to attack him. The Allies, however, retired to another position, between the Great and Little Geete rivers, and there, in a strongly entrenched position around Neerwinden, they were attacked by Luxemburg on the 29th of July. The long and doubtful battle, one of the greatest victories ever won by the French army, is briefly described under Neerwinden. It ended in a brilliant victory for the assailant, but Luxemburg’s exhausted army did not pursue; William was as unshaken and determined as ever; and the campaign closed, not with a treaty of peace, but with a few manœuvres which, by inducing William to believe in an attack on Ath, enabled Luxemburg to besiege and capture Charleroi (October).

Neerwinden was not the only French victory of the year. Catinat, advancing from Fenestrelle and Susa to the relief of Pinerolo (Pignerol), which the duke of Savoy was besieging, took up a position in formal order of battle Marsaglia. north of the village of Marsaglia. Here on the 4th of October the duke of Savoy attacked him with his whole army, front to front. But the greatly superior regimental efficiency of the French, and Catinat’s minute attention to details4 in arraying them, gave the new marshal a victory that was a not unworthy pendant to Neerwinden. The Piedmontese and their allies lost, it is said, 10,000 killed, wounded and prisoners, as against Catinat’s 1800. But here, too, the results were trifling, and this year of victory is remembered chiefly as the year in which “people perished of want to the accompaniment of Te Deums.”

In 1694 (late in the season owing to the prevailing distress and famine) Louis opened a fresh campaign in the Netherlands. The armies were larger and more ineffective than ever, and William offered no further opportunities to his formidable opponent. In September, after inducing William to desist from his intention of besieging Dunkirk by appearing on his flank with a mass of cavalry,5 which had ridden from the Meuse, 100 m., in 4 days, Luxemburg gave up his command. He died on the 4th of January following, and with him the tradition of the Condé school of warfare disappeared from Europe. In Catalonia the marshal de Noailles won a victory (27th May) over the Spaniards at the ford of the Ter (Torroella, 5 m. above the mouth of the river), and in consequence captured a number of walled towns.

In 1695 William found Marshal Villeroi a far less formidable opponent than Luxemburg had been, and easily succeeded in keeping him in Flanders while a corps of the Allies invested Namur. Coehoorn directed the siege-works, and Later campaigns of the war. Boufflers the defence. Gradually, as in 1692, the defenders were dislodged from the town, the citadel outworks and the citadel itself, the last being assaulted with success by the “British grenadiers,” as the song commemorates, on the 30th of August. Boufflers was rewarded for his sixty-seven days’ defence by the grade of marshal.

By 1696 necessity had compelled Louis to renounce his vague and indefinite offensive policy, and he now frankly restricted his efforts to the maintenance of what he had won in the preceding campaigns. In this new policy he met with much success. Boufflers, Lorge, Noailles and even the incompetent Villeroi held the field in their various spheres of operations without allowing the Allies to inflict any material injury, and also (by having recourse again to the policy of living by plunder) preserving French soil from the burden of their own maintenance. In this, as before, they were powerfully assisted by the disunion and divided counsels of their heterogeneous enemies. In Piedmont, Catinat crowned his work by making peace and alliance with the duke of Savoy, and the two late enemies having joined forces captured one of the fortresses of the Milanese. The last campaign was in 1697. Catinat and Vauban besieged Ath. This siege was perhaps the most regular and methodical of the great engineer’s career. It lasted 23 days and cost the assailants only 50 men. King William did not stir from his entrenched position at Brussels, nor did Villeroi dare to attack him there. Lastly, in August 1697 Vendôme, Noailles’ successor, captured Barcelona. The peace of Ryswijk, signed on the 30th of October, closed this war by practically restoring the status quo ante; but neither the ambitions of Louis nor the Grand Alliance that opposed them ceased to have force, and three years later the struggle began anew (see Spanish Succession, War of the).

Concurrently with these campaigns, the emperor had been engaged in a much more serious war on his eastern marches against the old enemy, the Turks. This war arose in 1682 out of internal disturbances in Hungary. The campaign of Austro-Turkish wars, 1682-1699. the following year is memorable for all time as the last great wave of Turkish invasion. Mahommed IV. advanced from Belgrade in May, with 200,000 men, drove back the small imperial army of Prince Charles of Lorraine, and early in July invested Vienna itself. The two months’ defence of Vienna by Count Rüdiger Starhemberg (1635-1701) and the brilliant victory of the relieving army led by John Sobieski, king of Poland, and Prince Charles on the 12th of September 1683, were events which, besides their intrinsic importance, possess the romantic interest of an old knightly crusade against the heathen.

But the course of the war, after the tide of invasion had ebbed, differed little from the wars of contemporary western Europe. Turkey figured rather as a factor in the balance of power than as the “infidel,” and although the battles and sieges in Hungary were characterized by the bitter personal hostility of Christian to Turk which had no counterpart in the West, the war as a whole was as methodical and tedious as any Rhine or Low Countries campaign. In 1684 Charles of Lorraine gained a victory at Waitzen on the 27th of June and another at Eperies on the 18th of September, and unsuccessfully besieged Budapest.

