The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 119

CHARLES XII., king of Sweden, son of Charles XI., a warlike prince; ascended the throne at the age of 15; had to cope with Denmark, Russia, and Poland combined against him; foiled the Danes at Copenhagen, the Russians at Narva, and Augustus II. of Poland at Riga; trapped in Russia, and cooped up to spend a winter there, he was, in spring 1709, attacked by Peter the Great at Pultowa and defeated, so that he had to take refuge with the Turks at Bender; here he was attacked, captured, and conveyed to Demotica, but escaping, he found his way miraculously back to Sweden, and making peace with the Czar, commenced an attack on Norway, but was killed by a musket-shot at the siege of Friedrickshall; "the last of the Swedish kings"; "his appearance, among the luxurious kings and knights of the North" at the time, Carlyle compares to "the bursting of a cataract of bombsh.e.l.ls in a dull ballroom" (1697-1718).

CHARLES I., king of England, third son of James I., born at Dunfermline; failing in his suit for the Infanta of Spain, married Henrietta Maria, a French princess, a devoted Catholic, who had great influence over him, but not for good; had for public advisers Strafford and Laud, who cherished in him ideas of absolute power adverse to the liberty of the subject; acting on these ideas brought him into collision with the Parliament, and provoked a civil war; himself the first to throw down the gauntlet by raising the royal standard at Nottingham; in the end of which he surrendered himself to the Scots army at Newark, who delivered him to the Parliament; was tried as a traitor to his country, condemned to death, and beheaded, 30th January, at Whitehall (1600-1649).

CHARLES II., king of England, son of Charles I., horn at St. James's Palace, London; was at The Hague, in Holland, when his father was beheaded; a.s.sumed the royal t.i.tle; was proclaimed King by the Scots; landed in Scotland, and was crowned at Scone; marching into England, was defeated by Cromwell at Worcester, 3rd September 1651; fled to France; by the policy of General Monk, after Cromwell's death, was restored to his crown and kingdom in 1660, an event known as the Restoration; he was an easy-going man, and is known in history as the "Merry Monarch"; his reign was an inglorious one for England, though it is distinguished by the pa.s.sing of the Habeas Corpus Act, one of the great bulwarks of English liberty next to the Magna Charta (1630-1685).

CHARLES, a French physicist, born at Beaugency; was the first to apply hydrogen to the inflation of balloons (1746-1823).

CHARLES, ARCHDUKE, of Austria, son of the Emperor Leopold II. and younger brother of Francis II., one of the ablest generals of Austria in the wars against the French Republic and the Empire; lost the battle of Wagram, after which, being wounded, he retired into private life (1771-1847).

CHARLES ALBERT, king of Sardinia, succeeded Charles Felix in 1831; conceived a design to emanc.i.p.ate and unite Italy; in the pursuit of this object he declared war against Austria; though at first successful, was defeated at Novara, and to save his kingdom was compelled to resign in favour of his son Victor Emmanuel; retired to Oporto, and died of a broken heart (1798-1849).

CHARLES EDWARD, the Young Pretender, grandson of James II. of England, born at Rome, landed in Scotland (1745); issued a manifesto in a.s.sertion of his father's claims; had his father proclaimed king at Edinburgh; attacked and defeated General Cope at Prestonpans; marched at the head of his adherents into England as far as Derby; returned, and defeated the king's force at Falkirk, but retired before the Duke of c.u.mberland, who dispersed his army at Culloden; wandered about thereafter in disguise; escaped to France, and died at Florence (1721-1789).

CHARLES MARTEL (i. e. "Charles the Hammer"), son of Pepin d'Heristal and grandfather of Charlemagne; became mayor of the Palace, and as such ruler of the Franks; notable chiefly for his signal victory over the Saracens at Poitiers in 732, whereby the tide of Mussulman invasion was once for all rolled back and the Christianisation of Europe a.s.sured; no greater service was ever rendered to Europe by any other fighting man (689-741).

CHARLES OF ANJOU, brother of St. Louis, king of Naples; lost Sicily after the Sicilian Vespers (1220-1285).

CHARLES OF VALOIS, third son of Philip the Bold, one of the greatest captains of his age (1270-1324).

CHARLES THE RASH, last Duke of Burgundy, son of Philip the Good, born at Dijon; enemy of Louis XI. of France, his feudal superior; was ambitious to free the duchy from dependence on France, and to restore it as a kingdom, and by daring enterprises tried hard to achieve this; on the failure of the last effort was found lying dead on the field (1433-1477).

