Brest on the 3rd of June. Its safe arrival went far to console the French for their defeat. The failure to stop it was forgotten in England in the pleasure given by the victory.
See James’s Naval History, vol. i. (1837); and Tronde, Batailles navales de la France (1867). (D. H.)
FIRTH, CHARLES HARDING (1857–), British historian,
was born at Sheffield on the 16th of March 1857, and was educated
at Clifton College and at Balliol College, Oxford. At his university
he took the Stanhope prize for an essay on the marquess
Wellesley in 1877, became lecturer at Pembroke College in 1887,
and fellow of All Souls College in 1901. He was Ford’s lecturer
in English history in 1900, and became regius professor of
modern history at Oxford in succession to F. York Powell in
1904. Firth’s historical work was almost entirely confined to
English history during the time of the Great Civil War and the
Commonwealth; and although he is somewhat overshadowed
by S. R. Gardiner, a worker in the same field, his books are of
great value to students of this period. The chief of them are:
Life of the Duke of Newcastle (1886); Scotland and the Commonwealth (1895); Scotland and the Protectorate (1899); Narrative of General Venables (1900); Oliver Cromwell (1900); Cromwell’s Army (1902); and the standard edition of Ludlow’s Memoirs (1894). He also edited the Clarke Papers (1891–1901), and Mrs Hutchinson’s Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson (1885), and wrote an introduction to the Stuart Tracts (1903), besides contributions to the Dictionary of National Biography. In 1909 he published The Last Years of the Protectorate.
FIRTH, MARK (1819–1880), English steel manufacturer and
philanthropist, was born at Sheffield on the 25th of April 1819,
the son of a steel smelter. At the age of fourteen Mark, with his
brother, left school to join their father in the foundry where he
was employed, and ten years later the three together started a
six-hole furnace of their own. The venture proved successful,
and besides an extensive home business, they soon established
a large American connexion. Their huge Norfolk works were
erected at Sheffield in 1849, and still greater were afterwards
acquired at Whittington in Derbyshire and others at Clay Wheels
near Wadsley. The manufacture of steel blocks for ordnance
was the principal feature of their business, and they produced
also shot and heavy forgings. They also installed a plant
for the production of steel cores for heavy guns, and for some
time they supplied nearly all the metal used for gun making
by the British government and a large proportion of that used
by the French. On the death of his father in 1848 Mark Firth
became the head of the firm. In 1869 he built and endowed
“Mark Firth’s Almshouses” at Ranmoor near Sheffield, and in
1875, when mayor, he presented to his native place a freehold
park of thirty-six acres. He founded and endowed Firth College,
for lectures and classes in connexion with the extension of
university education, which was opened in 1879. He died on the
28th of November 1880, and was accorded a public funeral.
FIRŪZABAD, a town of Persia, in the province of Fars, 72 m.
S. of Shiraz, in 28° 51′ N. Pop. about 3000. It is situated
in a fertile plain, 15 m. long and 7 m. broad, well watered by
the river Khoja which flows through it from north to south.
The town is surrounded by a mud wall and ditch. Three or four
miles north-west of the town are the ruins of the ancient city
and of a large building popularly known as the fire-temple of
Ardashir, and beyond them on the face of the rock in the gorge
through which the river enters the plain are two Sassanian
bas-reliefs.
The river leaves the plain by a narrow gorge at the southern end, and according to Persian history it was there that Alexander the Great, when unable to capture the ancient city, built a dike across the gorge, thus damming up the water of the river and turning the plain into a lake and submerging the city and villages. The lake remained until the beginning of the 3rd century, when Ardashir, the first Sassanian monarch, drained it by destroying the dike. He built a new city, called it Gūr, and made it the capital of one of the five great provinces or divisions of Fars. Firuz (or Peroz, q.v.), one of Ardashir’s successors, called the district after his name Firūzabad (“the abode of Firuz”), but the name of the city remained Gūr until Azud ed Dowleh (Adod addaula) (949–982) changed it to its present name. He did this because he frequently resided at Gūr, and the name meaning also “a grave” gave rise to unpleasant allusions, for instance, “People who go to Gūr (grave) never return alive; our king goes to Gūr (the town) several times a year and is not dead yet.”
