Page:EB1911 - Volume 21.djvu/607

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PICENE—PICHEGRU
581

down by the duke, but neither he nor Gallas, the new lieutenant general of the emperor, possessed the capacity for carrying it out, and the war dragged on year after year. Piccolomini was in 1635 allied with a Spanish army, and bitterly complained that their sloth and caution marred every scheme that he formed In 1638 he was made a count of the empire, and in 1639, having been fortunate enough to win a great victory over the French (relief of Thionville, July 7, 1659), he was rewarded with the office of privy councillor from the emperor and with the dukedom of Amalfi from the king of Spain. But instead of being appointed, as he hoped, Gallas’s successor, he was called in to act as ad latus to the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, with whom he was defeated in the second battle of Breitenfeld in 1642. After this he spent some years in the Spanish service and received as his reward the title of grandee and the order of the Golden Fleece. Some years later, hai ing re-entered the Imperial army, he was again disappointed of the chief command by the selection of the brave veteran Peter Melander, Count Holzapfel. But when in 1648 Melander fell in battle at Zusmarshausen, Piccolomini was at last appointed lieutenant-general of the emperor, and thus conducted as generalissimo the final campaign of the weary and desultory Thirty Years’ War Three days after the commission for executing the peace had finished its labours, the emperor addressed a letter of thanks “to the Prince Piccolomini,” and awarded him a gift of 114,566 gulden Piccolomini died on the 11th of August 1656. He left no children (his only son Josef Silvio, the “Max” of Schiller’s Wallenstein, was murdered by the Swedes after the battle of Jankau in 164 5), and his titles and estates passed to his brother's son. With the death of the latter's nephew Octavio Aeneas Josef in 1757, the line became extinct


PICENE, C22H14, a hydrocarbon found in the pitchy residue obtained in the distillation of peat-tar and of petroleum. This is distilled to dryness and the distillate repeatedly recrystallized from cymene It may be synthetically prepared by the action of anhydrous aluminium chloride on a mixture of naphthalene and ethylene dibromide (R. Lespieau, Bull. soc. chim., 1891, (3), 6, p. 238), or by distilling α-dinaphthostilbene (T. Hirn, Ber., 1800, 32, p. 3341). It crystallizes in large colourless plates which possess a blue fluorescence It is soluble in concentrated sulphuric acid with a green colour. Chromic acid in glacial acetic acid solution oxidizes it to picene-quinone, picene-quinone carboxylic acid, and finally to phthalic acid. When heated with hydriodic acid and phosphorus it forms hydrides of composition C22H34 and C22H36 (see F. Bamberger and F.D. Chattaway, Ann., 1805, 284, p. 61).


PICENUM, a district of ancient Italy, situated between the Apennines and the Adriatic, bounded N. by the Senones and S. by the Vestini. The inhabitants were, according to tradition, an offshoot of the Sabines. Strabo (v. 4, 1) gives the story of their migration, led by a woodpecker (picus), a bird sacred to Mars, from which they derived their name Picentini (cf. Dion Hal. i. 14, 5), just as the Hirpini derived theirs from hirpus, a wolf. The district was conquered by the Romans early in the 3rd century B.C. and the whole territory was divided up among Latin-speaking settlers by the Lex Flaminia in 232 B.C. Hence we have very scanty records of any non-Latin Language that may have been spoken in the district before the 3rd century. Besides the problematic inscriptions from Belmonte, Nereto and Cupra Maritima (see Sabellic), we have one or two Latin inscriptions (probably of the 2nd or even the 1st century B.C.) which contain certain forms showing a distinct affinity with the dialect of Iguvium (cf. the name Paśdi=Latin Pacidii). Hence there seems some ground for believing that the population which the Romans dispossessed, or held in subjection, really spoke a dialect very much like that of their neighbours in Umbria.

For inscriptions, see R. S. Conway, The Italic Dialects, p. 449, where the place-names and personal names of the district will also be found, see further, Livy, Epit. xv.; B. V. Head, Historia numorum, p. 19.  (R. S. C.) 

