Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/23

Rh R O U B, O U 13 guinary siege ; he proposed making it one of his Continental resi- dences, but it was never completed. It was in Philip Augustus's castle that Joan of Arc was imprisoned and tried, and one of the public squares was the place where she was burned alive in 1431. From that year began a series of attempts on the part of the French to recapture the town. Ricardville in 1432 and Xaintrailles in 1436 failed in spite of the secret connivance of the inhabitants. In 1449 a stronger and better-planned expedition was successful, and Somer- set, the English commander, was obliged, in order to secure an honourable capitulation, to surrender the principal fortified places in Normandy. The English rule, though badly supported by the citizens, had not been without its influence on the prosperity of Rouen. It was then that the present church of St Ouen was con- tinued and almost completed ; the foundation was laid in 1311, but the choir alone had been constructed in the 14th century. In spite of the juxtaposition of the second and third or "radiant" and "flamboyant" styles of Gothic, the building taken altogether pre- sents in its general lines the most perfect unity a unity which even the modern addition of a faade with two bell towers has failed to mar, though no regard was had to the original plans. St Ouen is the largest church erected in France during the War of the Hundred Years ; in length (450 feet) it exceeds the cathedral. The central tower, not unlike the Butter Tower, with which it is contemporary, is 265 feet high ; the two new towers with their spires are some- what lower. Apart from its enormous dimensions and the richness of its southern portal, St Ouen has nothing that need long de- tain the visitor ; its style is cold and formal ; the interior, bare and stripped of its ancient stained glass, was further despoiled in 1562 and in 1791 of its artistic treasures and of almost all its old church-furniture. The organ dates from 1630, and the rather handsome roodscreen from the 18th century. The close of the 15th century and the first half of the 16th the reigns of Charles VIII., Louis XII., Francis I.; and Henry II., and the episcopates of Cardinal Estoutteville (1453-1483), Cardinal Georges d'Amboise (1494-1510), and his nephew of the same name (1511-50) rendered Rouen for nearly a hundred years the metropolis of art and taste in France ; and it was one of the first towns where the splendours of the Renaissance burst forth. At this time the church of St Maclou was erected, a building that can hardly be brought into comparison with the cathedral and St Ouen, but is justly cele- brated for the value and variety of its artistic treasures, such as the carved work of the principal doors, partly executed by Jean Goujon, the beautiful stained glass, and an organ-loft reached by an open-work staircase. The spire, 285 feet high, is a structure of the present century. Beside the church is the old parish ceinetery, called the Aitre of Saint Maclou, surrounded by charming Renaissance galleries and famous for its danse macabre formed by a series of sculptured groups. Other churches of the same period St Godard, St Patrice, St Vincent are no less interesting from the pro- fusion of their architectural details than from their magnificent 16th- century stained-glass windows. There are two glass windows in St Godard, and a regular collection in St Patrice ; but the latter, though the most famous, are in the eyes of connoisseurs of less worth than the stained glass in St Vincent, due to two incomparable artists of Beauvais, Engrand and Jean Le Prince. the two principal subjects treated by them being the Gifts of Mercy and the Glorification of the Virgin. St Godard contains, besides, old frescos worthy of note. The church of St Laurent, no longer used for worship, and the tower of St Andre are both of 16th-century origin. At the same period the cathedral received great embellishments, the central fleche was erected, and the portals were decorated with new sculptures. Georges d'Amboise, the virtuous minister of Louis XII., chose the chapel of the Virgin for his place of burial ; he caused his mausoleum, constructed after the plans of the architect Roland le Roux, to be composed entirely of marble, as well as his statue, which he ordered from Jean Goujon. Georges d'Amboise the second was, according to his desire, interred in his uncle's tomb, but his statue is of much less value. Near this tomb are two others erected for the lords of Breze ; both are very remarkable ; the oldest belongs to tho Gothic style ; the other, the tomb of Diana of Poitiers's husband, is a Renaissance structure of the time of Henry II., but, contrary to what was long believed, contains nothing from the hand of Jean Goujon. Under Louis XII. the archbishops of Rouen also rebuilt their palace at the side of the cathedral ; but in spite of the rich- ness of its architecture this lordly mansion cannot compete with the "palace of justice" begun in the same year, 1499, when the exchequer of Normandy, which had been established at