RIEDESEL RIENZI 325 continental princes, and was engaged in sev- eral conspiracies against Queen Elizabeth. In 1569 he was imprisoned for a month and fined. In 1571 he visited Brussels, Paris, Rome, and Madrid, bearing credentials of dis- puted authenticity from Mary queen of Scots and the duke of Norfolk, empowering him to solicit aid to dethrone Elizabeth, and a papal decree annulling the forced marriage of Mary with Bothwell. The duke of Alva received him coldly ; the pope gave him money and recommended him to Philip II. of Spain. At Madrid, where he arrived July 3, 1571, he laid before the king and six of his chosen council- lors a plan for assassinating Queen Elizabeth, which he declared to have been entertained by the English Catholics and approved by the pope. This assertion, to which the pope's letter of commendation gave some color, in- duced the king to give a partial assent to the plot in spite of Alva's urgent objections. But meanwhile the intrigue was discovered in Eng- land and the chief conspirators were brought to punishment. In December, 1874, on occa- sion of the Gladstone-Manning controversy, Lord Acton accused Pius V. of complicity in the contemplated assassination of Queen Eliza- beth, while writers on the opposite side have labored to show that the pope merely ap- proved of her being dethroned, but knew nothing of the plot against her life. Ridolfi, after the death of the duke of Norfolk and of Mary queen of Scots, continued his intrigues on the continent ; but little is known of his subsequent career. RIEDESEL. I. Friedrich Adolph Ton, baron, a German general in the British service, born at Lauterbach in the grand duchy of Hesse, June 3, 1738, died in Brunswick, Jan. 6, 1800. He left his studies at Marburg to join the Hessian regiment in the British service, dis- tinguished himself at the battle of Minden in 1759, and in 1776 was major general in command of the division of 4,000 Bruns- wickers which formed part of the German mercenary force employed by England in the American revolutionary war. Landing at Que- "bec June 1, he spent a year in Canada, exer- cising his men in the Indian mode of war- fare. Having accompanied Burgoyne on his inarch to Albany, he rendered efficient service in the capture of Ticonderoga, and secured the British victory the day following at Hub- bardton by bringing up reinforcements. In the first action at Saratoga, Sept. 19, 1777, by a timely forced march through the woods, he saved the army of Burgoyne from annihila- tion. After the second engagement, Oct. 7, he advised a retreat, and had his counsel been taken Burgoyne's escape into Canada might have been effected. After the surrender Rie- desel accompanied his commander-in- chief to Albany. With the other German prisoners te reached Cambridge, Mass., Nov. 7, 1777, whence in the following year he was trans- ferred to Virginia. On being exchanged in the autumn of 1780, he was placed by Clinton in command of Long Island. In August, 1783, he returned to Germany. Having been made lieutenant general in 1787, he commanded the Brunswick contingent sent to Holland to sup- port the cause of the stadtholder. At the time of his death he was commandant of the city of Brunswick. His " Letters and Military Journals in America," edited by Max von Eel- king, has been translated by William L. Stone, with a memoir by the translator (2 vols. 8vo, Albany, 1868). II. Friederike Charlotte Lnlse, wife of the preceding, born in Brandenburg in 1746, died in Berlin, March 29, 1808. She was a daughter of the Prussian minister Mas- sou, and was married at the age of 16. She followed her husband to America, joining him in Canada, and was his constant companion during his stay in this country. In her fre- quent correspondence with her mother her adventures were graphically and minutely de- scribed. These letters were published by her son-in-law Count Reuss, under the title of Voyage de mission en Amerique, ou Lettres de Mme. de Riedesel (Berlin, 1799 ; English by William L. Stone, 8vo, Albany, 1867). KIEL, Louis See MANITOBA, vol. xi., p. 114. RIENZI, Nicola Gabrin), commonly called COLA m RIENZI, "the last of the Roman tribunes," born in Rome about 1312, assassinated Oct. 8, 1354. He was a notary, but claimed illegiti- mate descent from- the imperial house of Lux- emburg, was well educated, of imposing pres- ence, and gifted with extraordinary powers of eloquence. The removal of the papal see to Avignon in 1309 had left Rome a prey to con- tending factions of nobles, whose houses were fortified castles, and whose armed dependants kept the city in a constant turmoil. On the accession of Clement VI. in 1342, Rienzi was included in the deputation sent to Avignon to urge the pope to return to his see. Petrarch, who headed the deputation, conceived an ad- miration for Rienzi, to whom he afterward addressed the ode commencing Spirto gentil. The pope showed no disposition to revisit Rome, and Rienzi, despairing of any allevia- tion of the public calamities through the eccle- siastical power, and eager to lead the people to liberty, proceeded by flattering and deceiv- ing the nobles to disarm their suspicions. He submitted to various kinds of indignity to advance his end, and imitating Brutus, in his own words, " made himself a simpleton and a stage player, and was by turns serious or silly, cunning, earnest, and timid, as the occasion required." On the day after Ash Wednesday, 1347, he caused a scroll to be affixed to the doors of the church of San Giorgio in Velabro, on which was inscribed : " Ere long Rome will return to her good estate." On the succeed- ing vigil, of Pentecost the people were sum- moned to repair to the capitol on the follow- ing day. Rienzi passed the night in the church of Sant' Angelo, where he heard the thirty masses of the Holy Ghost, by whom he said
