comparatively numerous, and those of Giacomo are scarce, it is evident that many of the pictures of the son pass as the works of the father. Giacomo died in 1557.—Francia's second son, Giulio, was also a painter, but he is only known as the assistant of his brother. The date of Francia's death, formerly a matter of great dispute, was discovered in the diary of a Bolognese goldsmith of the name of Cristoforo Saraceni, where it is written against the 6th January, 1517 (which is really 1518, as the Italians for the most part commenced their year with the 25th March), "A dì 6 Gennaro morì Francesco Francia orefice, e pittore eccellente," Another old chronicle speaks of Francia as having been very handsome, "Bellissimo di persona."—(Vasari, Vite, &c.; Calvi, Memorie di Francesco Raibolini.)—R. N. W.
FRANCIA, Jozè Gaspard Rodrigo, commonly called Dr. Francia, the renowned dictator of Paraguay, was born at Assumption, the capital of that province, in the year 1757. He was educated, first in his native city, and then at the university founded by the Franciscans at Cordova del Tucuman in La Plata, for the ecclesiastical state, and took the degree of doctor of theology. But his studies in the canon law gave him a taste for jurisprudence, and decided him upon changing his profession for that of an advocate. As a lawyer, he became distinguished for his integrity and disinterestedness, and when elevated to the position of alcalde of his native city, he discharged the duties of a judge with inflexible equity. Paraguay was the first among the South American colonies to shake off the feeble grasp of Spain. By a revolution which took place in 1811, the Spanish governor Velasco was deposed, and a junta of government appointed, consisting of the president Don Fulgentio Yegros, and two assessors, with Dr. Francia as secretary. Ignorant and pleasure-loving, the president and the assessors drew their pay and enjoyed themselves, and did as little work as possible. Francia, who was the best educated man in the country, who possessed a library of three hundred volumes—the largest in Paraguay—and something more than a smattering in physical science, did all the work of government, and with intense but veiled ambition aimed at making himself the mainspring of the whole administration, that so, when a crisis arose, his services might appear indispensable to the state. Dissatisfied with the state of affairs, the national congress in 1813 dissolved the junta, and intrusted the government to two consuls, of whom Francia was one. In the following year he had gained such an ascendancy as to induce the congress to appoint him dictator for three years. Having thus gained his point, he proceeded to make a great change in his habits of life. He renounced utterly the licentiousness with regard to women to which he had been hitherto addicted, rose very early, lived according to the extremest rules of temperance, and distributed his time methodically between his public duties and his favourite studies. He also remodelled the army and the public departments, dismissing all officers who were likely to thwart his designs, and filling their places with creatures of his own. By these means he easily obtained a decree of congress in 1817, nominating him perpetual dictator; and he retained his seat on this perilous eminence till his death in 1840. Francia seems to have set out with a sincere intention of benefiting and civilizing his countrymen; but the corrupting effects of absolute power were not long in manifesting themselves in a nature warped by an egregious vanity, profoundly mistrustful, and unchastened by religious faith. His foreign policy consisted in isolating Paraguay to the utmost of his power from all other countries, especially from the other states of the Argentine confederation. With Brazil, as an empire, he had more fellowfeeling, and sought to establish friendly though distant relations. For everything French he had an exaggerated admiration; and of his idol Napoleon he strove to imitate, not the despotism only, but even the dress. Unfortunately, the only portrait of the hero that he could procure for a long time was an absurd German caricature. This, however, according to Rengger, he took au serieux, and arrayed himself in precisely the ridiculous costume therein represented—blue coat, white waistcoat, gold shoe-buckles, &c. Of his internal administration all that can be said in praise is, that he kept Paraguay from joining in the revolutionary dance with the other Spanish-American republics, and that under his rule life and property were secure from all outrages that were not ordered by himself. This exception, however, is a large one. The cruelties which he practised during the five years from 1819 to 1824, have obtained for that period of his rule the appellation of