Aargau, Switzerland

Ancient Argovia, it is one of the more northerly cantons of Switzerland. It comprises the lower course of the River Aare. The Canton of Lucerne lies to the south.

BkXXXV:Chap11:Sec2 Mentioned.

 

Aaron

He was the brother of Moses according to the Bible.

BkXLI:Chap5:Sec1 For the miracles of Aaron’s rod see Exodus VII, and as Chateaubriand cites Numbers XVII.

 

Aaron, Saint

d. after 552. The Briton Saint Aaron crossed into Armorica (Brittany) and lived as a hermit on the island of Cesambre, called Saint Aaron until 1150 and now part of Saint Malo. The island was separated from Aleth by an arm of the sea, which the tide at low water left dry twice daily. Eventually Aaron was joined by a group of disciples and became their abbot. Among the disciples was Saint Malo, who arrived from Wales about the middle of the 6th century and was warmly welcomed. A parish church in the diocese of Saint Brieuc bears Aaron’s name (Benedictines, Husenbeth).

BkI:Chap4:Sec3 BkIX:Chap14:Sec1 Mentioned.

BkI:Chap4:Sec8 His chapel.

BkI:Chap5:Sec2 He drove out the pirates.

 

Abaillard, Pierre (Peter Abelard)

1079-1142. A French philosopher and churchman, he was born near Nantes. His ill-fated marriage to Héloïse, niece of a canon of Paris, led to his castration in 1118. He retired to a Breton monastery, and she became a nun. Noted as a logician he sought to reconcile faith and reason, his Sic et Non (Yes and No, or For and Against) listed points on which authorities differed and so caused outrage.

BkIII:Chap14:Sec2 BkXIII:Chap10:Sec2 Mentioned.

BkXVII:Chap5:Sec1 Attacked by Saint Bernard at the Council held in Sens in 1140.

 

Abbatucci, Jacques-Pierre

1723-1813. One of the major Corsican leaders, and the principal opponent of Paoli, from 1769 he served the French as an officer in the army. After the Revolution, when Paoli returned and took the island over to the English, Abbatucci led the pro-French faction. They were unsuccessful, and Abbatucci had to retire to Toulon. The Committee of Public Safety had him appointed to the Army of the Rhine and Moselle as a general of division in April 1795. He did not take up the post due to a reorganisation, and was instead appointed to the Army of Italy on 17 December 1795 as general of brigade. He joined the army immediately, and was promoted general of division on 16 April 1796. He was not actively employed by Bonaparte during the 1796 campaign. His retirement was authorised on 7 December 1796, but he continued to draw the pay of an active officer until 23 September 1800, when he was given a pension.

BkXIX:Chap12:Sec2 Napoleon’s early opinion of him.

 

Abbeville, Comtesse d’

She was an unknown Countess of the d’Abbeville family.

BkI:Chap4:Sec7 Guilty of marital infidelity: a ballad penned regarding her that was sung in Saint-Malo.

 

Abbo

c859-922. Abbo Cernuus (‘The Crooked’) was a French Benedictine monk of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris, sometimes called Abbo Parisiensis. He was born about the middle of the ninth century, was present at the siege of Paris by the Normans (885-86), and wrote a description of it in Latin verse, with an account of subsequent events to 896, ‘De bellis Parisiacae urbis.’ He also left some sermons for the instructions of clerics in Paris and Poitiers.

BkXXII:Chap13:Sec1 His description of the siege.

 

Abdalla-Aga

He was the ex-Governor of Jaffa.

BkXIX:Chap18:Sec1 Defeated in the Siege of Jaffa, 1799.

 

Abd-El-Ouad

The Beni-Abd-el-Ouad were a Berber (ethnic group of North-west Africa) dynasty.

BkXVIII:Chap3Sec4 Mentioned.

 

Abel

Murdered by his brother Cain, See Genesis IV:6-8.

BkXXXVIII:Chap10:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Aben-Hamet

A character in Les Aventures du dernier Abencérages (1826) by Chateaubriand, Aben-Hamet the last of his Moorish tribe falls in love, in Granada, with the devout Christian girl, Blanca, an impossible liaison since they are fated to be eternally separated by their faith.

