from this mission, he pronounced an eloquent discourse in favour of the republic. His simple manners, easy speech, ardent temperament and irreproachable private life gave him great influence in Paris, and he was elected president of the Commune, defending the municipality in that capacity at the bar of the Convention on the 31st of October 1792. Re-elected in the municipal elections of the 2nd of December 1792, he was soon charged with the functions of procurator of the Commune, and contributed with success to the enrolments of volunteers by his appeals to the populace. Chaumette was one of the ringleaders in the attacks of the 31st of May and of the 2nd of June 1793 on the Girondists, toward whom he showed himself relentless. He demanded the formation of a revolutionary army, and preached the extermination of all traitors. He was one of the promoters of the worship of Reason, and on the 10th of November 1793 he presented the goddess to the Convention in the guise of an actress. On the 23rd of the same month he obtained a decree closing all the churches of Paris, and placing the priests under strict surveillance; but on the 25th he retraced his steps and obtained from the Commune the free exercise of worship. He wished to save the Hébertists by a new insurrection and struggled against Robespierre; but a revolutionary decree promulgated by the Commune on his demand was overthrown by the Convention. Robespierre had him accused with the Hébertists; he was arrested, imprisoned in the Luxembourg, condemned by the Revolutionary tribunal and executed on the 13th of April 1794. Chaumette’s career had its brighter side. He was an ardent social reformer; he secured the abolition of corporal punishment in the schools, the suppression of lotteries, of houses of ill-fame and of obscene literature; he instituted reforms in the hospitals, and insisted on the honours of public burial for the poor.
Chaumette left some printed speeches and fragments, and memoirs published in the Amateur d’autographes. His memoirs on the 10th of August were published by F. A. Aulard, preceded by a biographical study.
CHAUMONT-EN-BASSIGNY, a town of eastern France, capital of the department of Haute-Marne, a railway junction 163 m. E.S.E. of Paris on the main line of the Eastern railway to Belfort. Pop. (1906) 12,089. Chaumont is picturesquely situated on an eminence between the rivers Marne and Suize in the angle formed by their confluence. To the west a lofty viaduct over the Suize carries the railway. The church of St-Jean-Baptiste dates from the 13th century, the choir and lateral chapels belonging to the 15th and 16th. In the interior the sculptured triforium (15th century), the spiral staircase in the transept and a Holy Sepulchre are of interest. The lycée and the hospital have chapels of the 17th and 16th centuries respectively. The Tour Hautefeuille (a keep of the 11th century) is the principal relic of a château of the counts of Champagne; the rest of the site is occupied by the law courts. In the Place de l’Escargot stands a statue of the chemist Philippe Lebon (1767–1804), born in Haute-Marne. Chaumont is the seat of a prefect and of a court of assizes, and has tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a lycée, training colleges, and a branch of the Bank of France. The main industries are glove-making and leather-dressing. The town has trade in grain, iron, mined in the vicinity, and leather. In 1190 it received a charter from the counts of Champagne. It was here that in 1814 Great Britain, Austria, Russia and Prussia concluded the treaty (dated March 1, signed March 9) by which they severally bound themselves not to conclude a separate peace with Napoleon, and to continue the war until France should have been reduced within the boundaries of 1792.
CHAUNCEY, ISAAC (1772–1840), American naval commander, was born at Black Rock, Connecticut, on the 20th of February 1772. He was brought up in the merchant service, and entered the United States navy as a lieutenant in 1798. His first services were rendered against the Barbary pirates. During these operations, more especially at Tripoli, he greatly distinguished himself, and was voted by Congress a sword of honour, which, however, does not appear to have been given him. The most active period of his life is that of his command on the Lakes during the War of 1812. He took the command at Sackett’s Harbor on Lake Ontario in October 1812. There was at that time only one American vessel, the brig “Oneida” (16), and one armed prize, a schooner, on the lake. But Commodore Chauncey brought from 400 to 500 officers and men with him, and local resources for building being abundant, he had by November formed a squadron of ten vessels, with which he attacked the Canadian port, York, taking it in April 1813, capturing one vessel and causing the destruction of another then building. He returned to Sackett’s Harbor. In May Sir James Lucas Yeo (1732–1818) came out from England with some 500 officers and men, to organize a squadron for service on the Lakes. By the end of the month he was ready for service with a squadron of eight ships and brigs, and some small craft. The governor, Sir G. Prevost, gave him no serious support. On the 29th of May, during Chauncey’s absence at Niagara, the Americans were attacked at Sackett’s Harbor and would have been defeated if Prevost had not insisted on a retreat at the very moment when the American shipbuilding yard was in danger of being burnt, with a ship of more than eight hundred tons on the stocks. The retreat of the British force gave Chauncey time to complete this vessel, the “General Pike,” which was so far superior to anything under Yeo’s command that she was said to be equal in effective strength to the whole of the British flotilla. The American commodore was considered by many of his subordinates to have displayed excessive caution. In August he skirmished with Sir James Yeo’s small squadron of six vessels, but made little effective use of his own fourteen. Two of his schooners were upset in a squall, with the loss of all hands, and he allowed two to be cut off by Yeo. Commodore Chauncey showed a preference for relying on his long guns, and a disinclination to come to close quarters. He was described as chasing the British squadron all round the lake, but his encounters did not go beyond artillery duels at long range, and he allowed his enemy to continue in existence long after he might have been destroyed. The winter suspended operations, and both sides made exertions to increase their forces. The Americans had the advantage of commanding greater resources for shipbuilding. Sir James Yeo began by blockading Sackett’s Harbor in the early part of 1814, but when the American squadron was ready he was compelled to retire by the disparity of the forces. The American commodore was now able to blockade the British flotilla at Kingston. When the cruising season of the lake was nearly over he in his turn retired to Sackett’s Harbor, and did not leave it for the rest of the war. During his later years he served as commissioner of the navy, and was president of the board of naval commissioners from 1833 till his death at Washington on the 27th of February 1840.
See Roosevelt’s War of 1812 (1882); and A. T. Mahan, Sea-Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 (1905).
CHAUNCY, CHARLES (1592–1672), president of Harvard College, was born at Yardley-Bury, Hertfordshire, England, in November 1592, and was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow. He was in turn vicar at Ware, Hertfordshire (1627–1633), and at Marston St Lawrence, Northamptonshire (1633–1637). Refusing to observe the ecclesiastical regulations of Archbishop Laud, he was brought before the court of high commission in 1629, and again in 1634, when, for opposing the placing of a rail around the communion table, he was suspended and imprisoned. His formal recantation in February 1637 caused him lasting self-reproach and humiliation. In 1637 he emigrated to America, and from 1638 until 1641 was an associate pastor at Plymouth, where, however, his advocacy of the baptism of infants by immersion caused dissatisfaction. He was the pastor at Scituate, Massachusetts, from 1641 until 1654, and from 1654 until his death was president of Harvard College, as the successor of the first president Henry Dunster (c. 1612–1659). He died on the 19th of February 1672. By his sermons and his writings he exerted a great influence in colonial Massachusetts, and according to Mather was “a most incomparable scholar.” His writings include: The Plain Doctrine of the Justification of a Sinner in the Sight of God (1659) and Antisynodalia Scripta Americana (1662). His son, Isaac
