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 trade of the island centre upon Valletta. The influx of winter visitors adds to the wealth of the city.

VALLEYFIELD, town and port of entry, Beauharnois county, Quebec, Canada, 25 m. S.W. of Montreal, at the foot of Lake St Francis-an expansion of the river St Lawrence—and at the head of the Beauharnois canal. Pop. (1891) 5515; (1901) 11,055. It is a station on the Canada Atlantic and New York Central railways, and a port of call for all steamers plying between Montreal and Lake Ontario ports. It is the see of a Roman Catholic bishop, and contains a college and a convent. It has extensive cotton, flour, canning and paper mills.

 VALLEY FORGE, a small village in Chester county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., on the S. bank of the Schuylkill river, about 20 m. N.W. of Philadelphia. It is served by the Philadelphia & Reading railway. The village lies in part of the tract occupied in the winter of 1777–1778 by the American army (under General Washington), whose sufferings from cold, starvation and sickness made the place historic. On the 19th of December (after the battles of Brandywine and Germantown and the occupation of Philadelphia by the British) the army, numbering about 10,000, went into camp here, the site having been selected by Washington partly because the hilly ground was favourable for defence, and partly because the army was thus placed between the British forces and York, Pennsylvania (about 65 m. W. of Valley Forge), where Congress was in session. The camp was almost unapproachable from the west by reason of the precipitous hillsides and Valley Creek, a small stream flowing northward at their base into the Schuylkill river which afforded a barrier on the north; on the east a series of entrenchments and rifle-pits were built. In this vicinity the army remained encamped until the middle of June. As a result of the mismanagement and general incapacity of the Commissary Department, the army received little food or clothing during the winter months; in the latter part of December nearly 2900 men were unfit for duty on account of sickness or the lack of clothing, and by the 1st of Februarythis number had increased by nearly 1000, a state of affairs which Washington said was due to “ an eternal round of the most stupid mismanagement by which] the public treasure is expended to no kind of purpose, while the men have been left to perish by inches with cold and nakedness.” There were many desertions and occasional symptoms of mutiny, but for the most part the soldiers bore their suffering with heroic fortitude. On the 27th of February (q.v.) reached the camp, where he drilled and reorganized the army. In 1893 the state of Pennsylvania created a commission of ten members, which (with $365,000 appropriated up to 1911) bought about 475 acres (in Chester and Montgomery counties) of the original camp ground, now known as the Valley Forge Park, preserved Washington's headquarters (built in about the year 1758) and other historic buildings, and reproduced several bake-ovens and huts of the kind used by the army. The state has also erected (1908) a fine equestrian statue by Henry K. Bush-Brown to General Anthony Wayne, and a number of granite markers which indicate the situation of the camps of the different brigades. The state of Maine erected in 1907 a granite memorial to the soldiers from Maine who camped here, and in 1910 Massachusetts appropriated $5000 for a memorial to her troops. Valley Forge took its name from an iron forge (also called “ Mountjoy forge ”) built on the east side of Valley Creek, near its mouth, in about 1750, and destroyed by the British in 1777.

 VALLOMBROSA, a summer resort of Tuscany, Italy, in the province of Florence, reached by a cable railway 5 m. long from the station of S. Ellero (which is 16 m. S.E. of Florence) and 328 ft. above sea-level, on the N.W. slope of the Prato Magno chain. The former monastery, suppressed in 1816, is occupied by the Royal School of Forestry. A number of hotels have been built. Similar summer resorts are situated among the woods above the Casentino or upper valley of the Arno to the east, such as Camaldoli, Badia di Prataglia, &c. Camaldoli was the original headquarters of the Camaldulensian order, now partly occupied by an hotel. Five hours' journey to the S. of the last on foot and 7½ m. to the E. of Bibbiena by road is the monastery of La Verna, 3660 ft. above sea-level, founded by St Francis in 1215.

 VALLOMBROSIANS, an order of monks under the Benedictine rule, founded by St John Gualbert in 1038. He was son of a Florentine nobleman, and became f1rstaBenedictine and then a Camaldulian. Finally, about 1030, he withdrew to Vallombrosa, a shady dale on the side of a mountain in the Apennines, 10 m. from Florence, and for some years led a completely solitary; life. Disciples, however, gathered around him, and he formed them into an order in which the cenobitical and the eremitical lives should be combined. The monks lived in a monastery, not in separate huts like the Camaldulians, and the Benedictine rule was the basis of the life; but the contemplative side was strongly emphasized, and every element of Benedictine life was eliminated that could be supposed to interrupt the attention of the mind to God—even manual labour. The Vallombrosians spread in Italy and France, but they never had more than sixty houses. They now have three, with some sixty monks in all. The habit was originally grey, but it became black; and the life also has been assimilated to that of the Benedictines. There were some convents of Vallombrosian nuns.

See Helyot, Histoire des Ordres religieux (1718), v. cc. 28, 29; Max Heimbucher, Orden u. Kongregationen (1907), I. § 44.

 VALLS, a town of north-eastern Spain, in the province of Tarragona; 11 m. N. of Tarragona, on the Picamoixons-Roda railway. Pop. (1900) 12,625. Valls is an old town, and its walls and towers still remain. Wool and cotton spinning and weaving, dyeing, distilling, paper-making and tanning are carried on here with considerable activity.

 VALOIS, COUNTS AND DUKES OF. The French countship of Valois (pagus Vadensis) takes its name from Vez (Latin Vadum), its early capital, a town in the department of the Oise. From the 10th to the 12th century it was owned by the counts of Vermandois and of Vexin; but on the death of Eleanor, sister and heiress of Count Raoul V. (d. 1167), it was united to the crown by King Philip Augustus. Soon detached from the royal domain, Valois was the property of Blanche of Castile, widow of Louis VIII., from 1240 to 1252, and of Jean Tristan, a younger son of Louis IX., from 1268 to 1270. In 1285 Philip III. gave the county to his son Charles (d. 1325), whose son and successor, Philip, count of Valois, became king of France as Philip VI. in 1328. Sixteen years later Valois was granted to Philip's son, Philip, duke of Orleans; then passing with the duchy of Orleans in 1392 to Louis (d. 1407), a son of Charles V., it was erected into a duchy in 1406, and remained the property of the dukes of Orleans until Duke Louis became king of France as Louis XII. in 1498, when it was again united with the royal domain.

After this event the duchy of Valois was granted to several ladies of the royal house. Held by Jeanne, countess of Taille- bourg (d. 1520), from 1516 to 1517, and by Marie, countess of Vendome, from 1530 until her death in 1546, it was given to Catherine de Medici, the widow of Henry II., in 1562, and in 1582 to her daughter, Margaret of Valois, the wife of Henry of Navarre. In 1630 Louis XIII. granted Valois to his brother Gaston, duke of Orleans, and the duchy formed part of the lands and titles of the dukes of Orleans from this time until the Revolution.

The house of Valois, a branch of the great Capetian family, is thus descended from Charles, a son of Philip III., and has been divided into several lines, three of which have reigned in France. These are: (1) the direct line, beginning with Philip VI., which reigned from 1328 to 1498; (2) the Orleans branch, descended from Louis, duke of Orleans, a son of Charles V., from 1498 to 1515; (3) the Angouleme branch, descendants of John, another son of the same duke, from 151 5 to 1589. Excluding the royal house, the most illustrious of the Valois branches are: the dukes of Alençon, descendants of Charles, a younger son of Charles I., count of Valois; the dukes of Anjou,