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 attempts to recapture the town, but they were unsuccessful till 1449 when Somerset, the English commander, was obliged to surrender the principal fortified places in Normandy. During the close of the 15th century and the first half of the 16th, Rouen was the metropolis of art and taste in France and was one of the first places to reflect the influence of the Renaissance. During the wars of religion the arts declined. In 1562 the town was sacked by the Protestants. This did not prevent the League from gaining so firm a footing there that Henry IV. besieged it unsuccessfully and only obtained entrance after his abjuration. The revocation of the edict of Nantes in 1685 lost Rouen many of its richest and most industrious citizens in the Calvinistic emigration. The town suffered less from the excesses of the French Revolution than from the depredations of bandits who, under the Directory, infested the neighbourhood of the city and were not suppressed till the Consulate. During the Franco-German War the city was occupied by the invaders from December 1870 till July 1871, and had to submit to heavy requisitions.

ROUERGUE (Ruthenensis pagus), one of the old provinces of France, was originally inhabited by the Rulheni. It was bounded on the N. by Auvergne, on the S. and S.W. by Languedoc, on the E. by Gévaudan and the Cévennes and on the W. by Quercy. It included (1) the county of Rodez, (2) Haute and Basse Marche; and it was divided between the dioceses of Rodez and Vabres (province d’Alby after this province had been separated from that of Bourges in 1678). Administratively it formed first a sénéchoussée, dependent on Languedoc (capital Villefranche, in the Basse Marche), and later it was attached to the military governments of Guienne and Gascony. It was then part of the departments of Aveyron and of Tarnet-Garonne. The county of Rodez, after having been in the possession of the houses of Toulouse and Carlat, fell in the 14th century into that of Armagnac. Jean II. of Armagnac having served Charles V. faithfully during his wars with England, received from him, in 1374, what were called the four “châtellenies” with the “Commun de la paix,” a tax which had been established there to organize resistance against foreigners. Jean V. of Armagnac was deprived of the county for crime and treason against Louis XI., in 1469, but afterwards it was given back to Charles of Armagnac, who died without legitimate issue in 1496. Its possession was then disputed between King Francis I. and the duke of Alençon, who at last compromised (1519); the king ceded the county to his sister Marguerite d’Angouleme, who took it as dowry first to the duke of Alençon, and then to her second husband Henri d’Albret, king of Navarre. The county afterwards passed to Jeanne d’Albret, then to Henri IV., and was joined to the crown lands in 1590.

ROUGE (“red,” from Lat. rubeus), a French name applied to various colouring substances of a brilliant carmine tint, especially when used as cosmetics. The best of these preparations are such as have for their basis carthamine, obtained from the safflower (Carthamus tinctorius). The Chinese prepare a rouge, said to be from safflower, which, spread on the cards on which it is sold, has a brilliant metallic green lustre, but when moistened and applied to the skin assumes a delicate carmine tint. Jeweller’s rouge for polishing plate is a fine red iron oxide prepared by calcination from ferrous sulphate (green vitriol).

 ROUGET DE LISLE, CLAUDE JOSEPH (1760–1836), French author, was born on the 10th of May 1760, at Lons-le-Saunier (Jura). He entered the army as an engineer, and attained the rank of captain. He was one of those authors whom a single work has made famous. The song which has immortalized him, the Marseillaise, was composed at Strassburg, where Rouget de Lisle was quartered in April 1792. He wrote both words and music in a fit of patriotic excitement after a public dinner. The piece was at first called Chant de guerre de l’armée du Rhin, and only received its name of Marseillaise from its adoption by the Provençal volunteers whom Barbaroux introduced into Paris, and who were prominent in the storming of the Tuileries. The author was a moderate republican, and was cashiered and thrown into prison; but the counter-revolution set him at liberty. He died at Choisy-le-Roi (Seine et Oise) on the 26th of June 1836. The stirring melody of the Marseillaise and its ingenious adaptation to the words serve to disguise the alternate poverty and bombast of the words themselves. Rouget de Lisle wrote a few other songs of the same kind, and in 1825 he published Chants français, in which he set to music fifty songs by various authors. His Essais en vers et en prose (1797) contains the Marseillaise, a prose tale of the sentimental kind called Adelaïde et Monville, and some occasional poems.

ROUGH CAST (the French equivalent is crépis), in architecture, the exterior coating originally given to the walls of common dwellings and outbuildings, but now frequently employed for decorative effect on country houses, especially those built in half timber. It is a composition of small gravel and sand, mixed with strong lime mortar, and is thrown on the walls already covered with two ordinary coats of plaster. Variety can be obtained on the surface of the wall by small pebbles of different colours, and in the Tudor period fragments of glass were sometimes embedded. The central tower of St Alban’s cathedral, built with Roman tiles from Verulam, was covered with rough cast believed to be coeval with the building. The rough cast was removed about 1870.

ROUHER, EUGÈNE (1814–1884), French statesman, was born at Riom (Puy de Dome) on the 30th of November 1814. He practised law in his native place after taking his degree in Paris in 1835, and in 1846 sought election by his fellow citizens to the Chamber of Deputies as an official candidate of the Guizot ministry. It was only after the revolution of 1848, however, that he became deputy for the department of Puy de Dome. Re-elected to the Legislative Chamber in 1849 he succeeded Odilon Barrot as minister of justice, with the additional office of keeper of the seals, which he retained with short intervals until January 1852. From the tribune of the Chamber he described. the revolution of February as a “catastrophe,” and he supported reactionary legislation, notably the bill (May 31, 1850) for the limitation of the suffrage. After the coup d’état of December 2, 1851, he was entrusted with the redaction of the new constitution, and on his resignation of office in January became vice-president of the Council of State. After the formal establishment of the Empire, Napoleon III. rewarded him by a grant of £40,000 and the estate of Cirey. In 1855 he became minister of agriculture, commerce and public works, and in 1856 senator. He secured for France an excellent system of railways without making them a state monopoly, and he conducted the complicated negotiations for the treaty of commerce with England which was concluded in January 1860, and subsequently arranged similar treaties with Belgium and Italy. In 1863 he became minister president of the Council of State, and on the death of A. A. M. Billault minister of state and chief spokesman of the emperor. before the Corps Législatif. Although the government had a great majority in the Chamber, the opposition counted the redoubtable names of Thiers, Berryer and Jules Favre, and government measures were only passed by frequent resort to the closure. Rouher had to defend Napoleon's foreign adventures as well as the free trade treaties and the extravagances of Baron Haussmann for which¢he was directly responsible. After an attempted defence of the foreign policy which had aided the aggrandizement of Prussia at the expense of Austria, Thiers told him in the Chamber that there were “no more blunders left for him to make.” He opposed the abortive Liberal concessions of January 1867, announced in a personal letter from Napoleon III. to himself, and resigned with the rest of the cabinet, only to resume office after a short interval as minister of finance. When concessions became inevitable Rouher, the “vice-empereur,” resigned