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 FREY (Old Norse, Freyr) son of Njord, one of the chief deities in the northern pantheon and the national god of the Swedes. He is the god of fruitfulness, the giver of sunshine and rain, and thus the source of all prosperity. (See, ad fin.)

FREYBURG [], a town of Germany, in Prussian Saxony, in an undulating vine-clad country on the Unstrut, 6 m. N. from Naumberg-on-the-Saale, on the railway to Artern. Pop. 3200. It has a parish church, a mixture of Gothic and Romanesque architecture, with a handsome tower. It is, however, as being the “Mecca” of the German gymnastic societies that Freyburg is best known. Here Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778–1852), the father of German gymnastic exercises, lies buried. Over his grave is built the Turnhalle, with a statue of the “master,” while hard by it the Jahn Museum in Romanesque style, erected in 1903. Freyburg produces sparkling wine of good quality and has some other small manufactures. On a hill commanding the town is the castle of Neuenburg, built originally in 1062 by Louis the Leaper, count in Thuringia, but in its present form mainly the work of the dukes of Saxe-Weissenfels.

FREYCINET, CHARLES LOUIS DE SAULCES DE (1828–), French statesman, was born at Foix on the 14th of November 1828. He was educated at the École Polytechnique, and entered the government service as a mining engineer. In 1858 he was appointed traffic manager to the Compagnie de chemins de fer du Midi, a post in which he gave proof of his remarkable talent for organization, and in 1862 returned to the engineering service (in which he attained in 1886 the rank of inspector-general). He was sent on a number of special scientific missions, among which may be mentioned one to England, on which he wrote a notable Mémoire sur le travail des femmes et des enfants dans les manufactures de l’Angleterre (1867). On the establishment of the Third Republic in September 1870, he offered his services to Gambetta, was appointed prefect of the department of Tarn-et-Garronne, and in October became chief of the military cabinet. It was mainly his powers of organization that enabled Gambetta to raise army after army to oppose the invading Germans. He showed himself a strategist of no mean order; but the policy of dictating operations to the generals in the field was not attended with happy results. The friction between him and General d’Aurelle de Paladines resulted in the loss of the advantage temporarily gained at Orleans, and he was responsible for the campaign in the east, which ended in the destruction of Bourbaki’s army. In 1871 he published a defence of his administration under the title of La Guerre en province pendant le siège de Paris. He entered the Senate in 1876 as a follower of Gambetta, and in December 1877 became minister of public works in the Dufaure cabinet. He carried a great scheme for the gradual acquisition of the railways by the state and the construction of new lines at a cost of three milliards, and for the development of the canal system at a further cost of one milliard. He retained his post in the ministry of Waddington, whom he succeeded in December 1879 as president of the council and minister for foreign affairs. He passed an amnesty for the Communists, but in attempting to steer a middle course on the question of the religious associations, lost the support of Gambetta, and resigned in September 1880. In January 1882 he again became president of the council and minister for foreign affairs. His refusal to join England in the bombardment of Alexandria was the death-knell of French influence in Egypt. He attempted to compromise by occupying the Isthmus of Suez, but the vote of credit was rejected in the Chamber by 417 votes to 75, and the ministry resigned. He returned to office in April 1885 as foreign minister in the Brisson cabinet, and retained that post when, in January 1886, he succeeded to the premiership. He came into power with an ambitious programme of internal reform; but except that he settled the question of the exiled pretenders, his successes were won chiefly in the sphere of colonial extension. In spite of his unrivalled skill as a parliamentary tactician, he failed to keep his party together, and was defeated on 3rd December 1886. In the following year, after two unsuccessful attempts to construct new ministries he stood for the presidency of the republic; but the radicals, to whom his opportunism was distasteful, turned the scale against him by transferring the votes to M. Sadi Carnot.

In April 1888 he became minister of war in the Floquet cabinet—the first civilian since 1848 to hold that office. His services to France in this capacity were the crowning achievement of his life, and he enjoyed the conspicuous honour of holding his office without a break for five years through as many successive administrations—those of Floquet and Tirard, his own fourth ministry (March 1890–February 1892), and the Loubet and Ribot ministries. To him were due the introduction of the three-years’ service and the establishment of a general staff, a supreme council of war, and the army commands. His premiership was marked by heated debates on the clerical question, and it was a hostile vote on his Bill against the religious associations that caused the fall of his cabinet. He failed to clear himself entirely of complicity in the Panama scandals, and in January 1893 resigned the ministry of war. In November 1898 he once more became minister of war in the Dupuy cabinet, but resigned office on 6th May 1899. He has published, besides the works already mentioned, Traité de mécanique rationnelle (1858); De l’analyse infinitésimale (1860, revised ed., 1881); Des pentes économiques en chemin de fer (1861); Emploi des eaux d’égout en agriculture (1869); Principes de l’assainissement des villes and Traité d’assainissement industriel (1870); Essai sur la philosophie des sciences (1896); La Question d’Égypte (1905); besides some remarkable “Pensées” contributed to the Contemporain under the pseudonym of “Alceste.” In 1882 he was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences, and in 1890 to the French Academy in succession to Émile Augier.

FREYCINET, LOUIS CLAUDE DESAULSES DE (1779–1842), French navigator, was born at Montélimart, Drôme, on the 7th of August 1779. In 1793 he entered the French navy. After taking part in several engagements against the British, he joined in 1800, along with his brother Louis Henri de Freycinet (1777–1840), who afterwards rose to the rank of admiral, the expedition sent out under Captain Baudin in the “Naturaliste” and “Géographe” to explore the south and south-west coasts of Australia. Much of the ground already gone over by Flinders was revisited, and new names imposed by this expedition, which claimed credit for discoveries really made by the English navigator. An inlet on the coast of West [sic] Australia, in 26° S., is called Freycinet Estuary; and a cape near the extreme south-west of the same coast also bears the explorer’s name. In 1805 he returned to Paris, and was entrusted by the government with the work of preparing the maps and plans of the expedition; he also completed the narrative, and the whole work appeared under the title of Voyage de découvertes aux terres australes (Paris, 1807–1816). In 1817 he commanded the “Uranie,” in which Arago and others went to Rio de Janeiro, to take a series of pendulum measurements. This was only part of a larger scheme for obtaining observations, not only in geography and ethnology, but in astronomy, terrestrial magnetism, and meteorology, and for the collection of specimens in natural history. On this expedition the hydrographic operations were conducted by Louis Isidore Duperry (1786–1865) who in 1822 was appointed to the command of the “Coquille,” and during the next three years carried out scientific explorations in the southern Pacific and along the coast of South America. For three years Freycinet cruised about, visiting Australia, the Marianne, Sandwich, and other Pacific islands, South America, and other places, and, notwithstanding the loss of the “Uranie” on the Falkland Islands during the return voyage, returned to France with fine collections in all departments of natural history, and with voluminous notes and drawings which form an important contribution to a knowledge of the countries visited. The results of this voyage were published under Freycinet’s supervision, with the title of Voyage autour du monde sur les corvettes “l’Uranie” et “la Physicienne” in 1824–1844, in 13 quarto volumes and 4 folio volumes of fine plates and maps. Freycinet was admitted into the Academy of Sciences in 1825, and was one