In 1685 the Germans were uniformly successful, though a victory at Gran (August 16th) and the storming of Neuhaüsel (August 19th) were the only outstanding incidents. In 1686 Charles, assisted by the elector Max Emanuel of Bavaria, besieged and stormed Budapest (Sept. 2nd). In 1687 they followed up their success by a great victory at Mohacz (Aug. 12th). In 1688 the Austrians advanced still further, took Belgrade, threatened Widin and entered Bosnia. The margrave Louis of Baden, who afterward became one of the most celebrated of the methodical generals of the day, won a victory at Derbent on the 5th of September 1688, and next year, in spite of the outbreak of a general European war, he managed to win another battle at Nisch (Sept. 24th), to capture Widin (Oct. 14th) and to advance to the Balkans, but in 1690, more troops having to be withdrawn for the European war, the imperialist generals lost Nisch, Widin and Belgrade one after the other. There was, however, no repetition of the scenes of 1683, for in 1691 Louis won the battle of Szlankamen (Aug. 19th). After two more desultory if successful campaigns he was called to serve in western Europe, and for three years more the war dragged on without result, until in 1697 the young Prince Eugene was appointed to command the imperialists and won a great and decisive victory at Zenta on the Theiss (Sept. 11th). This induced a last general advance of the Germans eastward, which was definitively successful and brought about the peace of Carlowitz (January 1699).

(C. F. A.)

Naval Operations

The naval side of the war waged by the powers of western Europe from 1689 to 1697, to reduce the predominance of King Louis XIV., was not marked by any very conspicuous exhibition of energy or capacity, but it was singularly decisive in its results. At the beginning of the struggle the French fleet kept the sea in face of the united fleets of Great Britain and Holland. It displayed even in 1690 a marked superiority over them. Before the struggle ended it had been fairly driven into port, and though its failure was to a great extent due to the exhaustion of the French finances, yet the inability of the French admirals to make a proper use of their fleets, and the incapacity of the king’s ministers to direct the efforts of his naval officers to the most effective aims, were largely responsible for the result.

When the war began in 1689, the British Admiralty was still suffering from the disorders of the reign of King Charles II., which had been only in part corrected during the short reign of James II. The first squadrons were sent out late and in insufficient strength. The Dutch, crushed by the obligation to maintain a great army, found an increasing difficulty in preparing their fleet for action early. Louis XIV., a despotic monarch, with as yet unexhausted resources, had it within his power to strike first. The opportunity offered him was a very tempting one. Ireland was still loyal to King James II., and would therefore have afforded an admirable basis of operations to a French fleet. No serious attempt was made to profit by the advantage thus presented. In March 1689 King James was landed and reinforcements were prepared for him at Brest. A British squadron under the command of Arthur Herbert (afterwards Lord Torrington), sent to intercept them, reached the French port too late, and on returning to the coast of Ireland sighted the convoy off the Old Head of Kinsale on the 10th of May. The French admiral Chateaurenault held on to Bantry Bay, and an indecisive encounter took place on the 11th of May. The troops and stores for King James were successfully landed. Then both admirals, the British and the French, returned home, and neither in that nor in the following year was any serious effort made by the French to gain command of the sea between Ireland and England. On the contrary, a great French fleet entered the Channel, and gained a success over the combined British and Dutch fleets on the 10th of July 1690 (see Beachy Head, Battle of), which was not followed up by vigorous action. In the meantime King William III. passed over to Ireland and won the battle of the Boyne. During the following year, while the cause of King James was being finally ruined in Ireland, the main French fleet was cruising in the Bay of Biscay, principally for the purpose of avoiding battle. During the whole of 1689, 1690 and 1691, British squadrons were active on the Irish coast. One raised the siege of Londonderry in July 1689, and another convoyed the first British forces sent over under the duke of Schomberg. Immediately after Beachy Head in 1690, a part of the Channel fleet carried out an expedition under the earl (afterwards duke) of Marlborough, which took Cork and reduced a large part of the south of the island. In 1691 the French did little more than help to carry away the wreckage of their allies and their own detachments. In 1692 a vigorous but tardy attempt was made to employ their fleet to cover an invasion of England (see La Hogue, Battle of). It ended in defeat, and the allies remained masters of the Channel. The defeat of La Hogue did not do so much harm to the naval power of King Louis as has sometimes been supposed. In the next year, 1693, he was able to strike a severe blow at the Allies. The important Mediterranean trade of Great Britain and Holland, called for convenience the Smyrna convoy, having been delayed during the previous year, anxious measures were taken to see it safe on its road in 1693. But the arrangements of the allied governments and admirals were not good. They made no effort to blockade Brest, nor did they take effective steps to discover whether or not the French fleet had left the port. The convoy was seen beyond the Scilly Isles by the main fleet. But as the French admiral Tourville had left Brest for the Straits of Gibraltar with a powerful force and had been joined by a squadron from Toulon, the whole convoy was scattered or taken by him, in the latter days of June, near Lagos. But though this success was a very fair equivalent for the defeat at La Hogue, it was the last serious effort made by the navy of Louis XIV. in this war. Want of money compelled him to lay his fleet up. The allies were now free to make full use of their own, to harass the French coast, to intercept French commerce, and to co-operate with the armies acting against France. Some of the operations undertaken by them were more remarkable for the violence of the effort than for the magnitude of the results. The numerous bombardments of French Channel ports, and the attempts to destroy St Malo, the great nursery of the active French privateers, by infernal machines, did little harm. A British attack on Brest in June 1694 was beaten off with heavy loss. The scheme had been betrayed by Jacobite correspondents. Yet the inability of the French king to avert these enterprises showed the weakness of his navy and the limitations of his power. The protection of British and Dutch commerce was never complete, for the French privateers were active to the end. But French commerce was wholly ruined.

