BOIELDIEU, FRANÇOIS ADRIEN (1775–1834), French composer of comic opera, was born at Rouen on the 15th of December 1775. He received his first musical education from M. Broche, the cathedral organist, who appears to have treated him very harshly. He began composing songs and chamber music at a very early age—his first opera, La Fille coupable (the libretto by his father), and his second opera, Rosalie et Myrza, being produced on the stage of Rouen in 1795. Not satisfied with his local success he went to Paris in 1795. His scores were submitted to Cherubini, Méhul and others, but met with little approbation. Grand opera was the order of the day. Boieldieu had to fall back on his talent as a pianoforte-player for a livelihood. Success came at last from an unexpected source. P. J. Garat, a fashionable singer of the period, admired Boieldieu’s touch on the piano, and made him his accompanist. In the drawing-rooms of the Directoire Garat sang the charming songs and ballads with which the young composer supplied him. Thus Boieldieu’s reputation gradually extended to wider circles. In 1796 Les Deux lettres was produced, and in 1797 La Famille suisse appeared for the first time on a Paris stage, and was well received. Several other operas followed in rapid succession, of which only Le Calife de Bagdad (1800) has escaped oblivion. After the enormous success of this work, Boieldieu felt the want of a thorough musical training and took lessons from Cherubini, the influence of that great master being clearly discernible in the higher artistic finish of his pupil’s later compositions. In 1802 Boieldieu, to escape the domestic troubles caused by his marriage with Clotilde Aug. Mafleuroy, a celebrated ballet-dancer of the Paris opera, took flight and went to Russia, where he was received with open arms by the emperor Alexander. During his prolonged stay at St Petersburg he composed a number of operas. He also set to music the choruses of Racine’s Athalie, one of his few attempts at the tragic style of dramatic writing. In 1811 he returned to his own country, where the following year witnessed the production of one of his finest works, Jean de Paris, in which he depicted with much felicity the charming coquetry of the queen of Navarre, the chivalrous verve of the king, the officious pedantry of the seneschal, and the amorous tenderness of the page. He succeeded Méhul as professor of composition at the Conservatoire in 1817. Le Chapeau rouge was produced with great success in 1818. Boieldieu’s second and greatest masterpiece was his Dame blanche (1825). The libretto, written by Scribe, was partly suggested by Walter Scott’s Monastery, and several original Scottish tunes cleverly introduced by the composer add to the melodious charm and local colour of the work. On the death of his wife in 1825, Boieldieu married a singer. His own death was due to a violent attack of pulmonary disease. He vainly tried to escape the rapid progress of the illness by travel in Italy and the south of France, but returned to Paris only to die on the 8th of October 1834.
Lives of Boieldieu have been written by Pougin (Paris, 1875), J. A. Refeuvaille (Rouen, 1836), Hequet (Paris, 1864), Emile Duval (Geneva, 1883). See also Adolphe Charles Adam, Derniers souvenirs d’un musicien.
BOIGNE, BENOÎT DE, Count (1751–1830), the first of the
French military adventurers in India, was born at Chambéry
in Savoy on the 8th of March 1751, being the son of a fur
merchant. He joined the Irish Brigade in France in 1768, and
subsequently he entered the Russian service and was captured
by the Turks. Hearing of the wealth of India, he made his way
to that country, and after serving for a short time in the East
India Company, he resigned and joined Mahadji Sindhia in
1784 for the purpose of training his troops in the European
methods of war. In the battles of Lalsot and Chaksana Boigne
and his two battalions proved their worth by holding the field
when the rest of the Mahratta army was defeated by the Rajputs.
In the battle of Agra (1788) he restored the Mahratta fortunes,
and made Mahadji Sindhia undisputed master of Hindostan.