CHARLES'S WAIN, the constellation of Ursa Major, a wagon without a wagoner.

CHARLESTON (56), the largest city in S. Carolina, and the chief commercial city; also a town in Western Virginia, U.S., with a s.p.a.cious land-locked harbour; is the chief outlet for the cotton and rice of the district, and has a large coasting trade.

CHARLET, NICOLAS TOUSSAINT, a designer and painter, born in Paris; famous for his sketches of military subjects and country life, in which he displayed not a little humour (1792-1845).

CHARLEVILLE (17), a manufacturing and trading town in the dep. of Ardennes, France; exports iron, coal, wines, and manufactures hardware and beer.

CHARLEVOIX, a Jesuit and traveller, born at St. Quentin, explored the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi (1682-1761).

CHARLOTTE, PRINCESS, daughter and only child of George IV. of England, married to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, afterwards king of Belgium; died after giving birth to a still-born boy, to the great grief of the whole nation (1796-1817).

CHARLOTTE ELIZABETH OF BAVARIA, second wife of the Duke of Orleans, brother of Louis XIV., called the Princess Palatine (1652-1722).

CHARLOTTENBURG (76), a town on the Spree, 3 m. W. of Berlin, with a palace, the favourite residence of Sophie Charlotte, the grandmother of Frederick the Great, and so named by her husband Frederick I. after her death; contains the burial-place of William I., emperor of Germany.

CHARLOTTETOWN (13), the capital of Prince Edward Island.

CHARMETTES, a picturesque hamlet near Chambery, a favourite retreat of Rousseau's.

CHARNAY, a French traveller; a writer on the ancient civilisation of Mexico, which he has made a special study; _b_. 1828.

CHARON, in the Greek mythology the ferryman of the ghosts of the dead over the Styx into Hades, a grim old figure with a mean dress and a dirty beard, peremptory in exacting from the ghosts he ferried over the obolus allowed him for pa.s.sage-money.

CHARONDAS, a Sicilian law-giver, disciple of Pythagoras; is said to have killed himself when he found he had involuntarily broken one of his own laws (600 B.C.).

CHARRON, PIERRE, a French moralist and theologian, as well as pulpit orator, born in Paris; author of "Les Trois Verites," the unity of G.o.d, Christianity the sole religion, and Catholicism the only Christianity; and of a sceptical treatise "De la Sagesse"; a friend and disciple of Montaigne, but bolder as more dogmatic, with less _bonhommie_ and originality, and much of a cynic withal (1541-1603).

CHARTERHOUSE, a large London school, originally a Carthusian monastery, and for a time a residence of the dukes of Norfolk.

CHARTIER, ALAIN, an early scholarly French poet and prose writer of note, born at Bayeux; secretary to Charleses V., VI., and VII. of France, whom Margaret, daughter of James I. of Scotland and wife of Louis XI., herself a poetess, once kissed as he lay asleep for the pleasure his poems gave her; was a patriot, and wrote as one (1390-1458).

CHARTISM, a movement of the working-cla.s.ses of Great Britain for greater political power than was conceded to them by the Reform Bill of 1832, and which found expression in a doc.u.ment called the "People's Charter," drawn up in 1838, embracing six "points," as they were called, viz., Manhood Suffrage, Equal Electoral Districts, Vote by Ballot, Annual Parliaments, Abolition of a Property Qualification in the Parliamentary Representation, and Payment of Members of Parliament, all which took the form of a pet.i.tion presented to the House of Commons in 1839, and signed by 1,380,000 persons. The refusal of the pet.i.tion gave rise to great agitation over the country, which gradually died out in 1848.

CHARTRES (23), the capital of the French dep. of Eure-et-Lois, 55 m.

SW. of Paris; gave t.i.tle of Duke to the eldest of the Orleanist Bourbons.

CHARTREUSE, LA GRANDE, a monastery founded by St. Bruno in 1084 in the dep. of Isere, 14 m. NE. of Gren.o.ble; famous as the original place of the manufacture of the Chartreuse liqueur, held in much repute; it was honoured by a visit of Queen Victoria in 1887; Ruskin was disappointed with both monks and monastery.

CHARYBDIS. See SCYLLA.

CHASE, SALMON PORTLAND, Chief-Justice of the United States; a great anti-slavery advocate and leader of the Free-Soil party; aimed at the Presidency, but failed (1773-1808).

CHASI'DIM, a party among the Jews identified with the Pharisees, their supreme concern the observance of their religion in its purity.