Preface:Sect2. BkXL:Chap3:Sec1 Mentioned.

BkXXXVII:Chap7:Sec1 Chateaubriand quotes from the work.

 

Abencérage, Les Aventures du dernier

Chateaubriand’s story of 1826. See Aben-Hamet.

BkXVIII:Chap3Sec1 BkXXXI:Chap1:Sec2 Mentioned.

BkXLI:Chap1:Sec1 The translator was Edvige de’ Battisti di San Giorgio de Solari (1808-1867).

 

Abensberg

In Bavaria, on the Abens, a tributary of the Danube, 18 miles south-west of Regensburg, the town is the Castra Abusina of the Romans, The Battle of Abensberg took place on April 20, 1809, between the French, Württembergers (VIII Corps) and Bavarians (VII Corps) under Napoleon numbering about 90,000 strong, and 80,000 Austrians under the Archduke Louis of Austria and Generaal Hiller. Napoleon succeeded in turning the Austrian flank, exposed by the defeat of their right, and Louis was forced to retreat.

BkXX:Chap10:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Abercrombie or Abercromby, James

1706-1781. A British general in the French and Indian Wars, born in Scotland, he arrived in America in 1756 and in 1758 replaced the Earl of Loudon as supreme British commander. After failing to take Ticonderoga from General Montcalm, Abercrombie was replaced (1758) by Jeffery Amherst.

BkVII:Chap5:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Abigail

She was the Jewish widow whose voice David ‘hearkened to’, and whom he married. See 1st Samuel:XXV.35

BkXXVII:Chap3:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Abou-Gosh

A Bedouin chief controlling the mountains of Judea, he escorted Chateaubriand in 1806, Lamartine in 1832.

BkXVIII:Chap3Sec4 A letter from him.

BkXL:Chap5:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Aboukir (Abu Quir), Egypt

A village on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt, 14.5 miles northeast of Alexandria, containing a castle used as a state prison by Muhammad Ali of Egypt. Near the village are many remains of ancient buildings, Egyptian, Greek and Roman. About two miles southeast of the village are ruins supposed to mark the site of Canopus. A little farther east the Canopic branch of the Nile (now dry) entered the Mediterranean. Stretching eastward as far as the Rosetta mouth of the Nile is spacious Abu Qir Bay (Khalīj Abū Qīr), where on 1 August 1798, Horatio Nelson fought the Battle of the Nile, often referred to as the ‘Battle of Aboukir Bay’. The latter title is applied more properly to an engagement between the French expeditionary army and the Turks fought on 25 July 1799. Near Abū Qīr, on 8 March 1801, the British army commanded by Sir Ralph Abercromby landed from its transports in the face of a strenuous opposition from a French force entrenched on the beach.

BkXIX:Chap14:Sec2 BkXIX:Chap16:Sec1 BkXIX:Chap16:Sec1

BkXXIV:Chap9:Sec1 Mentioned.

BkXIX:Chap18:Sec1 The battle of July 1799.

BkXX:Chap7:Sec1 The naval battle of 1798.

 

Abraham

The patriarch and founder of the Hebrew nation according to the Bible, he was supposedly born at Ur in Chaldea c2000BC. He travelled to Haran (Mesopotamia), Canaan, and Egypt and returned to Canaan where he settled. His grandson Jacob had twelve sons the origin of the twelve tribes of Israel.

BkXVIII:Chap3Sec5 Mentioned.

