Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/229

Rh R A D R A D 231 ments. Radcliffe Tower, dating from the 13th century, and formerly an extensive manorial residence, is now a complete ruin. Cot ton -weaving, calico-printing, and bleaching are the principal industries, and there are extensive collieries in the neighbourhood. The town is governed by a local board of health established in 1866. The area of the urban sanitary district is 2453 acres, with a population in 1871 of 11,446, and in 1881 of 16,267. Radcliffe is so called from a cliff of red rock on the south side of the Irwell opposite the town. The manor was held by Edward the Confessor, and was conferred on Roger de Poictou, but was forfeited by him soon after the Domesday survey. In the reign of Stephen it was granted to Ranulph de Gernons, earl of Chester. RADCLIFFE, ANN WARD (1764-1823), novelist, was born in London on 9th July 1764. She was the author of three novels unsurpassed of their kind in English litera- ture, The Romance, of the Forest (1791), The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), The Italian (1797). The interval of three years between the successive publications is noticeable; works so elaborate, intricate, and closely interwoven could not be written in a hurry. The second of the three novels is the one commonly associated with Mrs Radcliffe's name, but the preference is probably due to the title ; each is an improvement on its predecessor, and the last is considerably the best on the whole in style as well as in plot and char- acter. She wrote two other novels before any of these, the Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne (1789) and the Sicilian Romance (1790), but they attracted no special attention and deserve none, although in them she works with the same romantic materials dreadful castles, wild adventures, terrible characters. One other was written after the famous three, but not published till 1826, three years after her death Gaston de Blondeville, interesting as an elaborate study of costume and scenery, and valuable as a monument of her accurate archaeological learning, but comparatively tedious as a story, though not without passages in her best style. The circumstances that turned Mrs Radcliffe to literature are not recorded in the meagre memoir published under her husband's direction. Her maiden name was Ward, and her parents, who are described as " persons of great respectability, though engaged in trade," in London, had literary relations. Her husband was an Oxford gradu- ate and proprietor and editor of the English Chronicle. After The Italian she gave up writing for publication, and was reported to have been driven mad by the horrors of her own creations. This was purely mythical. It appears that she never saw the Italian scenery which she depicts with such minuteness, and never left England but once, in the summer of 1794, after the completion of her Udolpho. A record of the tour was published in the following year, along with descriptions of a visit to the English Lakes, the beauties of which she was one of the first to celebrate. Of scenery, as might be judged from her novels, where the descriptions are often felt as a tedious impediment, Mrs Radcliffe was an enthusiastic amateur, and made driving tours with her husband every other summer through the English counties. She died in February 1823. As a novelist Mrs Radcliffe deserves a much higher place than is accorded to her in general estimation. Critics familiar with her works, from Sir Walter Scott downwards, have shown themselves fully alive to the difference ; but the general public confound her with puerile and extravagant imitators, who have vulgarized her favourite "properties" of rambling and ruinous old castles, dark, desperate, and cadaverous villains, secret passages, vaults, trapdoors, evidences of deeds of monstrous crime, sights and sounds of mys- terious horror. She deserves at least the credit of originality, but apart from this there are three respects in which none of her numer- ous imitators approach her, ingenuity of plot, fertility of incident, and skill in devising apparently supernatural occurrences capable of explanation by human agency and natural coincidence. Except in her last and posthumously published work she never introduces the really supernatural, and, whether or not we agree with Sir w alter Scott that this limitation was a mistake in art, it must at least be acknowledged to impose a heavier burden on the author's ingenuity. Her imitators found it easier to follow Horace "Walpole in this point. Some of the tragic situations in The Italian are worked out with a vivid power of imagination which it would be hard to parallel in English literature outside the range of the Eliza- bethan drama, with the minor celebrities of which Mrs Radcliffe may fairly challenge comparison. RADETZKY, JOHANN J. W. A. F. C., COUNT OF RADETZ (1766-1858), field-marshal of Austria, was born at Trzebnitz in Bohemia in 1766, to the nobility of which province his family belonged. He entered a cavalry regi- ment in 1784 and served under Joseph II. and Laudon against the Turks in 1788 and 1789. In 1793 his regiment was sent to the lower Rhine, and from this time onwards Radetzky was engaged in the wars which were continued (with intermission) between Austria and France for the next twenty years. In 1796 he was adjutant to General Beaulieu, over whom Bonaparte won his first victories in Italy. In 1799, when the Austrians with Suwaroffs help reconquered Northern Italy, he distinguished himself at the battles of Novi and the Trebbia, displaying, accord- ing to the despatches of General Melas, great presence of mind in the midst of extreme danger. After the defeat of Marengo he was removed from Italy to Germany, and there took part in the still more disastrous engagement of Hohenlinden. In 1805 Radetzky, now major-general, was back in Italy, serving under the archduke Charles in the successful campaign of Caldiero, the fruits of which were lost by Mack's capitulation at Ulm and the fall of Vienna. In 1809 he fought at Wagram. In 1813, when all the great powers of Europe combined against Napoleon, Radetzky was chief of the staff under Schwarzenberg, the Austrian commander-in-chief of the allied forces, and he now gained a reputation outside his own country. The plan of the battle of Leipsic is said to have been in great part Radetzky's work, and in this engagement he was wounded. He entered Paris with the allied sovereigns in March 1814, and returned with them to the congress of Vienna, where he appears to have acted as an inter- mediary between Metternich and the czar Alexander, when these great personages were not on speaking terms. During the succeeding years of peace he disappeared from the public view and narrowly escaped being pensioned off in 1829. The insurrection of the Papal Legations in 1831 brought him, however, into active service again; and on the retirement of General Frimont he was placed in command of all the Austrian forces in Italy, receiving in 1836 the dignity of field-marshal. Radetzky was now seventy years old, but twelve more years were to pass before the really historical part of his career opened. When he was eighty-two the revolution of 1848 broke out. Milan rose in insurrection against its Austrian rulers, and after a struggle of five days Radetzky was forced to eva- cuate the city. Unable to retain any hold on Lombardy, he concentrated his troops at Verona, the fortifications of which were to a great extent his own creation. Charles Albert, king of Sardinia, now declared war upon Austria, occupied Milan, and laid siege to Peschiera. Radetzky, after the arrival of reinforcements, moved southwards to Mantua, and attempted from that point to turn the Sar- dinian flank ; he was, however, defeated on the Mincio, and Peschiera fell into the enemy's hands. Radetzky, nevertheless, was secure in the possession of Verona and Mantua; and, after being still further reinforced, he re- sumed the offensive in July, defeated the Sardinians at Cus- tozza and in several other encounters, and advanced victori- ously upon Milan, where, on 6th August, an armistice was concluded, the Sardinian army retiring behind the Ticino. During the succeeding months, while Vienna and the central provinces of the Austrian empire appeared likely to fall into anarchy, Radetzky's army remained firm in its loyalty to the old order of things, and declined to enter