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 DIESKAU DIET 99 is in the mixed Gothic-Saracenic style. There is a commercial court, a chamber of commerce, and a school of navigation. Dieppe is well supplied with water by an aqueduct 3 m. long, cut in the solid rock, and has 08 public and nu- merous private fountains. The port, enclosed by two jetties, is spacious and secure, with a basin of sufficient depth for vessels of 1,200 tons, but the entrance is difficult. It has two suburbs, La Barre and Le Pollet, and is pro- tected by an old castle and by some batteries. Its manufactories of ivory are famous; and there are also sugar refineries, rope walks, paper mills, and ship yards. The manufacture of tobacco employs 1,200 hands. Fishing, however, occupies the attention of the greater portion of the inhabitants ; from two oyster beds near the town about 12,000,000 oysters are annually sent to Paris. Dieppe is con- nected with Rouen, Paris, and Havre by rail, and by steamer with Newhaven, near Brigh- ton, England. Its sea baths, with its pure air and picturesque situation, have made it the chief watering place of France. The princi- pal bathing establishment combines reception rooms, ball, concert, and billiard rooms, and literary, social, and convivial saloons. In the early part of this century it became, under the patronage of the duchess de Berry, the ren- dezvous during the summer of the noblest families of France. Dieppe was founded in the 10th century, and in less than four centu- ries it had become the rival of Rouen. It was bombarded by the English and Dutch in 1694. It was the first maritime town of France occu- pied by the Germans in the war of 1870. DIESKAU, Ludwig August, a German soldier in the French service, born in Saxony in 1701, died near Paris, Sept. 8, 1767. He was adjutant of Marshal Saxe, in whose interest he visited St. Petersburg in J. 741. He accompanied him in the campaigns against the Netherlands, and became in 1748 brigadier general of infantry, and commander of Brest. In 1755 he was sent to Canada, at the head of French troops, to assist in the campaign against the English. With 600 Indians, as many Canadians, and 200 regular troops, he ascended Lake Champlain with the design of attacking Fort Edward. On Sept. 8 he defeated a detachment under Col. Williams, which had been sent against him, and pursued them to the British camp. The savages, however, halted just without the intrenchments, the Canadians became alarmed, and the regulars perished before the fire of New England marksmen. Dieskau, thrice wounded, refused to retire from the field, and seated himself on the stump of a tree, exposed to the shower of bullets. He was severely wounded by a random shot, and was kept a prisoner till 1763, when he returned to France, receiving a pension. DIESTERWEG, Friedrich Adolf Wilhelm, a Ger- man teacher and writer on education, born at Siegen, Oct. 29, 1790, died in Berlin, July 7, 1866. He studied at the academy of Herborn and the university of Tubingen, and subse- quently taught in various normal and Latin schools till 1832, when he was appointed di- rector of the seminary for teachers of city schools in Berlin. He retired in 1850. He is the author of numerous text books on mathe- matics and geography, and of several manuals for teachers, which have passed through many editions. He advocated the theories of Rous- seau, Pestalozzi, and modern liberalism in gen- eral, and was constantly engaged in .polemics on school reform, which he published in his Pada- gogiscJies Jahrbuch (Berlin, 1851-'65), and other periodicals. His biography has been written by Langenberg (3 vols., Berlin, 1867-'8). DIEST, a town and fortress of Belgium, in the province of South Brabant, situated on the Demer, and on the railway from Antwerp to Li6ge, 32 m. N. E. of Brussels ; pop. in 1866, 7,561. It has a college, several brew- eries, and flourishing manufactories of hosiery and woollens. Its only remarkable building is the church of St. Sulpicius. Its beer is cele- brated, and large quantities are exported. Marlborough captured the town in 1705, but in the same year the French retook it and dis- mantled the fortifications. DIET (Fr. diete), a term applied to several political bodies of mediaeval and modern Eu- rope, corresponding to the parliament in Great Britain, the cortes in Spain and Portugal, the states general, national assembly, and chambers in the history of France, and the congress in the United States. The derivation of the term from the Latin dies, day, as meaning a day fixed for the national deliberations on public affairs, is proved by the corresponding words in German (Reichstag), Dutch (Rijlcsdag), Swedish (Riksdag), and Danish (Rigsdag), all of which mean day of the empire ; and by the similar Swiss term for the Helvetian diet (Tag- satzung). It is used by English and French historians of the state assemblies of the Ger- man empire and confederation, Poland, Hun- gary, Sweden, Switzerland, and some other countries, to which the Germans apply the distinctive appellations of Reichstag, Landtag, Landstdnde, Bundestag, Tagsatzung, &c. The diet of the German empire, which must not be confounded with the popular assemblies of the Germanic nations in the Carlovingian times, or with the assembly (Bundestag) of the German confederation as established by the congress of Vienna, had its rise after the dissolution of the Frankish empire, and was slowly developed under the successive German houses, undergo- ing material changes, particularly in the reigns of the emperor Charles IV. in the 14th cen- tury, Frederick III. in the 15th, and Charles V. in the 16th, until it received its ultimate modi- fications by the treaty of Westphalia in 1648, and the session of Ratisbon in 1663. From this date down to the dissolution of the em- pire in 1806, Ratisbon became its permanent seat, while in previous times the emperor had the privilege of choosing the place of its ses-