This success led to his being given the command of a brigade
of ten battalions of infantry, with which he won the victories
of Patan and Merta in 1790. In consequence Boigne was allowed
to raise two further brigades of disciplined infantry, and made
commander-in-chief of Sindhia’s army. In the battle of Lakhairi
(1793) he defeated Holkar’s army. On the death of Mahadji
Sindhia in 1794, Boigne could have made himself master of
Hindostan had he wished it, but he remained loyal to Daulat
Rao Sindhia. In 1795 his health began to fail, and he resigned
his command, and in the following year returned to Europe
with a fortune of £400,000. He lived in retirement during
the lifetime of Napoleon, but was greatly honoured by Louis
XVIII. He died on the 21st of June 1830.
See H. Compton, European Military Adventurers of Hindustan (1892).
BOII (perhaps = “the terrible”), a Celtic people, whose original
home was Gallia Transalpina. They were known to the Romans,
at least by name, in the time of Plautus, as is shown by the
contemptuous reference in the Captivi (888). At an early date
they split up into two main groups, one of which made its way
into Italy, the other into Germany. Some, however, appear
to have stayed behind, since, during the Second Punic War,
Magalus, a Boian prince, offered to show Hannibal the way into
Italy after he had crossed the Pyrenees (Livy xxi. 29). The
first group of immigrants is said to have crossed the Pennine Alps
(Great St Bernard) into the valley of the Po. Finding the
district already occupied, they proceeded over the river, drove
out the Etruscans and Umbrians, and established themselves
as far as the Apennines in the modern Romagna. According
to Cato (in Pliny, Nat. Hist. iii. 116) they comprised as many
as 112 different tribes, and from the remains discovered in the
tombs at Hallstatt, La Tène and other places, they appear to
have been fairly civilized. Several wars took place between them
and the Romans. In 283 they were defeated, together with
the Etruscans, at the Vadimonian lake; in 224, after the battle
of Telamon in Etruria, they were forced to submit. But they still
cherished a hatred of the Romans, and during the Second Punic
War (218), irritated by the foundation of the Roman colonies
of Cremona and Placentia, they rendered valuable assistance to
Hannibal. They continued the struggle against Rome from
201 to 191, when they were finally subdued by P. Cornelius Scipio
Nasica, and deprived of nearly half their territory. According
to Strabo (v. p. 213) the Boii were driven back across the Alps
and settled on the land of their kinsmen, the Taurisci, on the
Danube, adjoining Vindelicia and Raetia. Most authorities,
however, assume that there had been a settlement of the Boii
on the Danube from very early times, in part of the modern
Bohemia (anc. Boiohemum, “land of the Boii”). About 60 B.C.
some of the Boii migrated to Noricum and Pannonia, when
32,000 of them joined the expedition of the Helvetians into
Gaul, and shared their defeat near Bibracte (58). They were
subsequently allowed by Caesar to settle in the territory of the
Aedui between the Loire and the Allier. Their chief town was
Gorgobina (site uncertain). Those who remained on the Danube
were exterminated by the Dacian king, Boerebista, and the
district they had occupied was afterwards called the “desert of
the Boii” (Strabo vii. p. 292). In A.D. 69 a Boian named
Mariccus stirred up a fanatical revolt, but was soon defeated
and put to death. Some remnants of the Boii are mentioned
as dwelling near Bordeaux; but Mommsen inclines to the opinion
that the three groups (in Bordeaux, Bohemia and the Po
districts) were not really scattered branches of one and the same
stock, but that they are instances of a mere similarity of name.
The Boii, as we know them, belonged almost certainly to the Early Iron age. They probably used long iron swords for dealing cutting blows, and from the size of the handles they must have been a race of large men (cf. Polybius ii. 30). For their ethnological affinities and especially their possible connexion with the Homeric Achaeans see W. Ridgeway’s Early Age of Greece (vol. i., 1901).
See L. Contzen, Die Wanderungen der Kelten (Leipzig, 1861); A. Desjardins, Géographie historique de la Gaule romaine, ii. (1876–1893); T. R. Holmes, Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul (1899), pp. 426-428; T. Mommsen, Hist. of Rome, ii. (Eng. trans. 5 vols., 1894), p. 373 note; M. Ihm in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyclopädie, iii. pt. 1 (1897); A. Holder, Alt-celtischer Sprachschatz.