The district has twenty villages and produces much wheat and rice. It is said that the rice of Firūzabad bears sixty-fold. (A. H.-S.)
FIRŪZKŪH, a small province of Persia, with a population of about 5000, paying a yearly revenue of about £500. Its chief
place is a village of the same name picturesquely situated in a
valley of the Elburz, about 90 m. east of Teheran, at an elevation
of 6700 ft. and in 35° 46′ N. and 52° 48′ E. It has post and
telegraph offices and a population of 2500. A precipitous cliff
on the eastern side of the valley is surmounted by the ruins of an
ancient fort popularly ascribed to Alexander the Great.
FISCHART, JOHANN (c. 1545–1591), German satirist and publicist, was born, probably at Strassburg (but according to some accounts at Mainz), in or about the year 1545, and was educated at Worms in the house of Kaspar Scheid, whom in the preface to his Eulenspiegel he mentions as his “cousin and preceptor.” He appears to have travelled in Italy, the Netherlands, France and England, and on his return to have taken the degree of doctor juris at Basel. From 1575 to 1581, within which period most of his works were written, he lived with, and was probably associated in the business of, his sister’s husband, Bernhard Jobin, a printer at Strassburg, who published many of his books. In 1581 Fischart was attached, as advocate to the Reichskammergericht (imperial court of appeal) at Spires, and in 1583, when he married, was appointed Amtmann (magistrate) at Forbach near Saarbrücken. Here he died in the winter of 1590–1591. Fischart wrote under various feigned names, such as Mentzer, Menzer, Reznem, Huldrich Elloposkleros, Jesuwalt Pickhart, Winhold Alkofribas Wüstblutus, Ulrich Mansehr von Treubach, and Im Fischen Gilt’s Mischen; and it is partly owing to this fact that there is doubt whether some of the works attributed to him are really his. More than 50 satirical works, however, both in prose and verse, remain authentic, among which are—Nachtrab oder Nebelkräh (1570), a satire against one Jakob Rabe, who had become a convert to the Roman Catholic Church; Von St Dominici des Predigermönchs und St Francisci Barfüssers artlichem Leben (1571), a poem with the expressive motto “Sie haben Nasen und riechen’s nit” (Ye have noses and smell it not), written to defend the Protestants against certain wicked accusations, one of which was that Luther held communion with the devil; Eulenspiegel Reimensweis (written 1571, published 1572); Aller Praktik Grossmutter (1572), after Rabelais’s Prognostication Pantagrueline; Flöh Haz, Weiber Traz (1573), in which he describes a battle between fleas and women; Affentheuerliche und ungeheuerliche Geschichtschrift vom Leben, Rhaten und Thaten der . . . Helden und Herren Grandgusier Gargantoa und Pantagruel, also after Rabelais (1575, and again under the modified title, Naupengeheurliche Geschichtklitterung, 1577); Neue künstliche Figuren biblischer Historien (1576); Anmahnung zur christlichen Kinderzucht (1576); Das glückhafft Schiff von Zürich (1576, republished 1828, with an introduction by the poet Ludwig Uhland), a poem commemorating the adventure of a company of Zürich arquebusiers, who sailed from their native town to Strassburg in one day, and brought, as a proof of this feat, a kettleful of Hirsebrei (millet), which had been cooked in Zürich, still warm into Strassburg, and intended to illustrate the proverb “perseverance overcomes all difficulties”; Podagrammisch Trostbüchlein (1577); Philosophisch Ehzuchtbüchlein (1578); the celebrated Bienenkorb des heiligen römischen Immenschwarms, &c., a modification of the Dutch De roomsche Byen-Korf, by Philipp Marnix of St Aldegonde, published in 1579 and reprinted in 1847; Der heilig Brotkorb (1580), after Calvin’s Traité des reliques; Das vierhörnige Jesuiterhütlein, a rhymed satire against the Jesuits (1580); and a number of smaller poems.
