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 of France towards the end of the reign of Louis XIV., and, after raising the regiment of Noailles in 1689, he commanded in Spain during the war of the Spanish succession, and was made marshal of France in 1693. A younger son, (1651–1729), was made archbishop of Paris in 1695, holding this high dignity until his death; he was made a cardinal in 1699. The name of Noailles occurs with almost confusing reiteration throughout the 18th century. (1678–1766), the third duke, served in all the most important wars of the reign of Louis XV. in Italy and Germany, and became a marshal in 1734. His last command was in the war of the Austrian succession, when he was beaten by the English at the battle of Dettingen in 1743. He married Francoise d’Aubigné, a niece of Madame de Maintenon and two of his sons also attained the rank of marshal of France. The elder, (1713–1793), who bore the title of duc d’Ayen till his father’s death in 1766, when he became duc de Noailles, served in most of the wars of the 18th century without particular distinction, but was nevertheless made a marshal in 1775. He refused to emigrate during the Revolution, but escaped the guillotine by dying in August 1793, before the Terror reached its height. On the 4th Thermidor (July 22) the aged duchesse de Noailles was executed with her daughter-in-law, the duchesse d’Ayen, and her granddaughter, the vicomtesse de Noailles. (1739–1824), the fifth duke, was in the army, but his tastes were scientific, and for his eminence as a chemist he was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences in 1777. He became duc d’Ayen in 1766 on his grandfather’s death, and duc de Noailles on his father’s in 1793. Having emigrated in 1792, he lived in Switzerland until the Restoration in 1814, when he took his seat as a peer of France. He had no son, and was succeeded as duc de Noailles by his grand-nephew, (1802–1885), who won some reputation as an author, and who became a member of the French Academy in the place of Chateaubriand in 1849. The grandfather of Paul de Noailles, and brother of the fifth duke, (1743–1822), marquis de Noailles, was ambassador at Amsterdam from 1770–1776, at London 1776–1783, and at Vienna 1783–1792.

 NOAKHALI, a town and district of British India, in the Chittagong division of eastern Bengal and Assam. The town, also known as Sudharam, is on a small river channel 10 m. from the sea. Pop (1901) 6520. The has an area of 1644 sq. m.; pop. (1901) 1,141,728. The district consists of an alluvial tract of mainland, together with several islands at the mouth of the Meghna. In general, each homestead is surrounded by a thick grove of betel- and coco-nut palms, and in the north-western tracts dense forests of betel-nut palms extend for miles. Rice is the great staple of cultivation. The district is very fertile; and, with the exception of some sandbanks and recent accretions, every part of it is under continuous cultivation. The process of alluvion is gradually but steadily going on, the mainland extending seawards. Noakhali is peculiarly liable to destructive floods from the sea, generally caused by southerly gales or cyclones occurring at the time when the Meghna is swollen by heavy rains, and at flood-tides—the tidal bore being sometimes 20 ft. high, and moving at the rate of 15 m. an hour. The cyclone and storm-wave of the 31st of October 1876 was terribly disastrous, sweeping over the whole delta of the Meghna. The loss of human life was estimated at 100,000. The east of the district is served by the Assam-Bengal railway.

The Mahommedan population of the islands at the mouth of the Meghna practised piracy up to a comparatively recent date, and at the beginning of the 17th century Portuguese pirates, under Sebastian Gonzales, occupied Sandwip. They were ultimately reduced to subjection by Shaista Khan, the governor of Bengal, about the middle of the century; and their descendants have sunk to the level of the natives surrounding them, whose dress, customs and language they have, for the most part, adopted. They are Christians, and retain the old Portuguese names. About 1756 the East India Company established factories in Noakhali and Tippera, the ruins of some of which still remain.  NOBEL, ALFRED BERNHARD (1833–1896), Swedish chemist and engineer, was the third son of Emmanuel Nobel (1801–1872), and was born at Stockholm on the 21st of October 1833. At an early age he went with his family to St Petersburg, where his father started torpedo works. In 1859 these were left to the care of the second son, Ludvig Emmanuel (1831–1888), by whom they were greatly enlarged, and Alfred, returning to Sweden with his father, devoted himself to the study of explosives, and especially to the manufacture and utilization of nitroglycerin. He found that when that body was incorporated with an absorbent, inert substance like kieselguhr it became safer and more convenient to manipulate, and this mixture he patented in 1867 as dynamite. He next combined nitroglycerin with another high explosive, gun-cotton, and obtained a transparent, jelly-like substance, which was a still more powerful explosive than dynamite. Blasting gelatin, as it was called, was patented in 1876, and was followed by a host of similar combinations, modified by the addition of potassium nitrate, wood-pulp and various other substances. Some thirteen years later Nobel produced ballistite, one of the earliest of the nitroglycerin smokeless powders, containing in its latest forms about equal parts of gun-cotton and nitroglycerin. This powder was a precursor of cordite, and Nobel’s claim that his patent covered the latter was the occasion of vigorously contested law-suits between him and the British Government in 1894 and 1895. Cordite also consists of nitroglycerin and gun-cotton, but the form of the latter which its inventors wished to use was the most highly nitrated variety, which is not soluble in mixtures of ether and alcohol, whereas Nobel contemplated using a less nitrated form, which is soluble in such mixtures. The question was complicated by the fact that it is in practice impossible to prepare either of these two forms without admixture of the other; but eventually the courts decided against Nobel. From the manufacture of dynamite and other explosives, and from the exploitation of the Baku oil-fields, in the development of which he and his brothers, Ludvig and Robert Hjalmar (1829–1896), took a leading part, he amassed an immense fortune; and at his death, which occurred on the 10th of December 1896 at San Remo, he left the bulk of it in trust for the establishment of five prizes, each worth several thousand pounds, to be awarded annually without distinction of nationality.