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 commonwealth are discussed with infinite subtlety, contrasted, and illustrated from the vicissitudes of Florence up to the year 1494. To these may be added a series of short essays, entitled Discorsi politici, composed during Guicciardini’s Spanish legation. It is only after a careful perusal of these minor works that the student of history may claim to have comprehended Guicciardini, and may feel that he brings with him to the consideration of the Storia d’ Italia the requisite knowledge of the author’s private thoughts and jealously guarded opinions. Indeed, it may be confidently affirmed that those who desire to gain an insight into the true principles and feelings of the men who made and wrote history in the 16th century will find it here far more than in the work designed for publication by the writer. Taken in combination with Machiavelli’s treatises, the Opere inedite furnish a comprehensive body of Italian political philosophy anterior to the date of Fra Paolo Sarpi.

See Rosini’s edition of the Storia d’ Italia (10 vols., Pisa, 1819), and the Opere inedite, in 10 vols., published at Florence, 1857. A complete and initial edition of Guicciardini’s works is now in preparation in the hands of Alessandro Gherardi of the Florence archives. Among the many studies on Guicciardini we may mention Agostino Rossi’s Francesco Guicciardini e il governo Fiorentino (2 vols., Bologna, 1896), based on many new documents; F. de Sanctis’s essay “L’Uomo del Guicciardini,” in his Nuovi Saggi critici (Naples, 1879), and many passages in Professor P. Villari’s Machiavelli (Eng. trans., 1892); E. Benoist’s Guichardin, historien et homme d’état italien an XVI&#8202;e siècle (Paris, 1862), and C. Gioda’s Francesco Guicciardini e le sue opere inedite (Bologna, 1880) are not without value, but the authors had not had access to many important documents since published. See also Geoffrey’s article “Une Autobiographie de Guichardin d’après ses &oelig;uvres inédites,” in the Revue des deux mondes (1st of February 1874).

 GUICHARD, KARL GOTTLIEB (1724–1775), soldier and military writer, known as, was born at Magdeburg in 1724, of a family of French refugees. He was educated for the Church, and at Leiden actually preached a sermon as a candidate for the pastorate. But he abandoned theology for more secular studies, especially that of ancient history, in which his learning attracted the notice of the prince of Orange, who promised him a vacant professorship at Utrecht. On his arrival, however, he found that another scholar had been elected by the local authorities, and he thereupon sought and obtained a commission in the Dutch army. He made the campaigns of 1747–48 in the Low Countries. In the peace which followed, his combined military and classical training turned his thoughts in the direction of ancient military history. His notes on this subject grew into a treatise, and in 1754 he went over to England in order to consult various libraries. In 1757 his Mémoires militaires sur les Grecs et les Romains appeared at the Hague, and when Carlyle wrote his Frederick the Great it had reached its fifth edition. Coming back, with English introductions, to the Continent, he sought service with Ferdinand of Brunswick, who sent him on to Frederick the Great, whom he joined in January 1758 at Breslau. The king was very favourably impressed with Guichard and his works, and he remained for nearly 18 months in the royal suite. His Prussian official name of Quintus Icilius was the outcome of a friendly dispute with the king (see Nikolai, Anekdoten, vi. 129-145; Carlyle, Frederick the Great, viii. 113-114). Frederick in discussing the battle of Pharsalia spoke of a centurion Quintus Caecilius as Q. Icilius. Guichard ventured to correct him, whereupon the king said, “You shall be Quintus Icilius,” and as Major Quintus Icilius he was forthwith gazetted to the command of a free battalion. This corps he commanded throughout the later stages of the Seven Years’ War, his battalion, as time went on, becoming a regiment of three battalions, and Quintus himself recruited seven more battalions of the same kind of troops. His command was almost always with the king’s own army in these campaigns, but for a short time it fought in the western theatre under Prince Henry. When not on the march he was always at the royal headquarters, and it was he who brought about the famous interview between the king and Gellert (see Carlyle, Frederick the Great, ix. 109; Gellert, Briefwechsel mit Demoiselle Lucius, ed. Ebert, Leipzig, 1823, pp. 629-631) on the subject of national German literature. On 22nd January 1761 Quintus was ordered to sack the castle of Hubertusburg (a task which Major-General Saldern had point-blank refused to undertake, from motives of conscience), and carried out his task, it is said, to his own very considerable profit. The place cannot have been seriously injured, as it was soon afterwards the meeting-place of the diplomatists whose work ended in the peace of Hubertusburg, but the king never ceased to banter Quintus on his supposed depredations. The very day of Frederick’s triumphant return from the war saw the disbanding of most of the free battalions, including that of Quintus, but the major to the end of his life remained with the king. He was made lieutenant-colonel in 1765, and in 1773, in recognition of his work Mémoires critiques et historiques sur plusieurs points d’antiquités militaires, dealing mainly with Caesar’s campaigns in Spain (Berlin, 1773), was promoted colonel. He died at Potsdam, 1775.