Rouen in 1302, was erected into a parlement, though the title was not adopted till 1515. This sumptuous building is in the Gothic style; but the Hotel de Bourgtheroulde, which dates from the time of Francis I., is undisguisedly of the Renaissance, and is justly celebrated for its bas-reliefs, the subjects of which are borrowed from two quite different orders of things the allegories from Petrarch's Triumphs, and the interview of the Field of the Cloth of Gold between Henry VIII. and Francis I. Many other secular Renais- sance buildings in Rouen bear witness to the great commercial prosperity of its citizens and to their keen appreciation of the arts : numerous private houses iu stone and especially in wood ; the gate of the great clock ; and a unique structure, the " fierte " of St Romain, a sort of pulpit from which every year a person condemned to death raised before the people the shrine or fierte (feretrum) of St Romain, and then received pardon and liberty. This splendour of the arts began to decline during the wars of religion ; in 1562 the town was sacked by the Protestants, which did not prevent the League from obtaining so firm a footing there that Henry IV., after having vainly besieged it, did not obtain entrance till long after his abjuration. To the 18th century belong the exchange and the claustral buildings of the abbey of St Ouen, transformed into an hotel de ville. Much more important works have been executed in recent times, but in great part at the expense of the historic and picturesque features of the town. On the other hand, handsome structures of various kinds have been erected iu the interests of public utility or embellishment churches, civil and military establishments, fountains, statues, &c. ; and many old buildings have been carefully restored or completed. Rouen, more- over, has recently been provided with museums of antiquities, of fine arts, of ceramic art, of natural history, and of industry, the first two being very important. During the Franco-German War the city was occupied by the invaders from 5th December 1870 to 22d July 1871, and had to submit to heavy requisitions. Among the famous men born at Rouen are the brothers Corneille, Fon- tenelle, the journalists Armand Carrel and De Villemessant, the composer Boieldieu, the painters Jouvenet, Restout, and Gericault, the architect Blondel, Dulong the physicist, and La Salle the American explorer. (A. S.-P.) ROUGE. This name is applied to various colouring substances of a brilliant carmine tint, especially when used as cosmetics. The least harmful of these preparations are such as have for their basis carthamine, obtained from the safflower (Cart/iamus 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 gold and silver plate is a fine red oxide of iron prepared by calcination from sulphate of iron (green vitriol). EOUGET DE LISLE, CLAUDE JOSEPH (1760-1836), one of the most noteworthy of those authors whom a single short piece of work has made famous, was born on 10th May 1760, at Lons-le-Saunier. He entered the army as an engineer and attained the rank of captain. He wrote complimentary verses pretty early, and appears to have been a good musician. The song which has immor- talized him, the Marseillaise, was composed at Strasburg, where Rouget de Lisle was quartered in April 1792, and he is said to have composed both the words and the music in a fit of patriotic excitement after a public dinner. The piece was at first called Chant de I'armee du Rhin, and only received its name of Marseillaise from its adoption by the Provengal volunteers whom Barbaroux introduced into Paris, and who were prominent, in the storming of the Tuileries. The author himself was unfavourably affected by that very event. He was a moderate republican, and was cashiered and thrown into prison; but the counter- revolution set him at liberty. Little is recorded of his later years, and he received no pension or other mark of favour till the accession of Louis Philippe. He died at Choisy on the 26th June 1836. The Marseillaise (of which as usually given six-sevenths only are Rouget's) is so well known that no elaborate criticism of it is necessary. The extraordinarily stirring character of the air and its ingenious adaptation to the words serve to disguise the alternate poverty and bombast of the words themselves. As poetry the sixth stanza alone has much merit. Rouget de Lisle wrote a few other songs of the same kind, and set a good many of others' writing to music. He also produced a play or two and some translations. But his chief literary monument is a slender and rather rare little volume entitled Essais en Vers et en Prose (Paris, 1796). This contains the Marseillaise, a prose tale of the sentimental kind called Adelaide et Monville, and a collection of occasional poems of various styles and dates, from which the author's poetic faculty can be fairly judged. It is humble enough. Rouget was a mere follower of standard models, imitating by turns J. B. Rousseau, La Fontaine, and Voltaire, and exaggerating the artificial language of his time. In Tom ct Lucy, which turns on a romantic story of