It was the misfortune of the allies that their co-operation with armies was largely with the forces of a power so languid and so bankrupt as Spain. Yet the series of operations directed by Russel in the Mediterranean throughout 1694 and 1695 demonstrated the superiority of the allied fleet, and checked the advance of the French in Catalonia. Contemporary with the campaigns in Europe was a long series of cruises against the French in the West Indies, undertaken by the British navy, with more or less help from the Dutch and a little feeble assistance from the Spaniards. They began with the cruise of Captain Lawrence Wright in 1690-1691, and ended with that of Admiral Nevil in 1696-1697. It cannot be said that they attained to any very honourable achievement, or even did much to weaken the French hold on their possessions in the West Indies and North America. Some, and notably the attack made on Quebec by Sir William Phips in 1690, with a force raised in the British colonies, ended in defeat. None of them was so triumphant as the plunder of Cartagena in South America by the Frenchman Pointis, in 1697, at the head of a semi-piratical force. Too often there was absolute misconduct. In the buccaneering and piratical atmosphere of the West Indies, the naval officers of the day, who were still infected with the corruption of the reign of Charles II., and who calculated on distance from home to secure them immunity, sank nearly to the level of pirates and buccaneers. The indifference of the age to the laws of health, and its ignorance of them, caused the ravages of disease to be frightful. In the case of Admiral Nevil’s squadron, the admiral himself and all his captains except one, died during the cruise, and the ships were unmanned. Yet it was their own vices which caused these expeditions to fail, and not the strength of the French defence. When the war ended, the navy of King Louis XIV. had disappeared from the sea.

See Burchett, Memoirs of Transactions at Sea during the War with France, 1688-1697 (London, 1703); Lediard, Naval History (London, 1735), particularly valuable for the quotations in his notes. For the West Indian voyages, Tronde, Batailles navales de la France (Paris, 1867); De Yonghe, Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche Zeewezen (Haarlem, 1860).

(D. H.)

1 The name “Grand Alliance” is applied to the coalition against Louis XIV. begun by the League of Augsburg. This coalition not only waged the war dealt with in the present article, but (with only slight modifications and with practically unbroken continuity) the war of the Spanish Succession (q.v.) that followed.

2 Louvois died in July 1691.

3 A few days before this the great naval reverse of La Hogue put an end to the projects of invading England hitherto entertained at Versailles.

4 Marsaglia is, if not the first, at any rate, one of the first, instances of a bayonet charge by a long deployed line of infantry.

5 Hussars figured here for the first time in western Europe. A regiment of them had been raised in 1692 from deserters from the Austrian service.

GRAND CANARY (Gran Canaria), an island in the Atlantic Ocean, forming part of the Spanish archipelago of the Canary Islands (q.v.). Pop. (1900) 127,471; area 523 sq. m. Grand Canary, the most fertile island of the group, is nearly circular in shape, with a diameter of 24 m. and a circumference of 75 m. The interior is a mass of mountain with ravines radiating to the shore. Its highest peak, Los Pexos, is 6400 ft. Large tracts are covered with native pine (P. canariensis). There are several mineral springs on the island. Las Palmas (pop. 44,517), the capital, is described in a separate article. Telde (8978), the second place in the island, stands on a plain, surrounded by palm trees. At Atalaya, a short distance from Las Palmas, the making of earthenware vessels employs some hundreds of people, who inhabit holes made in the tufa.

GRAND CANYON, a profound gorge in the north-west corner of Arizona, in the south-western part of the United States of America, carved in the plateau region by the Colorado river. Of it Captain Dutton says: “Those who have long and carefully studied the Grand Canyon of the Colorado do not hesitate for a moment to pronounce it by far the most sublime of all earthly spectacles”; and this is also the verdict of many who have only viewed it in one or two of its parts.

The Colorado river is made by the junction of two large streams, the Green and Grand, fed by the rains and snows of the Rocky Mountains. It has a length of about 2000 m. and a drainage area of 255,000 sq. m., emptying into the head of the Gulf of California. In its course the Colorado passes through a mountain section; then a plateau section; and finally a desert lowland section which extends to its mouth. It is in the plateau section that the Grand Canyon is situated. Here the surface of the country lies from 5000 to 9000 ft. above sea-level, being a tableland region of buttes and mesas diversified by lava intrusions, flows and cinder cones. The region consists in the main of stratified rocks bodily uplifted in a nearly horizontal position, though profoundly faulted here and there, and with some moderate folding. For a thousand miles the river has cut a series of canyons, bearing different names, which reach their culmination in the Marble Canyon, 66 m. long, and the contiguous Grand Canyon which extends for a distance of 217 m. farther down stream, making a total length of continuous canyon from 2000 to 6000 ft. in depth, for a distance of 283 m., the longest and deepest canyon in the world. This huge gash in the earth is the work of the Colorado river, with accompanying weathering, through long ages; and the river is still engaged in deepening it as it rushes along the canyon bottom.

