multitude of Academical Panegyrics; and an edition of Fontenelle's Worlds, with notes. Ever since the year 1761, Lalande has been professor of astronomy in the college of France; and the construction of the fine observatory in the military school at Paris, is owing to his exertions. His nephew, M. F. Lalande, is also a member of the Institute, and has shared in a great number of his astronomical labours.

MACK (THE BARON DE,)

AN Austrian general, was born of a poor and mean family in the margraviate of Anspach; he, nevertheless, received a good education, began life as a soldier, became a quarter-master in a regiment of cavalry, and during the war, belonged to the staff of the army, a post in which he drew the attention of field-marshal Lascy, who made him a captain. The sentiments of esteem for his benefactor, which glowed in the heart of Mack, displeased his successor Laudon, who one day said something very warm about the creatures of Lascy, keeping his eyes fixed on Mack. Mack returned, 'I must inform you, sir, that I here serve neither M. de Lascy nor you, but his Imperial Majesty, to whom my life is consecrated.' Two days after, Mack distinguished himself by the following action: M. de Laudon hesitated whether he should attack Lissa, ten miles from which town his camp was posted, believing it to be defended by 30,000 men. Mack, who wished to make him determine on the assault, left him at nine o'clock in the evening, crossed the Danube with one hussar, made his way into a suburb of Lissa, took a Turkish officer prisoner, and the next morning, at seven o'clock, presented him to the general, who learnt from him that the garrison consisted of only 6000 men. The marshal then addressed him in flattering terms, made him his aid-de-camp, and requested that he would never leave him. Laudon, before his death, presented his young favourite to the emperor, saying to him, I leave you a Laudon, who will serve you better than I have done: I mean Major Mack." Thus, having obtained some degree of celebrity, he served in 1793, under M. de Cobourg, as quarter-master-general, and in this capacity directed the early operations of the campaign, the passage of the Roër, the deliverance of Maestricht, and the battles of Nerwinde. He had also a great share in the negociations then carried on with Dumouriez, from which the Austrian leaders derived so little benefit. He was afterwards wounded in the attack on the camp at Famars, and unable to follow up his plans, was recalled to Vienna, and superseded by Prince Hohenlohe; whom he afterwards again joined in the Low Countries, when he was appointed major-general and quar

ter-master-general of the Flemish army. In the preceding February, 1794, the emperor had despatched him to London, that he might adjust with the British cabinet the plans of the campaign which was just going to open. Mack had prepared a ge neral attack to crush Pichegru, and was moving all his forces in a space of about twenty leagues; but so vast an operation was not in every part well concerted: the English and Hanoverians were defeated on the 18th of May, at Hondscoote, and the Aus trian army, after a fruitless contest, withdrew to Tournay. On the 22d, Pichegru, in his turn, attacked the allied forces, to compel them to cross the Scheldt again; but the battle, after continuing from six in the morning, till ten in the evening, at last remained doubtful. The emperor shortly after resolved on returning to Vienna, and leaving the command of the army to the Prince of Cobourg, who had little-confidence in Mack, but who highly esteemed General Fischer, one of his enemies. Mack, finding that after the emperor's departure he should have no influence, asked and obtained permission to return to Vienna. He then passed several years in Bohemia; but when the peace of Campo Formio was signed, he was appointed lieutenant-general, and commissioned to organize the army of Italy anew. A war having in 1798 broke out between Naples and the French republic, he went to take the command of the Neapolitan forces, and thus, in some sort, became master of the destiny of the state; but his talents were very unequal to so important a part, and though he at first obtained some advantages over scattered and small parties, he was afterwards completely defeated, and his army totally routed by General Championnet. Mack was then guilty of capital errors; for, quite beside himself, he wished to enter into a negociation with the hostile generals, and suspicions being thus excited, a cry of treachery was spread; part of his troops, and above all, the people of Naples rose against him, and he found there was no other way to escape their fury, than to throw himself, with his staff, into the arms of the French, who, in spite of his remonstrances, treated him as a prisoner of war. On this occasion it must be allowed, he behaved in a pusillanimous manner; for, though it has long been said, that valour in the field (which cannot be denied him) does not always supply the fortitude and presence of mind which are requisite to incite, or repress a multitude, yet he to whom the safety of a nation is intrusted, should know how to succeed, or to die in the attempt. Innumerable epigrams and songs against him, were published at the time of his flight and captivity, and the conduct of M. de Damas, a foreigner also, served to shew what he might have done, had he, like that galtant Frenchman, known how to gain the confidence of his troops, and inspire them with a like military enthusiasm. The court of

Vienna having refused an exchange, he was sent to France, and kept there some time on his parole, but at last secretly escaped with a courtezan, in April, 1800; and the French government, as if wishing to set in a stronger light the shame of this infraction of laws, ever sacred to a military man, immediately restored all the officers of his staff to liberty, and desired them to convey back to their general his servants, his effects, and his horses. In 1804 he was nominated commander in chief of all the forces stationed in the Tyrol, in Dalmatia, and in Italy, when he presented a new plan of discipline for the Austrian troops, which the Archduke Charles adopted. In 1805, he became a member of the council of war, and had great influence in the direction of military affairs. In the month of September he obtained the command of the Bavarian army, but on the approach of the French troops he withdrew beyond the Danube, and shut himself up in the city of Ulm, with a numerous force. Then the emperor Napoleon crossed the river, and after making a shew of a design to penetrate into Bavaria, he on a sudden returned to Ulm, cut off the left wing of the Austrian army, seized Memmingen, which General Spangen surrendered without resistance, and came with a superior force to give battle to General Mack, who continued shut up in Ulm, while the Archduke Ferdinand, after having vainly endeavoured to bring him to act courageously, was retreating into Bohemia, through Franconia, with a considerable body of cavalry. Mack then, closely pressed by the French army, after two or three attacks on the advanced guard, accepted the most ignominious capitulation recorded in military annals. His troops, to the number of 40,000 men, were made prisoners, and he and his staff alone had permission to retire on their parole to Austria; but no sooner was he arrived, than he was seized and confined in the fortress of Therisenstadt, from which he was removed only to appear before a court-martial. At the end of February, 1806, judgment had not been passed on him.