 

Abrantès, Laure-Adelaïde de Saint-Martin-Permon, Laure Junot, Duchesse d’

1784-1838. After her father died in 1795, Laure lived with her mother, Panonia de Comnène, Madame Permon, who was a friend of Napoleon’s mother, and established a distinguished Parisian salon that was frequented by Napoleon.  It was Napoleon who arranged the marriage in 1800 between Laure and his aide-de-camp Andoche Junot. Laure accompanied her husband to Portugal, where he was ambassador (1804–05). The marriage was unhappy, and Laure had affairs with Prince Metternich, Austrian ambassador to Paris (1806–09), and, later, with a Royalist aristocrat, Maurice de Balincourt. Always generous to the Junots, Napoleon became annoyed with Laure’s entertaining former émigrés and ordered her to leave Paris after her husband’s death (1813). Though she persuaded the minister of police to let her return, the Second Restoration (1815) saw the final collapse of her fortunes. After many years in Rome, she returned to Paris, where she completed her Mémoires sur Napoléon, la Révolution, le Consulat, l'Empire et la Restauration, (1831–35). Noted as a vehicle of caustic wit and extravagance, her memoirs, which are often incorrect, are also often malicious, especially with regard to Napoleon.

BkXIX:Chap2:Sec1 Her speculations regarding Napoleon’s family. The Comnène family name derived from the Greek.

BkXIX:Chap5:Sec1 The Comnène family was resident in Corsica as head of a Greek colony in the 17th century. The Permon family had a house on the Quai Conti in Paris according to Chateaubriand.

BkXIX:Chap9:Sec1 See her Memoirs of Napoleon, Chapter 13.

BkXIX:Chap9:Sec3 A friend of Napoleon in Paris in 1795. Her salon was held at the Hôtel de la Tranquillité, on the Rue des Filles-Saint-Thomas (off the Rue Vivienne, in the 2eme arondissement). See her Memoirs of Napoleon, Chapter 14.

 

Abruzzo

A region of central Italy it borders Marche to the north, Lazio to the west and south-west, Molise to the south-east and the Adriatic Sea to the east. Until 1963 it was part of the Abruzzi e Molise region (with Molise). The term Abruzzi is an obsolete plural denomination from a time when the Bourbons administered the territory as ‘Nearer Abruzzo’ (Abruzzo Citeriore) and ‘Farther Abruzzo’ (Abruzzo Ulteriore). The Apennine mountain chain runs through it.

BkXXXVI:Chap11:Sec1 BkXXXVIII:Chap5:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Acadia

The former French colony in Eastern Canada centred on Nova Scotia. The original French settlement was destroyed by the British in 1613. Conflict continued until 1763 when the whole region fell to the British. Many Acadians were deported and settled in Louisiana, where their descendants the Cajuns still live. Longfellow’s poem Evangeline tells their story. Note that old charts take Canada to mean the Saint-Lawrence and the Upper Mississippi while Louisiana or the Floridas means everything south of the Ohio.

BkVII:Chap11:Sec1 BkXLII:Chap10:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Acerbi (Virginia)

 

Achard de Villerai, Comte

An officer in the Navarre Regiment, he was second lieutenant in 1787, first lieutenant in 1789.

BkIV:Chap4:Sec1 Chateaubriand encountered him in 1786.

BkIX:Chap6:Sec1 They met again in Paris in 1792 and indulged in gambling.

 

Acheloüs

The River god in Greek mythology was in some tales father of the Sirens by Calliope the Muse or by Phorcys. The Sirens were depicted as birds with the heads of women, or as mermaids with tails like fish as here.

BkXLII:Chap2:Sec1 See also Horace: Ars Poetica: line 4.

 

Achilles

The Greek hero of the Trojan War, he was the son of Peleus, king of Thessaly, and the sea-goddess Thetis (See Homer’s Iliad).

BkI:Chap3:Sec4 His grave at the entrance to the Hellespont.

BkIII:Chap1:Sec3 A painting of him killing Hector displayed at Combourg.

BkXIII:Chap7:Sec1 A scene on a Greek vase, of his dragging Hector’s corpse behind his chariot.

BkXXIII:Chap8:Sec1 He was wounded in the heel by the Trojan Paris.

BkXXVIII:Chap11:Sec1 The anger of Achilles over the girl Briseis opens Homer’s account of the Trojan War in Iliad:I

BkXXVIII:Chap15:Sec1 Chateaubriand uses an etymology for the name Achilles of a-chylos, khylos in Greek meaning pap, from the legend that he never suckled at his mother’s breast. It is normally derived as a-kheilos, meaning lipless, since he never put his lips to her breast.