The higher parts of the enclosing plateau have sufficient rainfall for forests, whose growth is also made possible in part by the cool climate and consequently retarded evaporation; but the less elevated portions have an arid climate, while the climate in the canyon bottom is that of the true desert. Thus the canyon is really in a desert region, as is shown by the fact that only two living streams enter the river for a distance of 500 m. from the Green river to the lower end of the Grand Canyon; and only one, the Kanab Creek, enters the Grand Canyon itself. This, moreover, is dry during most of the year. In spite of this lack of tributaries, a large volume of water flows through the canyon at all seasons of the year, some coming from the scattered tributaries, some from springs, but most from the rains and snows of the distant mountains about the headwaters. Owing to enclosure between steeply rising canyon walls, evaporation is retarded, thus increasing the possibility of the long journey of the water from the mountains to the sea across a vast stretch of arid land.

The river in the canyon varies from a few feet to an unknown depth, and at times of flood has a greatly increased volume. The river varies in width from 50 ft. in some of the narrow Granite Gorges, where it bathes both rock walls, to 500 or 600 ft. in more open places. In the 283 m. of the Marble and Grand Canyons, the river falls 2330 ft., and at one point has a fall of 210 ft. in 10 m. The current velocity varies from 3 to 20 or more miles per hour, being increased in places by low falls and rapids; but there are no high falls below the junction of the Green and Grand.

Besides the canyons of the main river, there are a multitude of lateral canyons occupied by streams at intervals of heavy rain. As Powell says, the region “is a composite of thousands, and tens of thousands of gorges.” There are “thousands of gorges like that below Niagara Falls, and there are a thousand Yosemites.” The largest of all, the Grand Canyon, has an average depth of 4000 ft. and a width of 4½ to 12 m. For a long distance, where crossing the Kaibab plateau, the depth is 6000 ft. For much of the distance there is an inner narrower gorge sunk in the bottom of a broad outer canyon. The narrow gorge is in some places no more than 3500 ft. wide at the top. To illustrate the depth of the Grand Canyon, Powell writes: “Pluck up Mount Washington (6293 ft. high) by the roots to the level of the sea, and drop it head first into the Grand Canyon, and the dam will not force its waters over the wall.”

While there are notable differences in the Grand Canyon from point to point, the main elements are much alike throughout its length and are due to the succession of rock strata revealed in the canyon walls. At the base, for some 800 ft., there is a complex of crystalline rocks of early geological age, consisting of gneiss, schist, slate and other rocks, greatly plicated and traversed by dikes and granite intrusions. This is an ancient mountain mass, which has been greatly denuded. On it rest a series of durable quartzite beds inclined to the horizontal, forming about 800 ft. more of the lower canyon wall. On this come first 500 ft. of greenish sandstones and then 700 ft. of bedded sandstone and limestone strata, some massive and some thin, which on weathering form a series of alcoves. These beds, like those above, are in nearly horizontal position. Above this comes 1600 ft. of limestone—often a beautiful marble, as in the Marble Canyon, but in the Grand Canyon stained a brilliant red by iron oxide washed from overlying beds. Above this “red wall” are 800 ft. of grey and bright red sandstone beds looking “like vast ribbons of landscape.” At the top of the canyon is 1000 ft. of limestone with gypsum and chert, noted for the pinnacles and towers which denudation has developed. It is these different rock beds, with their various colours, and the differences in the effect of weathering upon them, that give the great variety and grandeur to the canyon scenery. There are towers and turrets, pinnacles and alcoves, cliffs, ledges, crags and moderate talus slopes, each with its characteristic colour and form according to the set of strata in which it lies. The main river has cleft the plateau in a huge gash; innumerable side gorges have cut it to right and left; and weathering has etched out the cliffs and crags and helped to paint it in the gaudy colour bands that stretch before the eye. There is grandeur here and weirdness in abundance, but beauty is lacking. Powell puts the case graphically when he writes: “A wall of homogeneous granite like that in the Yosemite is but a naked wall, whether it be 1000 or 5000 ft. high. Hundreds and thousands of feet mean nothing to the eye when they stand in a meaningless front. A mountain covered by pure snow 10,000 ft. high has but little more effect on the imagination than a mountain of snow 1000 ft. high—it is but more of the same thing; but a façade of seven systems of rock has its sublimity multiplied sevenfold.”

To the ordinary person most of the Grand Canyon is at present inaccessible, for, as Powell states, “a year scarcely suffices to see it all”; and “it is a region more difficult to traverse than the Alps or the Himalayas.” But a part of the canyon is now easily accessible to tourists. A trail leads from the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé railway at Flagstaff, Arizona; and a branch line of the railway extends from Williams, Arizona, to a hotel on the very brink of the canyon. The plateau, which in places bears an open forest, mainly of pine, varies in elevation, but is for the most part a series of fairly level terrace tops with steep faces, with mesas and buttes here and there, and, especially near the huge extinct volcano of San Francisco mountain, with much evidence of former volcanic activity, including numerous cinder cones. The traveller comes abruptly to the edge of the canyon, at whose bottom, over a mile below, is seen the silvery thread of water where the muddy torrent rushes along on its never-ceasing task of sawing its way into the depths of the earth. Opposite rise the highly coloured and terraced slopes of the other canyon wall, whose crest is fully 12 m. distant.