It was in Picenum, at Asculum, that the Social War broke out in 90 B.C. At the end of the war the district became connected with Pompeius Strabo, and his son Pompey the Great threw into the scale on the side of Sulla, in 83 B.C., all the influence he possessed there, and hoped to make it a base against Caesar's legions in 49 B.C. Under Augustus it formed the fifth region of Italy, and included twenty-three independent communities, of which five, Ancona, Firmum, Asculum, Hadria and Interamnia, were coloniae. It was reached from Rome by the Via Salaria, and its branch the Via Caecilia. It was also on a branch leading from the Via Flaminia at Nuceria Camellaria to Septempeda There were also communications from north to south, a road led from Asculum to Urbs Salvia and Ancona, another from Asculum and Firmum and the coast, another from Urbs Salvia to Potentia, while finally along the whole line of the coast there ran a prolongation of the Via Flaminia, the name of which is not known to us.

At the end of the 2nd century A.D. the north-eastern portion of Umbria was divided from the rest and acquired the name Flaminia, from the high road. For the time it remained united with Umbria for administrative purposes, but passed to Picenum at latest in the time of Constantine, and acquired the name of Flaminia et Picenum Annonarium, the main portion of Picenum being distinguished as Suburbicarium. In an inscription of A.D. 309 Ravenna is actually spoken of as the chief town of Picenum. When the exarchate of Ravenna was founded the part of Picenum Annonarium near the sea became the Pentapolis Maritima, which included the five cities of Ariminum, Pisaurum, Fanum Fortunae, Sena Gallica and Ancona. The exarchate was seized by Luitprand in 727, and Ravenna itself was taken by Aistulf in 752. In the next year, however, the Emperor Pippin took it from him and handed it over to the pope, a grant confirmed by his son Charlemagne.  (T. As.) 


PICHEGRU, CHARLES (1761-1804), French general, was born at Arbois, or, according to Charles Nodier, at Les Planches, near Lons-le-Saulnier, on the 16th of February 176 1. His father was a labourer, but the friars of Arbois gave the boy a good education, and one of his masters, the Père Partault, took him to the military school of Brienne. In 1783 he entered the first regiment of artillery, where he rapidly rose to the rank of adjutant-sub-lieutenant. When the Revolution began he became leader of the Jacobin party in Besançon, and when a regiment of volunteers of the department of the Gard marched through the city he was elected lieutenant-colonel. The fine condition of his regiment was soon remarked in the ar1ny of the Rhine, and his organizing ability was made use of by an appointment on the staff, and finally by his promotion to the rank of general of brigade. In 1793 Carnot and Saint Just were sent to find roturier generals who could be successful, C arnot discovered Jourdan, and Saint just discovered Hoche and Pichegru. In co-operation with Hoche and the army of the Moselle, Pichegru, now general of division and in command of the army of the Rhine, had to reconquer Alsace and to reorganize the disheartened troops of the republic. They succeeded, Pichegru made use of the élan of his soldiers to win innumerable small engagements, and with Hoche forced the lines of Haguenau and relieved Landau. In December 1793 Hoche was arrested, it is said owing in part to his colleague's machinations, and Pichegru became commander-in-chief of the army of the Rhine-and Moselle, whence he was summoned to succeed Jourdan in the army of the North in February 1794. It was now that he fought his three great campaigns of one year. The English and Austrians held a strong position along the Sambre to the sea. After vainly attempting to break the Austrian centre, Pichegru suddenly turned their left, and defeated Clerfayt at Cassel, Menin and Courtrai, while Moreau, his second in command, defeated Coburg at Tourcoing in May 1794; then after a pause, during which Pichegru feigned to besiege Ypres, he again dashed at Clerfayt and defeated him at Rousselaer and Hooglede, while Jourdan came up with the new army of the Sambre-and-Meuse, and utterly routed the Austrians at Fleurus on the 27th of June 1794. Pichegru began his second campaign by crossing the Meuse on the 18th of October, and after taking Nijmwegen drove the Austrians beyond the Rhine. Then, instead of going into winter-quarters, he prepared his army for a winter