Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume II.djvu/604

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584 BERTHOLD OF RATISBON rengo, concluded an armistice with Gen. Melts, was employed on several diplomatic missions, and reinstated in the war ministry till the pro- clamation of the empire. With the title of major general of the grand army, he accom- panied the emperor as chief of the general staff during all his subsequent campaigns. On Oct. 17, 1805, he negotiated with Mack the terms of the capitulation of Ulm. After the Prussian campaign of 1800 he was made sovereign prince of Neufchatel and Valengin. In 1808 he was ordered to marry the princess Elizabeth Maria of Bavaria-Birkenfeld, the king of Bavaria's niece, and was made marshal and vice consta- ble of France. In 1809 Napoleon placed him as general-in-chief at the head of the grand army destined to operate from Bavaria against Austria. He won no glory in this capacity, but again distinguished himself in the bat- tle of Wagram, which procured him one of his princely titles. He failed, however, com- pletely during the Russian campaign. After the senate had decreed the deposition of the emperor, Berthier was one of the first to pay court to Louis XVIIL, who made him a peer and captain of the royal guard. During the hundred days he wished to remain neutral, concealed from the king a letter he had re- ceived from Napoleon announcing his purpose to leave Elba, and retired to Bamberg, where, according to some, he was thrown from a win- dow of his father-in-law's palace by six men in masks, supposed to have been agents of a se- cret society ; but, according to a more probable account, he threw himself from the balcony at the sight of Russian troops marching toward France. He wrote Relation des campagnes du general Bonaparte en figypte et en Syrie (Paris, 1800), and Relation de la bataille de Marengo (1806); and his memoirs were pub- lished in 1826. His only son, NAPOLEON Louis JOSEPH ALEXANDKE CHARLES, duke and prince of Wagram, born in Paris, Sept. 11, 1810, be- came a senator in 1852, and has greatly im- proved agriculture in his vast domain of Gros- bois. lie married a daughter of Count Clary and cousin of the dowager queen of Sweden, and is the father-in-law of Prince Joachim Murat. BERTHOLD OF RATISBON, a German preach- er of the middle ages, born in that city about 1215, died there in 1272. He was a Fran- ciscan friar, and preached for many years to immense outdoor congregations in Germany, Switzerland, and Hungary. The first complete edition of his original sermons, which were singularly eloquent, was published in 1862 by Franz Pfeiffer (2 vols., Vienna), and they have been translated into modern German by Gobel, with a preface by A. Stolz. According to La- baud's Beitrage zur Geschichte des Schwaben- spiegeh (Berlin, 1861), the sermons serve also to explain this compilation of Swabian laws. BKUTIIOLLET, Clande Louis, a French chemist, born at Talloire, near Annecy, in Savoy, Nov. 9, 1748, died at Arcueil, near Paris, Nov. 6, 1822. He took his medical degree at the uni- BERTHOLLET versity of Turin, and in 1772 went to Paris, was appointed physician to the duke of Orleans, and applied himself to chemistry. He soon became known by his "Essays" on this branch of science, and in 1780 was elected a member of the academy of sciences. Some years later the duke of Orleans procured for him the office of government commissary and superintendent of dyeing processes, a position previously held by Macquer. To this appointment chemistry is indebted for his work on the theory and prac- tice of the art of dyeing, which is much supe- rior to anything of the kind ever published before. In 1785 Berthollet, at a meeting of the academy of sciences, announced his belief in the antiphlogistic doctrines propounded by Lavoisier, in opposition to the phlogistic theory then in vogue, and he was the first French chemist of celebrity who did so. He differed from Lavoisier, however, on one point: not ad- mitting oxygen to be the acidifying principle, he cited sulphuretted hydrogen as a compound possessing the properties of an acid ; and the justness of Berthollet's views has been con- firmed by the discovery of other acids into the composition of which oxygen does not enter. During the same year he discovered the com- position of ammonia, and published his first es- say on dephlogisticated marine acid, now called chlorine, proposing the use of it in the process of bleaching. During the revolutionary war, while the ports of France were blockaded, he visited almost every part of the country for the purpose of pointing out the means of obtain- ing saltpetre, and was engaged with others in teaching the processes of smelting iron and converting it into steel. In 1792 he was ap- pointed one of the commissioners of the mint, and in 1794 a member of the commission of agriculture and arts, and professor of chemistry at the polytechnic and normal schools. In 1795 he became a member of the newly organ- ized institute of France, and in the following year he was appointed by the directory to pro- ceed to Italy with Monge, to select works of art and science for the French capital. On this occasion he became acquainted with Bona- parte, and was led to join the expedition to Egypt, where he took part in the formation of the institute of Cairo. Berthollet cooperated with Lavoisier, Guyton de Morveau, and Four- croy in establishing a new and more philo- sophical system of chemical nomenclature. He was the author of more than 80 scientific papers, some of which were inserted in the memoirs of the academy, and others were printed in the Annales de chimie, Journal de physique, and the Memoires de physique et de chimie de la society d?Arcueil, so called from the place where Berthollet lived, the meetings of the society being held at his house. In some of the first memoirs published by Berthol- let on sulphuric acid, on the volatile alkali, and the decomposition of nitre, he adopted the phlogistic theory ; but subsequently, in a paper on soaps, he showed that they are chemical