Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/790

Rh a high reputation among the neighbouring princes. Like his father, he was removed by poison, and his son, Ala- eddin Mahomet III., a child of nine years of age, weak in mind and body, was placed on the throne. Under his rule the mild principles of his father were deserted, and a fresh course of assassination entered on. In 1255, after a reign of 30 years, Alaeddin was slain, with the connivance of his son, Rokueddin, the last ruler of the Assassins. In the following year Hulaku, brother of the Tatar, Mangu Khan, invaded the hill country of Persia, took Alamut and many other castles, and captured Rokneddin. He treated him kindly, and, at his own request, sent him under escort to Mangu. On the way, Rokneddin treacherously incited the inhabitants of Kirdkuh to resist the Tartars. This breach of good faith was severely punished by the khan, who ordered Rokneddin to be put to death, and sent a mes senger to Hulaku commanding him to slay all his captives. About 12,000 of the Assassins were massacred, and their power in Persia was completely broken. The Syrian branch flourished for some years longer, till Bibars, the Mameluke sultan of Egypt, ravaged their country and nearly extirpated them. Small bodies of them lingered about the mountains of Syria, and are believed still to exist there. Doctrines somewhat similar to theirs are to be met with among the Druses, and particularly among the Ansarii or Nosarii, a small Syrian people, dwelling not far from Latakia. Some writers have thought that these Ansarii are the remnants of the Assassins, but this does not seem possible, for the two sects are at enmity, and in 1809 the stronghold of Massiat, then in possession of some Ismaelites, was attacked and pillaged by the Ansarii. 1em  ASSAULT, in English Law, is defined &quot; as an attempt or offer with force or violence to do corporal hurt to another, as by striking at another with a stick or other weapon, or without a weapon, though the party misses his aim.&quot; Notwithstanding ancient opinions to the contrary, it is now settled that mere words, be they ever so provoking, will not constitute an assault. Coupled with the attempt or threat to inflict corporal injury, there must in all cases be the means of carrying the threat into effect. A battery is more than a threat or attempt to injure the person of another ; the injury must have been inflicted, but it makes no difference however small it may be, as the law does not &quot; draw the line between degrees of violence,&quot; but &quot; totally prohibits the first and lowest stage of it.&quot; Every battery includes an assault. A common assault is a misdemeanour, and is punishable by one year s imprisonment with hard labour, but severer penalties are provided for the various kinds of aggravated assaults.  ASSAYE, a village of Haidarabad, in the Nizam's dominions, in Southern India, situated in 20 18 N. lat. and 75 55 E. long. The place is celebrated as the site of iv battle fought on the 23d September 1803 between the combined Marhatta forces under Sindhia and the Raja of Berar and the British under Major-General Wellesley, after wards the Duke of Wellington. The Marhatta force con sisted of 50,000 men, supported by 100 pieces of cannon entrenched in a strong position. Against this the English had but a force of 4500 men, which, however, after a severe struggle, gained the most complete victory that ever crowned British valour in India. Assaye is 261 miles N.W. of Haidarabad.  ASSAYING. This term is used in metallurgy to denote a chemical operation in which the quantity of one ingredient of a mineral or alloy is determined ; it is chiefly used in reference to the precious metals, gold and silver, and it is in this connection that the subject will here be treated of. In the wider acceptation of the term in which it is used amongst practical metallurgists, assaying means almost the same thing as the quantitative estimation of one constituent of a compound, when the process adopted is one which has to be frequently repeated in a laboratory, and the results are required for commercial purposes. In this sense wo speak not only of the assay of gold and silver, but of other metals, such as lead and copper, of non-metallic elements, such as sulphur and iodine, and even of compounds such as nitre. The operations of assaying were, until recently, chiefly performed by what is called the dry method, but of late years the processes of volumetric analysis have been so largely introduced into the metallurgical laboratory, that the wet method is almost as much used as the dry method. In the processes of assaying the precious metals described in the following pages, the reader will have both these terms explained, for gold is assayed in the dry, while silver is assayed in the wet way. The precious metals, gold and silver, being almost universally used as convenient representatives of value, and as such passing frequently between one country and another, it is of the utmost importance to ascertain, quickly and accurately, the marketable value of any sample of gold or silver bullion. Were these metals invariably used in their pure state, their commercial value would be in direct pro portion to their weight, and all that would have to be known would be the actual value of a pound of gold or silver ; but the metals exist in commerce in the form of alloys or mixtures containing an indefinite amount of base metal. Gold is generally alloyed with copper and silver, whilst silver is generally alloyed with copper. The problem is, therefore, to ascertain by some ready process, which admits of extreme accuracy as well as moderate rapidity, the exact proportion of pure gold present in an alloy, ore, or mixture containing this metal ; and inasmuch as silver is also a precious metal, the assay of gold almost always involves the assay of the silver which accompanies it, for in many cases the amount of silver present may be sufficient to increase the commercial value of the substance under assay. It ia very seldom, however, that the copper or other metal present is in sufficient quantity to be of value, unless, in deed, the substance under assay be a copper ore or pyrites containing only traces of gold. In the case of silver assay, when the base metal is copper, it is generally neglected. It is, however, frequently necessary to examine silver fos gold, for, formerly, the methods of parting these two precious metals were by no means so exact as they are now, and on this account old silver frequently contains an amount of gold which it will pay well to extract by modern methods. The principle of assaying gold and silver is very simple theoretically, but in practice great experience ia necessary to ensure accuracy, and there is no branch of business which more demands personal and undivided attention. All substances containing gold may be divided into two classes. The first class comprises ores containing gold in a mineralised form. These include graphic tellurium and foliated tellurium, and are of no commercial importance. For the present purpose, we need simply mention the substances in the second class, which consist of alloys of gold, and include native gold, containing from 65 to 99 per cent, of gold; palladium gold, containing about 86 per cent, of gold ; rhodium gold, containing from 59 to 66 per cent, of gold ; gold amalgam, containing 38 per cent, of gold ; and artificial alloys, as gold coin, jewellery, &amp;lt;fec. Of the foregoing list, the only alloys which are of commercial importance are, native gold and artificial alloys. Native 