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 736 ESSEX ESTAING superiority over Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Charles Blount, the rival competitors for royal favor. He was challenged by Blount and wounded in the knee, and the queen is said to have expressed her gratification that some one had taken him in hand, as otherwise there would be no ruling him. In 1590 he married the daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham, the widow of Sir Philip Sidney, and in the follow- ing year had command of a fruitless expedition in Brittany against the Spaniards. When in 1596 alarm was excited by the hostile prepara- tions in the Spanish harbors, he was joined with Lord Admiral Howard in command of the expedition against Cadiz. The intrigues of the Cecils caused him to be coolly received on his return ; but he quickly recovered favor. Two subsequent expeditions which he con- ducted against Spanish shipping met with little success. The queen received him with re- proaches, and he retired to Wanstead; nor would he be pacified by her acknowledgment that the charges against him were unfounded, but after a long negotiation he accepted the office of hereditary earl marshal as indemnity for the promotion that had been given to his rivals. In 1598 he quarrelled with the queen about the appointment of deputy in Ireland, and when she boxed him on the ear for turning his back to her in presence of her ministers, he swore that he would not endure such an affront even from Henry VIII. himself, and withdrew from court. Only a formal reconciliation was ever effected. In 1599 the province of Ulster was in rebellion, and Essex accepted the lord- lieutenantcy of Ireland. His campaign resulted only in a temporary armistice. He returned in haste, and retired from his first audience with a cheerful countenance, but was imme- diately ordered to consider himself a prisoner in his own house. After months of hesitation, he at length conceived the plan of forcibly banishing his enemies from her majesty's coun- cil. At the head of a force of about 300 men he made his way into London, but was disappointed in expecting the people to rise in his favor ; he took refuge in Essex house, where he was besieged and forced to surrender. He was committed to the tower, tried for treason, condemned, and executed, the queen reluctantly signing the warrant. He was an accomplished scholar, and a patron of literature. He erected a monument to Spenser, gave an estate to Ba- con, and was the friend of Wotton and other men of learning. IV. Robert Devereox, son of the preceding, third earl, born in London in 1592, died there, Sept. 14, 1646. He succeeded to his title in 1603, and in his 15th year was married to Lady Frances Howard, who was a year younger. He proceeded to the university and thence to the continent, while his wife re- mained at court, and numbered Prince Henry and Rochester (afterward earl of Somerset) among her admirers. In 1613 she obtained a divorce, and was soon after married to Roches- ter. Essex led a solitary life in his country house, till in 1620 he raised a troop and served in the wars of the Netherlands. He was engaged j in several campaigns abroad, and as vice admi- ral commanded a fruitless expedition sent by England against Spain. His second marriage also resulted unhappily and in a divorce. At the outbreak of the civil war he was appointed lord general by the parliament, laid siege to Portsmouth, and was proclaimed a traitor by Charles. He fought against the king at Edge- hill (1642), captured Reading (1643), and ad- vanced into Cornwall, but met with a succes- sion of disasters which forced his army to capitulate. He escaped in a boat to Plymouth, and went to London, where a parliamentary deputation waited on him in honor of his faith- ful services. He again raised a corps, but ill health soon obliged him to quit his command. As early as 1644 he suspected Cromwell of a design to erect a new government. He there- fore urged his impeachment before the house of lords, and Cromwell took revenge by pro- posing the "self-denying ordinance," by which members of both houses were excluded from all offices, whether civil or military. This measure having passed, Essex ceased to be a parliamentary general, but for his services 10,000 per annum was voted to him out of the sequestered estates of the loyalists. The title expired with him, and was revived in 1661 in favor of Arthur, second Baron Capel, in whose family it still remains. ESSLING. See ASPERN AND ESSLING. ESSLIMEN, a town of Wtirtemberg, Germa- ny, on the Neckar, 9 m. S. E. of Stuttgart, on the Ulm railway ; pop. in 1871, 17,941. It is a place of great antiquity, and has old walls flanked with towers, and the old Berfried cas- tle. The Frauenkirche is an admirable speci- men of Gothic architecture of the 15th cen- tury, and is attended both by Protestants and Roman Catholics. The church of St. Dionysius was built in the Romanesque style in the 13th century, and enlarged in the 15th. There are several superior educational institutions, and a school for the deaf and dumb, and adjoining the town is the water-cure establishment of Ivennenburg for the relief of the insane. Ess- lingen is important for its trade and industry. The fruit market is especially renowned ; the culture of the vine is extensive, and the cele- brated Esslingen champagne is the oldest spark- ling wine in Germany. Railway locomotives are exported to many parts of the world. There are many manufactories of cloth, cotton, and woollen goods, optical and physical instruments, &c. Esslingen became a free imperial city j under the Hohenstaufen. The Swabian league was founded here in 1488. Its prosperity, in- creased after the reformation, but impaired by the thirty years' war and by intestine com- motions, has been revived since 1801, when it became part of Wurtemberg. ESTAING, Charles Hector, count d', a French naval officer, born at the chateau of Ruvel, Auvergne, in 1729, executed in Paris, April 28,