the "reign of terror." In 1820 he put to death many Paraguayans for complicity, real or supposed, with a threatened invasion by Ramirez, the ruler of Entre Rios; and in the following year he cast three hundred Spaniards into prison upon suspicion, kept many of them there for nineteen months, and nearly ruined them all by fines before he released them. The Swiss Rengger, whose work on Francia is far preferable to the more pretentious production of the brothers Robertson—the Letters from Paraguay—states that Francia considerably improved the agriculture of his country. That at first he made some endeavours to do so seems clear; but as his tyrannical plan of isolation gradually developed itself, trade was destroyed, the products of the soil were not allowed to find an outlet, and agriculture necessarily suffered. In religion, Francia professed himself to be a deist. He told Rengger that he and his friend might profess any religion they preferred—that they might be Christians, Mahometans, pagans—"anything but atheists." He bitterly hated the Roman catholic religion which he had abandoned; and there were no topics upon which he conversed more frequently and willingly, than the loose morals of the clergy, and the superstitions of their flocks. He suppressed all the religious houses in Paraguay, and even the theological seminary; and as, either from design or inexperience, he took no steps to encourage public education, ignorance settled down upon the country more densely than ever. He waged a bloody war of extermination against the Indians of the western deserts. Succeeding to all, and more than all, the power of the jesuit fathers of Paraguay, he used it merely to harry and destroy the unhappy children of the soil. This wretched man, after having for the gratification of his diseased ambition degraded his country, and debased its people far below the level at which he found them, died at the advanced age of eighty-four, in the year 1840.—T. A.
FRANCIABIGIO, Marcantonio, was born at Florence in 1483, studied under Albertinelli, and was the friend and companion of Andrea del Sarto, whose unfinished works in the Scalzo at Florence were completed by Franciabigio. The two friends painted in competition together in the court of the annunciata, where Franciabigio represented the "Marriage of the Virgin;" but as the monks uncovered his work before it was completed, the incensed painter struck the fresco several blows with a hammer, injuring the head of the Virgin, and destroying some portions. The injuries still remain as a monument of the painter's ill temper and folly. It seems that the monks tried in vain to induce him to repair the mischief, but he would not, and his brother painters dared not make the repairs. He executed some frescoes also at Poggio a Caiano, a seat of the Medici near Florence. Franciabigio died in 1524. He was distinguished for his beautiful colouring, and for his skill as a fresco painter, and he was also a successful portrait painter. Vasari extols his knowledge of anatomy and perspective, and states that he surpassed all his contemporaries as a practical fresco painter, which is one of those instances of biassed judgment in favour of his own countrymen, with which Vasari is charged by writers of other provinces of Italy.—(Vasari, Vite de' Pittori.)—R. N. W.
FRANCIS: the emperors, kings, and princes of this name are here noticed under the names of their respective countries:—
GERMANY AND AUSTRIA.
Francis I., Emperor of Germany, was born in 1708, the eldest son of Duke Leopold Joseph of Lorraine. He succeeded to the government of the duchy at the death of his father, in 1729, but was induced, six years after, to exchange his patrimony for the reversion of the crown of Tuscany, at the death of the last scion of the house of Medici. Lorraine was then given to the father-in-law of King Louis XV. of France, Stanislas Lesczinski, ex-king of Poland; and at the death of Grand-duke John Gaston, which happened soon after (July 9, 1737), Francis assumed the sovereignty of Tuscany. He had previously become acquainted with Princess Maria Theresa, sole daughter of the Emperor Charles VI. of Germany, who chose him for her husband from among a vast number of royal suitors. The marriage took place in 1736, and at the death of Charles VI., October 21, 1740, Maria Theresa became sovereign of Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia. One of her first acts was to nominate her husband, to whom she was devotedly attached, co-regent of her dominions, and commander-in-chief of the Austrian army. The throne of Germany becoming soon after vacant by the death of Charles VII., January, 1745, Maria Theresa determined to have her husband elected to the imperial dignity, and succeeded in winning the votes of all the electors except those of Branden-