 GUICHEN, LUC URBAIN DE BOUËXIC, (1712–1790), French admiral, entered the navy in 1730 as “garde de la Marine,” the first rank in the corps of royal officers. His promotion was not rapid. It was not till 1748 that he became “lieutenant de vaisseau,” which was, however, a somewhat higher rank than the lieutenant in the British navy, since it carried with it the right to command a frigate. He was “capitaine de vaisseau,” or post captain, in 1756. But his reputation must have been good, for he was made chevalier de Saint Louis in 1748. In 1775 he was appointed to the frigate “Terpsichore,” attached to the training squadron, in which the duc de Chartres, afterwards notorious as the duc d’Orléans and as Philippe Égalité, was entered as volunteer. In the next year he was promoted chef d’escadre, or rear-admiral. When France had become the ally of the Americans in the War of Independence, he hoisted his flag in the Channel fleet, and was present at the battle of Ushant on the 27th of July 1779. In March of the following year he was sent to the West Indies with a strong squadron and was there opposed to Sir George Rodney. In the first meeting between them on the 17th of April to leeward of Martinique, Guichen escaped disaster only through the clumsy manner in which Sir George’s orders were executed by his captains. Seeing that he had to deal with a formidable opponent, Guichen acted with extreme caution, and by keeping the weather gauge afforded the British admiral no chance of bringing him to close action. When the hurricane months approached (July to September) he left the West Indies, and his squadron, being in a bad state from want of repairs, returned home, reaching Brest in September. Throughout all this campaign Guichen had shown himself very skilful in handling a fleet, and if he had not gained any marked success, he had prevented the British admiral from doing any harm to the French islands in the Antilles. In December 1781 the comte de Guichen was chosen to command the force which was entrusted with the duty of carrying stores and reinforcements to the West Indies. On the 12th Admiral Kempenfelt, who had been sent out by the British Government with an unduly weak force to intercept him, sighted the French admiral in the Bay of Biscay through a temporary clearance in a fog, at a moment when Guichen’s warships were to leeward of the convoy, and attacked the transports at once. The French admiral could not prevent his enemy from capturing twenty of the transports, and driving the others into a panic-stricken flight. They returned to port, and the mission entrusted to Guichen was entirely defeated. He therefore returned to port also. He had no opportunity to gain any counterbalancing success during the short remainder of the war, but he was present at the final relief of Gibraltar by Lord Howe. His death occurred on the 13th of January 1790. The comte de Guichen was, by the testimony of his contemporaries, a most accomplished and high-minded gentleman. It is probable that he had more scientific knowledge than any of his English contemporaries and opponents. But as a commander in war he was notable chiefly for his skill in directing the orderly movements of a fleet, and seems to have been satisfied with formal operations, which were possibly elegant but could lead to no substantial result. He had none of the combative instincts of his countryman Suffren, or of the average British admiral. 