Down by the river are the folded rocks of an ancient mountain system, formed before vertebrate life appeared on the earth, then worn to an almost level condition through untold ages of slow denudation. Slowly, then, the mountains sank beneath the level of the sea, and in the Carboniferous Period—about the time of the formation of the coal-beds—sediments began to bury the ancient mountains. This lasted through other untold ages until the Tertiary Period—through much of the Palaeozoic and all of the Mesozoic time—and a total of from 12,000 to 16,000 ft. of sediments were deposited. Since then erosion has been dominant, and the river has eaten its way down to, and into, the deeply buried mountains, opening the strata for us to read, like the pages of a book. In some parts of the plateau region as much as 30,000 ft. of rock have been stripped away, and over an area of 200,000 sq. m. an average of over 6000 ft. has been removed.

The Grand Canyon was probably discovered by G. L. de Cardenas in 1540, but for 329 years the inaccessibility of the region prevented its exploration. Various people visited parts of it or made reports regarding it; and the Ives Expedition of 1858 contains a report upon the canyon written by Prof. J. S. Newberry. But it was not until 1869 that the first real exploration of the Grand Canyon was made. In that year Major J. W. Powell, with five associates (three left the party in the Grand Canyon), made the complete journey by boat from the junction of the Green and Grand rivers to the lower end of the Grand Canyon. This hazardous journey ranks as one of the most daring and remarkable explorations ever undertaken in North America; and Powell’s descriptions of the expedition are among the most fascinating accounts of travel relating to the continent. Powell made another expedition in 1871, but did not go the whole length of the canyon. The government survey conducted by Lieut. George M. Wheeler also explored parts of the canyon, and C. E. Dutton carried on extensive studies of the canyon and the contiguous plateau region. In 1890 Robert B. Stanton, with six associates, went through the canyon in boats, making a survey to determine the feasibility of building a railway along its base. Two other parties, one in 1896 (Nat. Galloway and William Richmond) the other in 1897 (George F. Flavell and companion), have made the journey through the canyon. So far as there is record these are the only four parties that have ever made the complete journey through the Grand Canyon. It has sometimes been said that James White made the passage of the canyon before Powell did; but this story rests upon no real basis.

For accounts of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado see J. W. Powell, Explorations of the Colorado River of the West and its Tributaries (Washington, 1875); J. W. Powell, Canyons of the Colorado (Meadville, Pa., 1895); F. S. Dellenbaugh, The Romance of the Colorado River (New York, 1902); Capt. C. E. Dutton, Tertiary History of the Grand Canyon District, with Atlas (Washington, 1882), being Monograph No. 2, U.S. Geological Survey. See also the excellent topographic map of the Grand Canyon prepared by F. E. Matthes and published by the U.S. Geological Survey.

(R. S. T.)

GRAND-DUKE (Fr. grand-duc, Ital. granduca, Ger. Grossherzog), a title borne by princes ranking between king and duke. The dignity was first bestowed in 1567 by Pope Pius V. on Duke Cosimo I. of Florence, his son Francis obtaining the emperor’s confirmation in 1576; and the predicate “Royal Highness” was added in 1699. In 1806 Napoleon created his brother-in-law Joachim Murat, grand-duke of Berg, and in the same year the title was assumed by the landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, the elector of Baden, and the new ruler of the secularized bishopric of Würzburg (formerly Ferdinand III., grand-duke of Tuscany) on joining the Confederation of the Rhine. At the present time, according to the decision of the Congress of Vienna, the title is borne by the sovereigns of Luxemburg, Saxe-Weimar (grand-duke of Saxony), Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Mecklenburg-Strelitz, and Oldenburg (since 1829), as well as by those of Hesse-Darmstadt and Baden. The emperor of Austria includes among his titles those of grand-duke of Cracow and Tuscany, and the king of Prussia those of grand-duke of the Lower Rhine and Posen. The title is also retained by the dispossessed Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty of Tuscany.

Grand-duke is also the conventional English equivalent of the Russian velíkiy knyaz, more properly “grand-prince” (Ger. Grossfürst), at one time the title of the rulers of Russia, who, as the eldest born of the house of Rurik, exercised overlordship over the udyelniye knyazi or local princes. On the partition of the inheritance of Rurik, the eldest of each branch assumed the title of grand-prince. Under the domination of the Golden Horde the right to bestow the title velíkiy knyaz was reserved by the Tatar Khan, who gave it to the prince of Moskow. In Lithuania this title also symbolized a similar overlordship, and it passed to the kings of Poland on the union of Lithuania with the Polish republic. The style of the emperor of Russia now includes the titles of grand-duke (velíkiy knyaz) of Smolensk, Lithuania, Volhynia, Podolia and Finland. Until 1886 this title grand-duke or grand-duchess, with the style “Imperial Highness,” was borne by all descendants of the imperial house. It is now confined to the sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, and male grandchildren of the emperor. The other members of the imperial house bear the title of prince (knyaz) and princess (knyaginya, if married, knyazhna, if unmarried) with the style of “Highness.” The emperor of Austria, as king of Hungary, also bears this title as “grand-duke” of Transylvania, which was erected into a “grand-princedom” (Grossfürstentum) in 1765 by Maria Theresa.

