Page:EB1911 - Volume 04.djvu/711

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BRUNSWICK
  

and upon the capitulation of Kloster Zeven he was easily persuaded by his uncle Ferdinand of Brunswick, who succeeded Cumberland, to continue in the war as a general officer. The exploits of the hereditary prince, as he was called, soon gained him further reputation, and he became an acknowledged master of irregular warfare. In pitched battles, and in particular at Minden and Warburg, he proved himself an excellent subordinate. After the close of the Seven Years’ War, the prince visited England with his bride, the daughter of Frederick, prince of Wales, and in 1766 he went to France, being received both by his allies and his late enemies with every token of respect. In Paris he made the acquaintance of Marmontel; in Switzerland, whither he continued his tour, that of Voltaire; and in Rome, where he remained for a long time, he explored the antiquities of the city under the guidance of Winckelmann. After a visit to Naples he returned to Paris, and thence, with his wife, to Brunswick. His services to the dukedom during the next few years were of the greatest value; with the assistance of the minister Féronce von Rotenkreuz he rescued the state from the bankruptcy into which the war had brought it. His popularity was unbounded, and when he succeeded his father, Duke Karl I., in 1780, he soon became known as a model to sovereigns. He was perhaps the best representative of the benevolent despot of the 18th century—wise, economical, prudent and kindly. His habitual caution, if it induced him on some occasions to leave reforms uncompleted, at any rate saved him from the failures which marred the efforts of so many liberal princes of his time. He strove to keep his duchy from all foreign entanglements. At the same time he continued to render important services to the king of Prussia, for whom he had fought in the Seven Years’ War; he was a Prussian field marshal, and was at pains to make the regiment of which he was colonel a model one, and he was frequently engaged in diplomatic and other state affairs. He resembled his uncle Frederick the Great in many ways, but he lacked the supreme resolution of the king, and in civil as in military affairs was prone to excessive caution. As an enthusiastic adherent of the Germanic and anti-Austrian policy of Prussia he joined the Fürstenbund, in which, as he now had the reputation of being the best soldier of his time, he was the destined commander-in-chief of the federal army.

Between 1763 and 1787 his only military service had been in the brief War of the Bavarian Succession; in the latter year, however, the Duke, as a Prussian field marshal, led the army which invaded Holland. His success was rapid, complete and almost bloodless, and in the eyes of contemporaires the campaign appeared as an example of perfect generalship. Five years later Brunswick was appointed to the command of the allied Austrian and German army assembled to invade France and crush the Revolution. In this task he knew that he must encounter more than a formal resistance. He was so far in acknowledged sympathy with French hopes of reform, that when he gave an asylum in his duchy to the “comte de Lille” (Louis XVIII.) the revolutionary government made no protest. Indeed, earlier this year (1792) he had been offered supreme command of the French army. As the king of Prussia took the field with Brunswick’s army, the duke felt bound as a soldier to treat his wishes as actual orders. (For the events of the Valmy campaign see French Revolutionary Wars). The result of Brunswick’s cautious advance on Paris was the cannonade of Valmy followed by a retreat of the allies. The following campaign of 1793 showed his perhaps at his best as a careful and exact general; even the fiery Hoche, with the “nation in arms” behind him, failed to make any impression on the veteran leader of the allies. But difficulties and disagreements at headquarters multiplied, and when Brunswick found himself unable to move or direct his army without interference from the king, he laid down his command and returned to govern his duchy. He did not, however, withdraw entirely from Prussian service, and in 1803 he carried out a successful and diplomatic mission to Russia. In 1806, at the personal request of Queen Louise of Prussia, he consented to command the Prussian army, but here again the presence of the king of Prussia and the conflicting views of numerous advisers of high rank proved fatal. At the battle of Auerstadt the old duke was mortally wounded. Carried for nearly a month in the midst of the routed Prussian army he died at last on the 10th of November 1806 at Ottensen near Hamburg.

His son and successor, Friedrich Wilhelm (1771–1815), who was one of the bitterest opponents of Napoleonic domination in Germany, took part in the war of 1809 at the head of a corps of partisans; fled to England after the battle of Wagram, and returned to Brunswick in 1813, where he raised fresh troops. He was killed at the battle of Quatre Bras on the 16th of June 1815.

See Lord Fitzmaurice, Charles W. F., duke of Brunswick (London, 1901); memoir in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, vol. ii. (Leipzig, 1882); and, for an interesting sketch of his military character, A. Chuquet, Les Guerres de la Révolution—La Première Invasion prussienne (Paris, N.D.).


BRUNSWICK, a city and the county-seat of Glynn county, Georgia, U.S.A., and a port of entry, on St Simon Sound, about 12 m. from the Atlantic Ocean, and about 100 m. S. of Savannah. Pop. (1890) 8459; (1900) 9081, of whom 5184 were of negro descent; (1910 U.S. census) 10,182. It is one of the seaports of Georgia, the Federal government having dredged a channel in the inner harbour 21 ft. deep at mean low water and a channel across the outer bar 19.3 ft. deep at mean low water—there is a rise of 7.2 ft. at high tide. St Simon Island and Jekyl Island (a winter resort of wealthy men), lying between the ocean and the mainland, protect the harbour. The city is served by the Southern, the Atlanta, Birmingham & Atlantic, and the Atlantic Coast Line railways; it is also connected by lines of steamboats with various ports along the coast, including New York and Boston. Brunswick’s growth has been retarded by the successful rivalry of other cities, notably Savannah; but it has a considerable export trade, principally in lumber, cross-ties and naval stores—its exports were valued at $13,387,838 in 1908—and various manufactories, including planing mills, cooperage works and oyster canneries. It was settled about 1772, and received a city charter in 1856.


BRUNSWICK (Ger. Braunschweig), a sovereign duchy of northern Germany, and a constituent state of the German empire, comprising three larger and six smaller portions of territory. The principal or northern part, containing the towns of Brunswick, Wolfenbüttel and Helmstedt, is situated between the Prussian provinces of Hanover and Saxony to the south-east of the former. The western part, containing Holzminden and Gandersheim, extends eastward from the river Weser to Goslar. The Blankenburg, or eastern portion, lies to the south-east of the two former, between Prussia, the duchy of Anhalt and the Prussian province of Hanover. The six small enclaves, lying in the Prussian provinces of Hanover and Saxony, are the districts Thedinghausen, Harzburg and Kalvörde, and the three demesnes of Bodenburg, Olsburg and Ostharingen. A portion of the Harz mountains was, down to 1874, common to Brunswick and Prussia (Hanover) and known as the Communion Harz. In 1874 a partition was effected, but the mines are still worked in common, four-sevenths of the revenues derived from them falling to Prussia and the remaining three-sevenths to Brunswick.

The northern portion of the duchy has its surface diversified by hill and plain; it is mostly arable and has little forest. The other two principal portions are intersected by the Harz mountains, and its spurs and the higher parts are covered with forests of fir, oak and beech. The greatest elevations are the Wurmberg (3230 ft.), and the Achtermannshöhe (3100 ft.), lying south of the Brocken. Brunswick belongs almost entirely to the basin of the river Weser, into which the Oker, the Aller and the Leine, having their sources in the Harz, discharge their waters. The climate is mild in the north, but in the hilly country raw and cold in winter, and in autumn and spring damp. The area of the duchy is 1424 sq. m., and of this total fully one-half is arable land, 10% meadow and pasture, and 33% under forest. The population in 1905 was 485,655. The religion is, in the main, that of the Lutheran Evangelical church; but there is a large Roman Catholic community centred in and round Hildesheim,