republican statesmen, was born at Nolai in the department of Côte-d'Or, and province of Burgundy, on the 13th of May, 1753, and died at Magdeburg on the 23d of August, 1823. His father was a member of a respectable family of middle rank, and the parent of eighteen children. In 1771, the young Carnot having passed the necessary examination with distinction, was admitted to the government school of engineering at Mézières, where for two years he received the instruction of several distinguished professors, and especially of the famous Monge. In 1773 he received his commission as lieutenant, and was sent to Calais to superintend the progress of military and hydraulic works. In the course of the ensuing year, besides distinguishing himself in his profession, he published various lyric poems and scientific essays. The most remarkable of the latter was his "Essai sur les Machines en général," first published in 1783, republished in 1786, and again republished and remodelled under the title of "Essai sur les principes de l'equilibre et du mouvement," in 1803. In that essay we first meet with a distinct term—"force vive latente"—to designate what is now called "potential energy." In 1784 he obtained much celebrity by gaining the prize offered by the Academy of Dijon for the éloge of Marshal Vauban, and was elected a member of that academy. The science and art of fortification were amongst the special subjects of Carnot's study, and he did much to improve them. In 1786 he married Mademoiselle Dupont, a lady of the Pas de Calais. On the breaking out of the Revolution, Carnot strongly avowed republican principles. In 1791 he was elected, along with his brother, deputy to the legislative assembly from the department of the Pas de Calais. In August, 1792, he took an active part in the suspension of the royal power. In 1793 he was one of those who voted for the execution of Louis XVI. In the summer of 1793, having gone, as republican commissioner, to superintend the operations for the defence of Dunkirk, threatened by the army of the duke of York, Carnot in person led the successful assault of the important position of Furnes. On the revolt and flight of Dumourier, Carnot, being present with the army of the north, exerted himself with success to prevent the defection of the soldiers. He soon afterwards again distinguished himself in actual combat, by leading in person, and on foot, one of the attacking columns of the army commanded by Jourdan, which dislodged the Austrians from Wattignies, and forced them to raise the siege of Maubeuge. On the 14th of August, 1793, Carnot was appointed a member of the equally famous and infamous committee of public safety. To Carnot alone was intrusted the whole conduct of affairs of war. To his skill in directing and combining the operations of sometimes as many as fourteen armies at once, and to his judgment in choosing officers to command them, are to be ascribed all the honour which belongs to the central organization of the glorious career of victory that marked the early wars of the French republic. Fully occupied by his own duty of guarding the frontier of France, Carnot had no share in the domestic butchery by which his colleagues earned for the period of their domination, the name of the "reign of terror." By the leaders amongst them he was regarded with fear and hatred, which he repaid with contempt and abhorrence. After the fall of the terrorists, Carnot continued to direct the military affairs of the nation with the same success as before. The original idea of the polytechnic school is by many ascribed to him. In 1795 he was appointed one of the five directors, and was elected a member of the Institute. Soon afterwards he encountered a military genius, before which his own had to give way; for on his attempting to control the movements of Bonaparte in Italy, the young general threatened to resign, unless he were allowed to conduct his campaign according to his own plans, and Carnot yielded. The jealousy of Carnot's colleagues in the directory led to a plot for his assassination in 1797, from which he narrowly escaped; but was proscribed as a conspirator and compelled to fly to Germany. In 1799, when Bonaparte seized the supreme power, Carnot was recalled to France, and appointed minister of war. In 1800, disapproving of the consular government, as being opposed to his republican principles, he resigned his office, and retired to a country seat at Étampes, where he passed about two years in scientific labours and in the education of his family. About this time he rose to the rank of colonel of engineers by seniority alone, never having used his former great authority for his own promotion or profit. He ultimately attained the rank of lieutenant-general.
In 1802 Carnot was appointed a tribune; in that capacity he steadily opposed all measures of the consular government having an aristocratic or monarchical tendency; and finally stood alone in opposing the elevation of Napoleon to the empire. It is to the honour of both those great men that, to the end of his career, Napoleon never ceased to evince the highest esteem and even personal regard towards this inveterate political adversary. On the abolition of the tribunate in 1806 Carnot retired into private life. In 1809 the emperor granted him an annual pension of 10,000 francs, which he lost at the restoration of the Bourbons. Shortly after the former date he was elected to the senate by his native department of the Côte-d'Or, and was most favourably received by the emperor, who offered him his choice of offices and dignities, but in vain. At length, in 1814, when the power of Napoleon was tottering to its fall, Carnot, believing the safety of his country to be involved in the maintenance of the empire against its threatened overthrow by foreign powers, came forward to offer those services which he had refused in the time of Napoleon's highest prosperity. The offer was gladly accepted by the emperor, who appointed Carnot to be governor of Antwerp, the most important fortress in his dominions. The day after Carnot's arrival in Antwerp its bombardment by the allies commenced. Carnot practised with success those principles which he had previously published respecting the defence of fortresses; he held out firmly against force and negotiation for nearly three months, and even after the news of Napoleon's abdication had reached him; and it was not until he was assured of the acceptance of Louis XVIII. by the French nation as its sovereign that he surrendered, on the 18th of April, 1814. Carnot on arriving in Paris was coldly received by the king, to whom he afterwards addressed a memorial on political affairs.
On the return of Napoleon from Elba, he created Carnot a count and peer, and minister of the interior. In that capacity Carnot recommended liberal measures to the emperor, and forbade the practice of opening letters in the post-office. On the final overthrow of Napoleon, it was Carnot whom he charged with the reading of his abdication to the chamber of peers. Carnot then became a member of the provisional government, and published an exposition of his political conduct. He alone, of all Napoleon's ministers, was proscribed by the government of Louis XVIII. Being in danger of arrest, he quitted France by the aid of a passport furnished to him by the Emperor Alexander I. of Russia. That sovereign, having a mind capable of appreciating the great and good qualities of Carnot, offered him the rank of lieutenant-general in his army, which he declined, preferring to settle at Magdeburg, where he passed the remainder of his life in the cultivation of literature and science, and died on the 23rd of August, 1823.
We are informed that Carnot was of tall stature, and a noble carriage; that his features were expressive and regular, his forehead broad and high, his eyes blue, lively, and full of intelligence, his nose slightly aquiline; and that his mouth was expressive of serenity and kindness.
Carnot's poetry is marked by simplicity and tenderness, his political writings by truthfulness and energy. His works on geometry and mechanics, full as they are of genius and originality, would be sufficient of themselves to immortalize his name; but their lustre grows pale before the splendour of his political virtue. In him we see the man who rejected wealth, rank, power, and all that common men prize—who braved the mob, the demagogue, the despot, and all that common men fear—who showed by his every act that patriotism, to common men a pretext or a fable, was to him a reality, and the ruling principle of his life—one of the few men of whom Horace's description is true:—
" Justum et tenacem propositi virum;
Non civium ardor prava jubentium,
Non vultus instantis tyranni,
Mente quatit solidâ."
Besides the life of Carnot by Körte, his memoirs, chiefly compiled from his own documents, have been written by Tissot. His life, by one of his sons, has long been announced as forthcoming; but so far as the author of this article has been able to ascertain, it has not yet been published.—W. J. M. R.
CARNOT, Sady, son of Lazare Carnot, and captain of engineers, discovered one of the laws of the motive power of heat, and published it in 1824, in an essay called "Réflexions sur la Puissance Motrice du Feu."—W. J. M. R.