GRANDEE (Span. Grande), a title of honour borne by the highest class of the Spanish nobility. It would appear to have been originally assumed by the most important nobles to distinguish them from the mass of the ricos hombres, or great barons of the realm. It was thus, as Selden points out, not a general term denoting a class, but “an additional dignity not only to all dukes, but to some marquesses and condes also” (Titles of Honor, ed. 1672, p. 478). It formerly implied certain privileges; notably that of sitting covered in the royal presence. Until the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, when the power of the territorial nobles was broken, the grandees had also certain more important rights, e.g. freedom from taxation, immunity from arrest save at the king’s express command, and even—in certain cases—the right to renounce their allegiance and make war on the king. Their number and privileges were further restricted by Charles I. (the emperor Charles V.), who reserved to the crown the right to bestow the title. The grandees of Spain were further divided into three classes: (1) those who spoke to the king and received his reply with their heads covered; (2) those who addressed him uncovered, but put on their hats to hear his answer; (3) those who awaited the permission of the king before covering themselves. All grandees were addressed by the king as “my cousin” (mi primo), whereas ordinary nobles were only qualified as “my kinsman” (mi pariente). The title of “grandee,” abolished under King Joseph Bonaparte, was revived in 1834, when by the Estatudo real grandees were given precedence in the Chamber of Peers. The designation is now, however, purely titular, and implies neither privilege nor power.

GRAND FORKS, a city in the Boundary district of British Columbia; situated at the junction of the north and south forks of the Kettle river, 2 m. N. of the international boundary. Pop. (1908) about 2500. It is in a good agricultural district, but owes its importance largely to the erection here of the extensive smelting plant of the Granby Consolidated Company, which smelts the ores obtained from the various parts of the Boundary country, but chiefly those from the Knob Hill and Old Ironsides mines. The Canadian Pacific railway, as well as the Great Northern railway, runs to Grand Forks, which thus has excellent railway communication with the south and east.

GRAND FORKS, a city and the county-seat of Grand Forks county, North Dakota, U.S.A., at the junction of the Red river (of the North) and Red Lake river (whence its name), about 80 m. N. of Fargo. Pop. (1900) 7652, of whom 2781 were foreign-born; (1905) 10,127; (1910) 27,888. It is served by the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern railways, and has a considerable river traffic, the Red river (when dredged) having a channel 60 ft. wide and 4 ft. deep at low water below Grand Forks. At University, a small suburb, is the University of North Dakota (co-educational; opened 1884). Affiliated with it is Wesley College (Methodist Episcopal), now at Grand Forks (with a campus adjoining that of the University), but formerly the Red River Valley University at Wahpeton, North Dakota. In 1907-1908 the University had 57 instructors and 861 students; its library had 25,000 bound volumes and 5000 pamphlets. At Grand Forks, also, are St Bernard’s Ursuline Academy (Roman Catholic) and Grand Forks College (Lutheran). Among the city’s principal buildings are the public library, the Federal building and a Y.M.C.A. building. As the centre of the great wheat valley of the Red river, it has a busy trade in wheat, flour and agricultural machinery and implements, as well as large jobbing interests. There are railway car-shops here, and among the manufactures are crackers, brooms, bricks and tiles and cement. The municipality owns its water-works and an electric lighting plant for street lighting. In 1801 John Cameron (d. 1804) erected a temporary trading post for the North-West Fur Company on the site of the present city; it afterwards became a trading post of the Hudson’s Bay Company. The first permanent settlement was made in 1871, and Grand Forks was reached by the Northern Pacific and chartered as a city in 1881.

GRAND HAVEN, a city, port of entry, and the county-seat of Ottawa county, Michigan, U.S.A., on Lake Michigan, at the mouth of Grand river, 30 m. W. by N. of Grand Rapids and 78 m. E. of Milwaukee. Pop. (1900) 4743, of whom 1277 were foreign-born; (1904) 5239; (1910) 5856. It is served by the Grand Trunk and the Père Marquette railways, and by steamboat lines to Chicago, Milwaukee and other lake ports, and is connected with Grand Rapids and Muskegon by an electric line. The city manufactures pianos, refrigerators, printing presses and leather; is a centre for the shipment of fruit and celery; and has valuable fisheries near—fresh, salt and smoked fish, especially whitefish, are shipped in considerable quantities. Grand Haven is the port of entry for the Customs District of Michigan, and has a small export and import trade. The municipality owns and operates its water-works and electric-lighting plant. A trading post was established here about 1821 by an agent of the American Fur Company, but the permanent settlement of the city did not begin until 1834. Grand Haven was laid out as a town in 1836, and was chartered as a city in 1867.

GRANDIER, URBAN (1590-1634), priest of the church of Sainte Croix at Loudun in the department of Vienne, France, was accused of witchcraft in 1632 by some hysterical novices of the Carmelite Convent, where the trial, protracted for two years, was held. Grandier was found guilty and burnt alive at Loudun on the 18th of August 1634.

