Page:EB1911 - Volume 26.djvu/421

 are soluble in water, their solutions having an add reaction and an astringent taste; the solutions are coloured dark hiue or green by ferrous salts, a property utilized in the manufacture of  (q.v.). Their chemistry is little known. Some appear to be glucosides of gallic acid, since they yield this acid and a sugar on hydrolysis, e.g. oak tannin; whilst others yield proto-catechuic acid and phloroglucin, e.g. moringa-tannin; common tannin, however, is a digallic acid.

TANN-RATHSAMHAUSEN, LUDWIG SAMSON ARTHUR, (1815–1881), Bavarian general, was born at Darmstadt on the 18th of June 1815, the day of Waterloo. He was descended from the old family of von der Tann, which had representatives in Bavaria, Alsace and the Rhine countries, and assumed his mother's name (she being the daughter of an Alsatian, Freiherr von Rathsamhausen) in 1868 by licence of the king of Bavaria. Ludwig, the first king of Bavaria, stood sponsor for the child, who received his name and in addition that of Arthur, in honour of the duke of Wellington. He received a careful education, and in 1827 became a page at the Bavarian court, where a great future was predicted for him. Entering the artillery in 1833, he was after some years placed on the general staff. He attended the manoeuvres of the Austrian army in Italy under (q.v.) and, in the spirit of adventure, joined a French military expedition operating in Algiers against the Tunisian frontier. On his return he became a close personal friend of the Crown Prince Maximilian Joseph (afterwards King Maximilian). In 1848 he was made a major, and in that year he distinguished himself greatly as the leader of a Schleswig-Holstein light corps in the Danish war. At the close of the first campaign he was given the order of the Red Eagle by the king of Prussia, and his own sovereign gave him the military order of Max-Joseph without his asking for it, and also made him a lieutenant-colonel. In 1849 he served as chief of staff to the Bavarian contingent at the front, and distinguished himself at the lines of Düppel, after which he visited Haynau's headquarters in the Hungarian war, and returned to Schleswig-Holstein to serve as v. Willisen's chief of staff in the Idstedt campaign. Then came the threat of war between Prussia and Austria, and von der Tann was recalled to Bavaria. But the affair ended with the “surrender of Olmütz,” and he saw no further active service until 1866, rising in the usual way of promotion to colonel (1851), major-general (1855), and lieutenant-general (1861). In the earlier years of this period he was the aide-de-camp and constant companion of the king. In the war of 1866 he was chief of the staff to Prince Charles of Bavaria, who commanded the South German contingents. The almost entirely unfortunate issue of the military operations led to his heing vehemently attacked in the press, but the unreadiness and unequal efficiency of the troops and the general lack of interest in the war on the part of the soldiers foredoomed the South Germans to failure in any case. He continued to enjoy the favour of the king and received promotion to the rank of general of infantry (1869), but the bitterness of his disappointment of 1866 never left him. He was grey-haired at forty-two, and his health was impaired. In 1869 von der Tann-Rathsamhausen, as he was now called, was appointed commander of the I. Bavarian corps. This corps he commanded in the Franco-German War, and therein he retrieved his place as one of the foremost of German soldiers. His gallantry was conspicuous at Worth and Sedan. Transferred in the autumn to an independent command on the Loire, he conducted the operations against d'Aurelle de Paladines, at first with marked success, and forced the surrender of Orleans. He had, however, at Coulmiers to give way before a numerically larger French force; but reinforced, he fought several successful engagements under the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg near Orleans. On the termination of the war he was reappointed commander-in-chief of the I. Bavarian corps, a post which he held until his death at Meran on the 26th of April 1881. He had the grand cross of the Bavarian military orders, and the first class of the Iron Cross and the pour le mérite from the king of Prussia., In 1878 the emperor named von der Tann chief of a Prussian infantry regiment, decreed him a grant, and named one of the new Strassburg forts after him.

TANSA, a small river in Salsett island, in the Thana district of Bombay, which provides the city of Bombay with its water-supply. It is embanked by one of the largest masonry dams in the world, built in 1892. The embankment is nearly 2 m. long, 118 ft. high, and 110 ft. thick at the base.

TANTA, a town of Lower Egypt, in a central position nearly midway between the two main branches of the Nile, and converging-point of several railways traversing the Delta in all directions. It has a population (1907) of 54,437, is the capital of the rich province of Gharbia, and is noted for its fairs and Moslem festivals, which are held three times a year in honour of Seyyid el-Bedawi, and are sometimes attended by 200,000 pilgrims and traders. There are a large railway station, a very fine mosque (restored), and a palace of the khedive. Seyyid el-Bedawi, who lived in the 13th century, was a native of Fez who, after a pilgrimage to Mecca, settled in Tanta. He is one of the most popular saints in Egypt.

TANTALUM [symbol Ta, atomic weight 181·0 (O＝16)], a metallic chemical element, sparingly distributed in nature and then almost invariably associated with columbium. Its history