with the Government officers, and condemned to death, but his mother s entreaty gained his pardon from Louis XVI., and he never forgot his benefactor. He then became a soldier but deserted, and was imprisoned ; on his release he settled down in a legal occupation, and joined the national guard. On the outbreak of the Revolution he gathered round him a band of royalist peasantry with whom he retired to the wood of Misdon, where they lived in huts and subterranean chambers. From Lower Maine the insurrection soon spread to Brittany, and throughout the west of France. In 1793 Cottereau joined Laval with some 500 men ; and the band grew rapidly and swelled into a considerable army, which assumed the name of La Petite Vendee. Cottereau greatly distinguished himself by his personal bravery and his military ability. But after the decisive defeats at Le Mans and Savenay, he retired again to his old haunts in the wood of Misdon, and resumed his old course of guerilla warfare. Misfortunes here increased upon him, until through treachery he fell into an ambuscade and was mortally wounded. He died among his followers, July 28, 1794. Ignorant as he was, he appears to have been a man of no slight ability. His gratitude was intense ; and his magnanimity was such that he is said on several occasions to have spared those who had most deeply injured him. After the death of Cottereau, the chief leaders of the Chouans were Georges Cadoudal and a man who went by the name of Jarnbe d Argent. For several months the Chouans continued their petty warfare, which was disgraced by many acts of ferocity and rapine ; in August 1795 they dispersed. See Duchemin-Descepeaux, Lettressurla Chouannerie; Seguin, Histoire de la Chouannerie; and Muret, Histoire des Guerres
de r Quest.CHRESTIEN, Florent (1541-1596), a satirist and Latin poet, was the son of Guillaume Chrestien, an eminent French physician and writer on physiology, and was born at Orleans. A pupil of Henri Estienne, the famous Hellenist, and a zealous Calvinist, at an early age he was appointed tutor to Henry of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV., who made him his librarian. De Thou says of Chrestien that he was an excellent man, a man of such an enlightened and ncljle soul that he was incapable of writing aught from a base and servile complaisance, but that it was not safe to irritate his Calvinism, as if that were done he hit hard and straight, trusting to reconciliation afterwards. Florent Chrestien was the author of many good translations from the Greek into Latin verse, amongst others, of versions of the Hero and Leander attributed to Musseus, of several plays, and of many epigrams from the Anthology, all of which were enriched with excellent notes and com mentaries. In his translations into French, among which are remarked those of Buchanan s Jephthes and of Oppian De Venatione, he is not so happy, being rather to be praised for fidelity to his original than for excellence of style. He wrote in verse against Ronsard, and in prosa against Pibrac, the apologist of the Saint-Bartholomew ; but his principal claim to a place among memorable satirists is as one of the authors of the Satyre Jfenippee, the famous pasquinade in the interest of his old pupil, Henry IV., his share in which, however, cannot now be exactly determined.
CHRESTIEN DE TROYES, the most eminent of the early French writers of romance, was born at Troyes in Champagne in the llth century. Nothing whatever is known of his life ; but from the fact that several of his works are dedicated to Philip of Alsace, count of Flanders, it is conjectured that he was attached to the court of that prince. He was much esteemed and highly praised by his contemporaries, and by the writers of the century following, and not without reason, being a master of style, and possessing in an eminent degree the qualities of invention and conduct, together vith great purity and range of thought, and a remarkable knowledge of men and manners. His books, therefore, apart from the interest attached to them as specimens of the mediaeval epic, and by reason of their relation to the rest of the Arthurian literature, and in spite of the difficulties and crudities of the unformed lan guage in which they are written, are still readable, and are rich in instructive details concerning the age that gave them birth. Many romances are attributed to Chrestieu des Troyes. Modern criticism has selected^ six only as undoubtedly his. These are (1) Irec et Enide, which contains some seven thousand verses, and which has supplied the materials for one of the legends of Tenny son s Arthurian cycle ; (2) Cliff es, or Cliff et, a second Round Table romance; (3) Le Chevalier au Lion, containing nearly seven thousand verses, an offshoot of the Arthurian legend, if not absolutely forming part of it ; (4) Guillaume d Angleterre, a specimen of a more modern style, containing three thousand three hundred verses ; (5) Le Chevalier de la Charette, a romance of nearly seven thousand verses, written by Chrestien and continued by Godefroid de Laigny, the hero of which is Lancelot du Lac ; and (6) Perceval le Gallois, a poem of twenty thousand verses, begun by Chrestien and continued by Gautier de Denet and by Menassier, perhaps the earliest instance of that alliance of the Holy Grail and Round Table legends, which enjoyed such an immense popularity in the Middle Ages translations and imitations of which have appeared in English, French, German, Spanish, Flemish, and Icelandic. Two other romances are known to have been written by Chrestien, Tristan, ou le Roi Marc et la Seine Yseult, and Le Chevalier de VEpee, but these are wholly lost ; and he is credited with the authorship of six songs and of several Ovidian translations or imitations still unpublished.
CHRIST (Xpioros. the Anointed One), the official title given in the New Testament to Jesus of Nazareth, equiva lent to the Hebrew Messiah. See Jesus Christ.
CHRISTCHURCH, a parliamentary borough of South Hampshire, England, is situated at the confluence of the rivers Avon and Stour, 1/ miles from the sea, 22 miles S."VV. of Southampton, and 111 miles from London by rail. Its history commences in Saxon times, when it was known as Tweonaeteam, a name which continued till recently in the form of Christchurch Twineham. The town, which is nominally governed by a mayor, recorder, and councillors, consists of two long irregular streets. It manufactures chains for clocks and watches, and hosiery, while the salmon fishery employs some hands. It is, however, to its priory church that it owes its distinction. This building, which is a conspicuous object at sea, belongs partly to the Norman and partly to the Perpendicular styles of architec ture, and is one of the best specimens of its kind, measuring 311 feet long by 104 broad. It was first established as an Augustinian priory by Baldwin, earl of Devon, in the 1 2th century, and thereafter received successive grants from the Crown. Within recent years the work of restoration has been carried on to a considerable extent. The church con tains a very fine rood screen of the 14th century, a chapel of the 16th century, built by Margaret, countess of Salisbury, an altar tomb of the same century with effigies, and many other objects of architectural interest. A monu ment has been erected in the Western tower to Shelley the poet. Little remains of the old castle but an adjoining ruin called the Norman House, which is supposed to date from the time of Henry II. The population of the town in 1871 was little over 2000, but the parliamentary borough, which extends to 22,350 acres and includes the greater part of Bournemouth aud the parish of Holden- hurst, contained 15,415 persons ; it returns one member to parliament.