FRERON, (L. S.)

SON of the journalist Fréron, the antagonist of Voltaire, and of the philosophic sect, with whom he himself contended after the death of his father. Brought up at the college Louis-le-grand with Robespierre, he became in the revolution his friend, his emulator, and at last his denunciator. He was god-son to Stanislaus, King of Poland, and was protected by Madame Adelaide, aunt to Louis XVI. After the death of his father, he worked at the Literary Year, (the property of which had been continued to him) with several men of letters, and especially with Geoffroy. In

1789, he began to edite the Orator of the People, and became the coadjutor of Marat. Mercier says, in his New Paris, that Fréron, as well as Marat, by his periodical incendiary papers, excited contentions between the citizens and the king's new guard; a dexterous method, by which they occasioned the disbanding of these guards, and delivered up the king without defence, to the insults of the populace.'

In 1798, Fréron ventured to demand the death of Louis XVI. and he afterwards made a figure in the municipality which completed the overthrow of the monarchy on the 10th of August, 1792. The department of Paris appointed him in September deputy to the convention, where he voted for the death of Louis XVI. observing, that he had proposed his execution two years before and that he had gone to attack him, even in his palace.' It was during his missions to the departments, that Fréron signalized himself in the most revolutionary manner. Being sent with Barras into the South, he displayed all the activity of his coadjutor, and shewed besides an inexhaustible fund of cruelty, in his correspondence and in his private conduct. On their arrival at Marseilles, in the beginning of October, 1793, they organized there a committee, which occasioned all the calamities of the town, erected scaffolds, destroyed workshops, and ruined commerce; they published there a proclamation, announcing that terror was the order of the day, and that to save Marseilles, and to raze Toulon were the aims of their labours. The latter town soon became the theatre of new atrocities; and whilst Barras mingled courage at least with his fury, Fréron seemed to reserve to himself more particularly butcheries and demolitions. Things go well here; he wrote in January to Moses Bayle; we have required 12,000 masons to raze the town; every day since our arrival we have caused 200 heads to fall, and there are already 800 Toulonese shot. All the great measures have been missed at Marseilles; if they had only shot 800 conspirators, as has been done here, and had appointed a committee to condemn the rest, we should not be in the condition that we now are in.' It was at first intended to put to death all who had accepted any office, or borne arms in the town during the siege. Fréron consequently signified to them that they must all go, under pain of death, to the Champ-de-Mars. The Toulonese, thinking to obtain pardon by their submission, obeyed; and 8000 persons were assembled at the appointed place. All the representatives (Barras, Salicetti, Ricord, Robespierre the younger, &c.) were embarrassed at the sight of this multitude; Fréron himself, surrounded by a formidable train of artillery, saw these numerous victims with terror; at last, by the advice of Barras, a jury was appointed, commissioned to select the most guilty immediately, and a great number were

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instantly shot. The shooting with muskets being insufficient, they had afterwards recourse to the mitraillade, and it was in another execution of this nature that Fréron, in order to despatch the victims who had not perished by the first discharge, cried out, 'Let those who are still living rise, the republic pardons them." Some unhappy creatures trusting to this promise, he caused them to be instantly fired upon. In the midst of his massacres, Fréron wrote, on the 26th of December, 1793, Shooting is the order of the day here. There is a mortality among the friends of Louis XVII. and, but for the fear of destroying innocent victims, such as the confined patriots, all would have been put to the sword; as, but for the fear of burning the arsenal and magazines, the town would have been given up to the flames; but it will not the less disappear from the soil of liberty, to-morrow and the following days we proceed to razing-shooting, till there are no more traitors.' Fréron, on quitting this unhappy town, went with his coadjutors, to finish the depopulation of Marseilles, which they declared a commune without a name, and where they destroyed more than 400 individuals, by means of a criminal tribunal, and afterwards of a military committee. This is the homage which Fréron did in one of his letters, to the members of this committee: Our revolutionary tribunal goes on in a formidable manner; the merchants dance the carmagnole; it is on them principally that it fixes.' At the same time they caused the finest edifices of this city to be destroyed. Returning at last from his proconsulship, Fréron was at first proclaimed, at the Jacobin Club, the deliverer of the South; and after the fall of Hébert, he imputed to the Hébertists the misfortunes of these places. He soon, however, became an object of suspicion to Robespierre, who procured his expulsion from the society of Jacobins; being then marked out as a victim, he joined his efforts to those of the other terrorists, who saw themselves equally threatened, attacked Robespierre, and contributed greatly to his ruin. He was one of the coadjutors who were given to Barras on the 28th July, 1794, to have the vanquished executed, and to keep their partisans within bounds. Ever possessed with a rage for demolition, he proposed on that day to demolish the building of the commune of Paris. After this period he shewed himself the enemy of the terrorists, and pursued them with a fury worthy of a former companion. On the 1st of August he attacked Fouquier Tinville, who had been retained in the new organization of the tribunal. • All Paris,' said he, calls for his punishment; I demand a decree of accusation against him, and let him go and expiate in hell the blood that he has shed.' The next day, in a speech frequently interrupted by applauses, he retraced the various crises of the revolution, and especially of the tyranny of Robespierre. He did