order, but his father had designed him for the bar, and an advocate accordingly he became; but, having lost the first cause which was entrusted to him, he soon abandoned law and gave himself wholly to literary pursuits. His attention was first directed to poetry; and more than once he competed for prizes of the French Academy, but never with success. He visited Paris from time to time and established intimate relations with the abbé de Saint Pierre, the abbé Vertot and the mathematician Pierre Varignon. He witnessed, in 1680, the total failure of his tragedy Aspar. Fontenelle afterwards acknowledged the justice of the public verdict by burning his unfortunate drama. His opera of Thétis et Pélée, 1689, though highly praised by Voltaire, cannot be said to rise much above the others; and it may be regarded as significant that of all his dramatic works not one has kept the stage. His Poésies pastorales (1688) have no greater claim to permanent repute, being characterized by stiffness and affectation; and the utmost that can be said for his poetry in general is that it displays much of the limae labor, great purity of diction and occasional felicity of expression.
His Lettres galantes du chevalier d’Her . . ., published anonymously in 1685, was an amusing collection of stories that immediately made its mark. In 1686 his famous allegory of Rome and Geneva, slightly disguised as the rival princesses Mreo and Eenegu, in the Relation de l’île de Bornéo, gave proof of his daring in religious matters. But it was by his Nouveaux Dialogues des morts (1683) that Fontenelle established a genuine claim to high literary rank; and that claim was enhanced three years later by the appearance of the Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes (1686), a work which was among the very first to illustrate the possibility of being scientific without being either uninteresting or unintelligible to the ordinary reader. His object was to popularize among his countrymen the astronomical theories of Descartes; and it may well be doubted if that philosopher ever ranked a more ingenious or successful expositor among his disciples.
Hitherto Fontenelle had made his home in Rouen, but in 1687 he removed to Paris; and in the same year he published his Histoire des oracles, a book which made a considerable stir in theological and philosophical circles. It consisted of two essays, the first of which was designed to prove that oracles were not given by the supernatural agency of demons, and the second that they did not cease with the birth of Christ. It excited the suspicion of the Church, and a Jesuit, by name Baltus, published a ponderous refutation of it; but the peace-loving disposition of its author impelled him to leave his opponent unanswered. To the following year (1688) belongs his Digression sur les anciens et les modernes, in which he took the modern side in the controversy then raging; his Doutes sur le système physique des causes occasionnelles (against Malebranche) appeared shortly afterwards.
In 1691 he was received into the French Academy in spite of the determined efforts of the partisans of the ancients in this quarrel, especially of Racine and Boileau, who on four previous occasions had secured his rejection. He consequently was admitted a member both of the Academy of Inscriptions and of the Academy of Sciences; and in 1697 he became perpetual secretary to the latter body. This office he actually held for the long period of forty-two years; and it was in this official capacity that he wrote the Histoire du renouvellement de l’Académie des Sciences (Paris, 3 vols., 1708, 1717, 1722) containing extracts and analyses of the proceedings, and also the éloges of the members, written with great simplicity and delicacy. Perhaps the best known of his éloges, of which there are sixty-nine in all, is that of his uncle Pierre Corneille. This was first printed in the Nouvelles de la république des lettres (January 1685) and, as Vie de Corneille, was included in all the editions of Fontenelle’s Œuvres. The other important works of Fontenelle are his Élements de la géometrie de l’infini (1727) and his Apologie des tourbillons (1752). Fontenelle forms a link between two very widely different periods of French literature, that of Corneille, Racine and Boileau on the one hand, and that of Voltaire, D’Alembert and Diderot on the other. It is not in virtue of his great age alone that this can be said of him; he actually had much in common with the beaux esprits of the 17th century, as well as with the philosophes of the 18th. But it is to the latter rather than to the former period that he properly belongs.
He has no claim to be regarded as a genius; but, as Sainte-Beuve has said, he well deserves a place “dans la classe des esprits infiniment distingués”—distinguished, however, it ought to be added by intelligence rather than by intellect, and less by the power of saying much than by the power of saying a little well. In personal character he has sometimes been described as having been revoltingly heartless; and it is abundantly plain that he was singularly incapable of feeling strongly the more generous emotions—a misfortune, or a fault, which revealed itself in many ways. “Il faut avoir de l’âme pour avoir du goût.” But the cynical expressions of such a man are not to be taken too literally; and the mere fact that he lived and died in the esteem of many friends suffices to show that the theoretical selfishness which he sometimes professed cannot have been consistently and at all times carried into practice.
There have been several collective editions of Fontenelle’s works, the first being printed in 3 vols. at the Hague in 1728–1729. The best is that of Paris, in 8 vols. 8vo, 1790. Some of his separate works have been very frequently reprinted and also translated. The Pluralité des mondes was translated into modern Greek in 1794. Sainte-Beuve has an interesting essay on Fontenelle, with several useful references, in the Causeries du lundi, vol. iii. See also Villemain, Tableau de la littérature française au XVIIIe siècle; the abbé Trublet, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de la vie et des ouvrages de M. de Fontenelle (1759); A. Laborde-Milaà, Fontenelle (1905), in the “Grands écrivains français” series; and L. Maigron, Fontenelle, l’homme, l’œuvre, l’influence (Paris, 1906).
FONTENOY, a village of Belgium, in the province of Hennegau,
about 4 m. S.E. of Tournai, famous as the scene of the battle of
Fontenoy, in which on the 11th of May 1745 the French army
under Marshal Saxe defeated the Anglo-Allied army under the
duke of Cumberland. The object of the French (see also
Austrian Succession, War of the) was to cover the siege
of the then important fortress of Tournai, that of the Allies,
who slowly advanced from the east, to relieve it. Informed
of the impending attack, Louis XV., with the dauphin, came
with all speed to witness the operations, and by his presence to
give Saxe, who was in bad health and beset with private enemies,
the support necessary to enable him to command effectively.
Under Cumberland served the Austrian field-marshal Königsegg,
and, at the head of the Dutch contingent, the prince of Waldeck.
The right of the French position (see map) rested on the river at Antoing, which village was fortified and garrisoned, between Antoing and Fontenoy three square redoubts were constructed, and Fontenoy itself was put in a complete state of defence. On the left rear of this line, and separated from Fontenoy by some furlongs of open ground, another redoubt was made at the corner of the wood of Barry and a fifth towards Gavrain. The infantry was arrayed in deployed lines behind the Antoing-Fontenoy redoubts and the low ridge between Fontenoy and the wood; behind them was the cavalry. The approaches to Gavrain were guarded by a mounted volunteer corps called Grassins. At Calonne the marshal had constructed three military bridges against the contingency of a forced retreat. The force of the French was about 60,000 of all arms, not including 22,000 left in the lines before Tournai. Marshal Saxe himself, who was suffering from dropsy to such an extent that he was unable to mount his horse, slept in a wicker chariot in the midst of the troops. At early dawn of the 11th of May, the Anglo-Hanoverian army with the Austrian contingent formed up in front of Vézon, facing towards Fontenoy and the wood, while the Dutch on their left extended the general line to Péronne. The total force was 46,000, against about 52,000 whom Saxe could actually put into the line of battle.
The plan of attack arranged by Cumberland, Königsegg and Waldeck on the 10th grew out of circumstances. A preliminary skirmish had cleared the broken ground immediately about Vézon and revealed a part of the defender’s dispositions. It was resolved that the Dutch should attack the front Antoing-Fontenoy,