BkXXIX:Chap13:Sec4 Priam goes to his tent to beg for the body of Hector. See Homer’s Iliad XXIV.

BkXXXIX:Chap10:Sec1 A noted charioteer.

 

A’Court, Sir William

1779-1860. He was extraordinary envoy to Spain in 1822, he was then Ambassador to Portugal in 1824, and Russia (1828-1832).

BkXXVII:Chap7:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Acre, Saint-Jean d’

The port in north-west Israel, on the Bay of Haifa (an arm of the Mediterranean Sea), the city was captured (638) by the Arabs, who developed its natural harbour. In 1104 it was captured in the First Crusade and was held by Christians until 1187, when it was taken by Saladin. In the Third Crusade it was won back (1191) by Guy of Lusignan, Richard I of England, and Philip II of France, who gave it to the Knights Hospitalers (the Knights of St. John, hence its French name). For the next century it was the centre of the Christian possessions in the Holy Land. Its surrender and virtual destruction by the Saracens in 1291 marked the decline of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem and the effective end of the Crusades. ‘Akko’ was taken by the Ottoman Turks in 1517 and was revived in the late 18th century under Dahir al-Umar, the local Ottoman ruler. In 1799, Ottoman forces, with the aid of Great Britain, withstood a 61-day siege by Napoleon I. The city was taken in 1832 by Ibrahim Pasha for Muhammad Ali of Egypt, but European and Ottoman forces won it back for the Ottoman Empire in 1840.

BkXIX:Chap16:Sec1 BkXIX:Chap16:Sec2 BkXX:Chap7:Sec1

BkXXI:Chap5:Sec1 Napoleon’s siege of the town in 1799. It was also named Ptolemais in the third century BC by Ptolemy II.

BkXXIII:Chap8:Sec1 An example of French influence.

BkXXXIX:Chap4:Sec1 The Pactum Warmundi was a treaty of alliance established in 1123 between the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Republic of Venice, it gave the Venetians special rights in Acre which they had captured, and in Ascalon and Tyre which they had agreed to attack. The Venetian communes in Acre and Tyre were particularly powerful and influential in the 13th century after the Kingdom lost Jerusalem and was reduced to a coastal state. They resisted Emperor Frederick II’s attempts to claim the Kingdom, and virtually ignored the authority the Lord of Tyre, conducting affairs instead as if they controlled their own independent lordship.

 

Actes des Apôtres

A satirical Royalist newspaper, filled with verse anagrams, acrostics, etc. edited by Jean Gabriel Peltier (1770-1825).

BkV:Chap14:Sec1 BkX:Chap7:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Adalbéron

d. 998 Archbishop of Rheims, he was Chancellor of Kings Lothair and Louis V of France. He was a seventh generation descendant of Charlemagne. On Louis’ death, in 987, Adalberon and Gerbert of Aurillac addressed the elctoral assembly at Senlis in favour of Hugh Capet, to replace the Carolingian monarch. Adalbéron pleaded: ‘Crown the Duke. He is most illustrious by his exploits, his nobility, his forces. The throne is not acquired by hereditary right; no one should be raised to it unless distinguished not only for nobility of birth, but for the goodness of his soul’ Capet was elected and crowned at Noyon, 3 July in that year by Adalbéron.

BkXXVIII:Chap6:Sec1 Quoted.

 

Adam

The first man according to Genesis 1-4, he committed original sin by eating of ‘the tree of the knowledge of good and evil’, and was expelled from the Garden of Eden.

BkIII:Chap14:Sec2 Chateaubriand slightly alters his quote from the final lines of Milton’s Paradise Lost, XII: ‘The World was all before them…’

BkXIII:Chap11:Sec2 BkXXX:Chap2:Sec2 Mankind as the children of Adam.

BkXV:Chap7:Sec1 Chateaubriand quotes Genesis 3:22.