GRAND ISLAND, a city and the county-seat of Hall county, Nebraska, U.S.A., on the Platte river, about 154 m. W. by S. of Omaha. Pop. (1900) 7554 (1339 foreign-born); (1910) 10,326. It is served by the Union Pacific, the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, and the St Joseph & Grand Island railways, being the western terminus of the last-named line and a southern terminus of a branch of the Union Pacific. The city is situated on a slope skirting the broad, level bottom-lands of the Platte river, in the midst of a fertile farming region. Grand Island College (Baptist; co-educational) was established in 1892 and the Grand Island Business and Normal College in 1890; and the city is the seat of a state Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Home, established in 1888. Grand Island has a large wholesale trade in groceries, fruits, &c.; is an important horse-market, and has large stock-yards. There are shops of the Union Pacific in the city, and among its manufactures are beet-sugar—Grand Island is in one of the principal beet-sugar-growing districts of the state—brooms, wire fences, confectionery and canned corn. The most important industry of the county is the raising and feeding of sheep and meat cattle. A “Grand Island” was founded in 1857, and was named from a large island (nearly 50 m. long) in the Platte opposite its site; but the present city was laid out by the Union Pacific in 1866. It was chartered as a city in 1873.

GRANDMONTINES, a religious order founded by St Stephen of Thiers in Auvergne towards the end of the 11th century. St Stephen was so impressed by the lives of the hermits whom he saw in Calabria that he desired to introduce the same manner of life into his native country. He was ordained, and in 1073 obtained the pope’s permission to establish an order. He betook himself to Auvergne, and in the desert of Muret, near Limoges, he made himself a hut of branches of trees and lived there for some time in complete solitude. A few disciples gathered round him, and a community was formed. The rule was not reduced to writing until after Stephen’s death, 1124. The life was eremitical and very severe in regard to silence, diet and bodily austerities; it was modelled after the rule of the Camaldolese, but various regulations were adopted from the Augustinian canons. The superior was called the “Corrector.” About 1150 the hermits, being compelled to leave Muret, settled in the neighbouring desert of Grandmont, whence the order derived its name. Louis VII. founded a house at Vincennes near Paris, and the order had a great vogue in France, as many as sixty houses being established by 1170, but it seems never to have found favour out of France; it had, however, a couple of cells in England up to the middle of the 15th century. The system of lay brothers was introduced on a large scale, and the management of the temporals was in great measure left in their hands; the arrangement did not work well, and the quarrels between the lay brothers and the choir monks were a constant source of weakness. Later centuries witnessed mitigations and reforms in the life, and at last the order came to an end just before the French Revolution. There were two or three convents of Grandmontine nuns. The order played no great part in history.

See Helyot, Hist. des ordres religieux (1714), vii. cc. 54, 55; Max Heimbucher, Orden und Kongregationen (1896). i. § 31; and the art. in Wetzer and Welte, Kirchenlexicon (ed. 2), and in Herzog, Realencyklopädie (ed. 3).

(E. C. B.)

GRAND RAPIDS, a city and the county-seat of Kent county, Michigan, U.S.A., at the head of navigation on the Grand river, about 30 m. from Lake Michigan and 145 m. W.N.W. of Detroit. Pop. (1890) 60,278; (1900) 87,565, of whom 23,896 were foreign-born and 604 were negroes; (1910 census) 112,571. Of the foreign-born population in 1900, 11,137 were Hollanders; 3318 English-Canadians; 3253 Germans; 1137 Irish; 1060 from German Poland; and 1026 from England. Grand Rapids is served by the Michigan Central, the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern, the Grand Trunk, the Père Marquette and the Grand Rapids & Indiana railways, and by electric interurban railways. The valley here is about 2 m. wide, with a range of hills on either side, and about midway between these hills the river flows over a limestone bed, falling about 18 ft. in 1 m. Factories and mills line both banks, but the business blocks are nearly all along the foot of the E. range of hills; the finest residences command picturesque views from the hills farther back, the residences on the W. side being less pretentious and standing on bottom-lands. The principal business thoroughfares are Canal, Monroe and Division streets. Among the important buildings are the United States Government building (Grand Rapids is the seat of the southern division of the Federal judicial district of western Michigan), the County Court house, the city hall, the public library (presented by Martin A. Ryerson of Chicago), the Manufacturer’s building, the Evening Press building, the Michigan Trust building and several handsome churches. The principal charitable institutions are the municipal Tuberculosis Sanatorium; the city hospital; the Union Benevolent Association, which maintains a home and hospital for the indigent, together with a training school for nurses; Saint John’s orphan asylum (under the superintendence of the Dominican Sisters); Saint Mary’s hospital (in charge of the Sisters of Mercy); Butterworth hospital (with a training school for nurses); the Woman’s Home and Hospital, maintained largely by the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union; the Aldrich Memorial Deaconess’ Home; the D. A. Blodgett Memorial Children’s Home, and the Michigan Masonic Home. About 1 m. N. of the city, overlooking the river, is the Michigan Soldiers’ Home, with accommodation for 500. On the E. limits of the city is Reed’s Lake, a popular resort during the summer season. The city is the see of Roman Catholic and Protestant Episcopal bishops. In 1907-1908, through the efforts of a committee of the Board of Trade, interest was aroused in the improvement of the city, appropriations were made for a “city plan,” and flood walls were completed for the protection of the lower parts of the city from inundation. The large quantities of fruit, cereals and vegetables from the surrounding country, and ample facilities for transportation by rail and by the river, which is navigable from below the rapids to its mouth, make the commerce and trade of Grand Rapids very important. The manufacturing interests are greatly promoted by the fine water-power, and as a furniture centre the city has a world-wide reputation—the value of the furniture manufactured within its limits in 1904 amounted to $9,409,097, about 5.5% of the value of all furniture manufactured in the United States. Grand Rapids manufactures carpet sweepers—a large proportion of the whole world’s product,—flour and grist mill products, foundry and machine-shop products, planing-mill products, school seats, wood-working tools, fly paper, calcined plaster, barrels, kegs, carriages, wagons, agricultural implements and bricks and tile. The total factory product in 1904 was valued at $31,032,589, an increase of 39.6% in four years.

