Charleston was founded about 1680 by English colonists who had come over with William Sayle. As early as 1670 they had settled a few miles distant from the site of the present city at a place which they named Charleston. The new village soon began to flourish, while the original settlement dwindled away and disappeared. During the revolutionary war two unsuccessful attempts were made by the British forces to take Charleston,—the first by Sir Peter Parker and Sir Henry Clinton in 1776, and the second by General Prevost in 1779. After a siege of several weeks, the city was taken in May 1780 by a force under Sir Henry Clinton, but it was evacuated by the British in December 1782. In the recent civil war between the Northern and the Southern States Charleston was the scene of the first hostilities, which commenced April 12, 1861, with the bombardment of Fort Sumter by the Confederate General Beauregard. After the surrender of the Fort the Confederates took possession of the city, and held it until February 1865. In April 1863 a naval attack was made upon the fortifications in the harbour by a Federal fleet of nine iron-clads commanded by Admiral Du Pont. This effort, however, proved unsuccessful, as was also a land attack made by General Gillmore in July ensuing. The advance of General Sherman's army through South Carolina, and the fall of Columbia, the capital of the State, led to the evacuation of Charleston by the Confederates on the 17th of February 1865. The public buildings, cotton warehouses, stores, shipping, &c., had previously been fired by order of the general in command. From this and other causes the city suffered much injury during the war; but since its close many new buildings have been erected, and there has been marked commercial and industrial progress.
CHARLESTOWN, formerly a separate city of the United States, in Middlesex county, Massachusetts, but since 1874 incorporated with the city of Boston, with which it had long before been in many respects practically one. It was founded in 1628 or 1629, and soon rose into importance. The most remarkable event in its history is its almost complete destruction in 1775 during the revolutionary war. Its population in 1800 was 2751, which at the time of its incorporation with Boston had increased to 32,040. See Boston.
CHARLET, Nicolas Toussaint, a designer and painter, more especially of military subjects, was born in Paris on 20th December 1792, and died there on 30th October 1845, He was the son of a dragoon in the Republican army, whose death in the ranks left the widow and orphan in very poor circumstances. Madame Charlet, however, a woman of determined spirit and an extreme Napoleonist, managed to give her boy a moderate education at the Lycée Napoléon, and was repaid by his lifelong affection. His first employment was in a Parisian mairie, where he had to register recruits: he served in the National Guard in 1814, fought bravely at the Barriers de Clichy, and, being thus unacceptable to the Bourbon party, was dismissed from the mairie in 1816. He then, having from a very early age had a propensity for drawing, entered the atelier of the distinguished painter Baron Gros, and soon began issuing the first of those lithographed designs which eventually brought him renown. His Grenadier de Waterloo, with the motto “La Garde meurt et ne se rend pas” (a famous phrase which has got attributed to Cambronne, but which he never uttered, and which cannot, perhaps, be traced farther than to this lithograph by Charlet), was particularly popular. It was only towards 1822, however, that he began to be successful in a professional sense. Lithographs (about 2000 altogether), water-colours, sepia-drawings, numerous oil sketches, and a few etchings followed one another rapidly; there were also three exhibited oil pictures, the first of which was especially admired—Episode in the Campaign of Russia (1836), the Passage of the Rhine by Moreau (1837), Wounded Soldiers Halting in a Ravine (1843). Besides the military subjects in which he peculiarly delighted, and which found an energetic response in the popular heart, and kept alive a feeling of regret for the recent past of the French nation and discontent with the present—a feeling which increased upon the artist himself towards the close of his career,—Charlet designed many subjects of town life and peasant life, the ways of children, &c., with much wit and whim in the descriptive mottoes. One of the most famous sets is the Vie Civile, Politique, et Militaire du Caporal Valentin, 50 lithographs, dating from 1838 to 1842. In 1838 his health began to fail, owing to an affection of the chest. Charlet was an uncommonly tall man, with an expressive face, bantering and good natured; his character corresponded, full of boyish fun and high spirits, with manly independence, and a vein of religious feeling, and he was a hearty favourite among his intimates, one of whom was the celebrated painter Géricault. Charlet married in 1824, and two sons survived him. A life of him was published in 1856 by a military friend, De la Combe.
CHARLEVILLE, a handsome and well-built town of France, on the left bank of the Meuse, in the department of Ardennes, about one mile north of Mézieres, with which it is connected by a suspension bridge. Since the end of the 17th century it has become a thriving place, with manufactures of nails, hardware, and firearms, and an active export trade in wine, spirits, coal, iron, and slates. It has tribunals of primary instance and commerce, a commodious port, a theatre, a large public library, and a cabinet of natural history. The royal manufactory of arms formerly established here was transferred to Tulle and Chatellerault. Charleville was founded by Charles of Gonzagua, eighth duke of Mantua, in 1606, and continued in the possession of his family till 1708. Its fortifications were dismantled in 1687; and in 1815 it was plundered by the Prussians. Louis Dufour, the abbé of Longuerue, was born in the town. Population in 1872, 12,059.
CHARLEVOIX, Pierre François Xavier de (1682–1761), a French Jesuit traveller and historian, was born at St Quentin in 1682. At the age of sixteen he entered the society of the Jesuits; and, at the age of twenty-three, was sent to Canada, where he remained for four years. He afterwards became professor of belles lettres at home; and travelled on the errands of his society in various countries. In 1720 he visited America for two years, in order to collect materials for his Histoire de la Nouvelle-France, which appeared in 1744. He also wrote Histoire de Paraguay (1706), Historie de Saint Domingue (1730), Histoire du Japan, a compilation chiefly from Kämpfer (Rouen, 1715); and he was one of the directors of the Journal de Trévoux.