BkXXV:Chap12:Sec1 See Genesis 3:24 for the flaming sword.

BkXL:Chap2:Sec3 As portrayed by Tasso.

BkXLII:Chap12:Sec1 See Genesis 3:19.

 

Adamastor

BkXXIV:Chap14:Sec1 The giant of the tempests invented by Camoëns.

 

Addison, Joseph

1672-1719. The Essayist, poet and Whig statesman, he was elected to Parliament in 1708. Contributed to Steele’s journal the Tatler, and in 1771 founded the Spectator with him, for which he contributed his elegant and witty essays. He also wrote a tragedy Cato (1713).

BkXII:Chap1:Sec1 The Spectator mentioned.

BkXXIX:Chap7:Sec1 BkXXXIX:Chap19:Sec1 He published his Remarks on Several Parts of Italy in 1705, having travelled on the Continent between 1699 and late 1703.

 

Adélaïde d’Orléans, Eugene Adélaïde Louise

1777-1847. The daughter of Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, and the sister of King Louis-Philippe of France. She moved to the United States in 1801 and married George Casper von Schroeppel, a Prussian-born tea merchant who was a naturalized American citizen and lived in New York City. In 1814, when her brother Louis-Philippe returned to France to later become King, she left her family and returned to live in his household. Now known as Madame Adélaïde, she became his loyal advisor. She died two months before the overthrow of Louis-Philippe’s regime.

BkXXXII:Chap11:Sec1 BkXXXIII:Chap5:Sec1 Mentioned. Chateaubriand refers to her as Mademoiselle to deny her Royal legitimacy.

 

Adélaïde de France (Marie-Adélaïde)

1732-1800 The third daughter of Louis XV, she emigrated with her sister Victoire in 1791, and after sojourns in Rome and Naples settled in Trieste.

BkV:Chap9:Sec1 She remained with the King Louis XVI after the fall of the Bastille.

BkV:Chap15:Sec1 She and her sister, as aunts of the King, were referred to as Mesdames. They left for Rome in February 1791.

BkXXXIX:Chap11:Sec1 BkXLII:Chap9:Sec1 The sisters’ deaths in Trieste.

 

Admetus

King of Pherae in Thessaly, he was famed for his hospitality.

BkXL:Chap2:Sec2 Apollo, God of the Arts and the Lyre, served as his shepherd when he was banned for nine years from Oylmpus.

 

Admetus

5th century BC. King of Molossus, he is remembered for his hospitable reception of the banished Themistocles, in spite of the fact that the great Athenian had persuaded his countrymen to refuse the alliance tardily offered by the Molossians when victory against the Persians was already secured.

BkVII:Chap5:Sec1 Themistocles sought sanctuary with him.

 

Adrian I, Pope

d. 795. Pope 772-795. In his contest with the Eastern Roman Empire and the Lombard dukes of Benevento, Adrian remained faithful to the Frankish alliance.

BkII:Chap10:Sec2 Mentioned.

 

Adrianople (Edirne), Turkey

A city in Thrace, the westernmost part of Turkey, close to the borders with Greece and Bulgaria. The city was known as Adrianople, named after its Roman re-founder. The area around Edirne has been the site of no fewer than 15 major battles or sieges, since the days of the ancient Greeks. In particular, the catastrophic defeat of the Roman Emperor Valens by the Visigoths took place nearby. The city was, occupied by Imperial Russian troops in 1829, during the war of Greek independence.

BkXXIX:Chap13:Sec1 BkXXIX:Chap13:Sec2 Mentioned.

 

Aeneid, Aeneas

The epic by Virgil concerns the story of Aeneas, the Trojan Prince.

BkII:Chap3:Sec4 Chateaubriand refers to Book IV of the Aeneid, which describes the love of Dido for Aeneas.

BkXIV:Chap2:Sec3 A reference to Book I.

BkXXIX:Chap9:Sec1 BkXXXVI:Chap4:Sec1 Mentioned.

BkXXXVI:Chap8:Sec1 Virgil frequently uses the epithet pious of Aeneas.