On the site of Grand Rapids there was for a long time a large Ottawa Indian village, and for the conversion of the Indians a Baptist mission was established in 1824. Two years later a trading post joined the mission, in 1833 a saw mill was built, and for the next few years the growth was rapid. The settlement was organized as a town in 1834, was incorporated as a village in 1838, and was chartered as a city in 1850, the city charter being revised in 1857, 1871, 1877 and 1905.

GRAND RAPIDS, a city and the county-seat of Wood county, Wisconsin, U.S.A., on both sides of the Wisconsin river, about 137 m. N.W. of Milwaukee. Pop. (1900) 4493, of whom 1073 were foreign-born; (1905) 6157; (1910) 6521. It is served by the Minneapolis, St Paul & Sault Ste Marie, the Green Bay & Western, the Chicago & North-Western, and the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul railways. It is a railway and distributing centre, and has manufactories of lumber, sash, doors and blinds, hubs and spokes, woodenware, paper, wood-pulp, furniture and flour. The public buildings include a post office, court house, city hall, city hospital and the T. B. Scott Free Public Library (1892). The city owns and operates its water-works; the electric-lighting and telephone companies are co-operative. Grand Rapids was first chartered as a city in 1869. That part of Grand Rapids on the west bank of the Wisconsin river was formerly the city of Centralia (pop. in 1890, 1435); it was annexed in 1900.

GRANDSON (Ger. Grandsee), a town in the Swiss canton of Vaud, near the south-western end of the Lake of Neuchâtel, and by rail 20 m. S.W. of Neuchâtel and 3 m. N. of Yverdon. Its population in 1900 was 1771, mainly French-speaking and Protestant. Its ancient castle was long the home of a noted race of barons, while in the very old church (once belonging to a Benedictine monastery) there are a number of Roman columns, &c., from Avenches and Yverdon. It has now a tobacco factory. Its lords were vassals of the house of Savoy, till in 1475 the castle was taken by the Swiss at the beginning of their war with Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, whose ally was the duchess of Savoy. It was retaken by Charles in February 1476, and the garrison put to death. The Swiss hastened to revenge this deed, and in a famous battle (2nd March 1476) defeated Charles with great loss, capturing much booty. The scene of the battle was between Concise and Corcelles, north-east of the town, and is marked by several columns, perhaps ancient menhirs. Grandson was thenceforward till 1798 ruled in common by Berne and Fribourg, and then was given to the canton du Léman, which in 1803 became that of Vaud.

See F. Chabloz, La Bataille de Grandson (Lausanne, 1897).

GRANET, FRANÇOIS MARIUS (1777-1849), French painter, was born at Aix in Provence, on the 17th of December 1777; his father was a small builder. The boy’s strong desires led his parents to place him—after some preliminary teaching from a passing Italian artist—in a free school of art directed by M. Constantin, a landscape painter of some reputation. In 1793 Granet followed the volunteers of Aix to the siege of Toulon, at the close of which he obtained employment as a decorator in the arsenal. Whilst a lad he had, at Aix, made the acquaintance of the young comte de Forbin, and upon his invitation Granet, in the year 1797, went to Paris. De Forbin was one of the pupils of David, and Granet entered the same studio. Later he got possession of a cell in the convent of Capuchins, which, having served for a manufactory of assignats during the Revolution, was afterwards inhabited almost exclusively by artists. In the changing lights and shadows of the corridors of the Capuchins, Granet found the materials for that one picture to the painting of which, with varying success, he devoted his life. In 1802 he left Paris for Rome, where he remained until 1819, when he returned to Paris, bringing with him besides various other works one of fourteen repetitions of his celebrated Chœur des Capucins, executed in 1811. The figures of the monks celebrating mass are taken in this subject as a substantive part of the architectural effect, and this is the case with all Granet’s works, even with those in which the figure subject would seem to assert its importance, and its historical or romantic interest. “Stella painting a Madonna on his Prison Wall,” 1810 (Leuchtenberg collection); “Sodoma à l’hôpital,” 1815 (Louvre); “Basilique basse de St François d’Assise,” 1823 (Louvre); “Rachat de prisonniers,” 1831 (Louvre); “Mort de Poussin,” 1834 (Villa Demidoff, Florence), are among his principal works; all are marked by the same peculiarities, everything is sacrificed to tone. In 1819 Louis Philippe decorated Granet, and afterwards named him Chevalier de l’Ordre St Michel, and Conservateur des tableaux de Versailles (1826). He became member of the institute in 1830; but in spite of these honours, and the ties which bound him to M. de Forbin, then director of the Louvre, Granet constantly returned to Rome. After 1848 he retired to Aix, immediately lost his wife, and died himself on the 21st of November 1849. He bequeathed to his native town the greater part of his fortune and all his collections, now exhibited in the Musée, together with a very fine portrait of the donor painted by Ingres in 1811.

Explore with AITake your curiosity a little further.

Reading settings