inquisitions reiterated the abbot’s rights. These were confirmed in 1408–1409 and 1413; in 1418 the charter was annulled, and in 1477 parliament declared that Cirencester was not corporate. After several unsuccessful attempts to re-establish the gild merchant, the government in 1592 was vested in the bailiff of the lord of the manor. Cirencester became a parliamentary borough in 1572, returning two members, but was deprived of representation in 1885. Besides the “new market” of Domesday Book the abbots obtained charters in 1215 and 1253 for fairs during the octaves of All Saints and St Thomas the Martyr. The wool trade gave these great importance; in 1341 there were ten wool merchants in Cirencester, and Leland speaks of the abbots’ cloth-mill, while Camden calls it the greatest market for wool in England.
See Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, vols. ii., ix., xviii.
CIRILLO, DOMENICO (1739–1799), Italian physician and
patriot, was born at Grumo in the kingdom of Naples. Appointed
while yet a young man to a botanical professorship, Cirillo went
some years afterwards to England, where he was elected fellow
of the Royal Society, and to France. On his return to Naples
he was appointed successively to the chairs of practical and
theoretical medicine. He wrote voluminously and well on
scientific subjects and secured an extensive medical practice.
On the French occupation of Naples and the proclamation of
the Parthenopean republic (1799), Cirillo, after at first refusing
to take part in the new government, consented to be chosen a
representative of the people and became a member of the
legislative commission, of which he was eventually elected
president. On the abandonment of the republic by the French
(June 1799), Cardinal Ruffo and the army of King Ferdinand
IV. returned to Naples, and the Republicans withdrew, ill-armed
and inadequately provisioned, to the forts. After a short siege
they surrendered on honourable terms, life and liberty being
guaranteed them by the signatures of Ruffo, of Foote, and of
Micheroux. But the arrival of Nelson changed the complexion
of affairs, and he refused to ratify the capitulation. Secure
under the British flag, Ferdinand and his wife, Caroline of
Austria, showed themselves eager for revenge, and Cirillo was
involved with the other republicans in the vengeance of the
royal family. He asked Lady Hamilton (wife of the British
minister to Naples) to intercede on his behalf, but Nelson wrote
in reference to the petition: “Domenico Cirillo, who had been
the king’s physician, might have been saved, but that he chose
to play the fool and lie, denying that he had ever made any
speeches against the government, and saying that he only took
care of the poor in the hospitals” (Nelson and the Neapolitan Jacobins, Navy Records Society, 1903). He was condemned
and hanged on the 29th of October 1799. Cirillo, whose favourite
study was botany, and who was recognized as an entomologist
by Linnaeus, left many books, in Latin and Italian, all of them
treating of medical and scientific subjects, and all of little value
now. Exception must, however, be made in favour of the
Virtù morali dell’ Asino, a pleasant philosophical pamphlet
remarkable for its double charm of sense and style. He introduced
many medical innovations into Naples, particularly
inoculation for smallpox.
See C. Giglioli, Naples in 1799 (London, 1903); L. Conforti, Napoli nel 1799 (Naples, 1889); C. Tivaroni, L’ Italia durante il dominio francese, vol. ii. pp. 179-204. Also under Naples; Nelson and Ferdinand IV. of Naples.
CIRQUE (Lat. circus, ring), a French word used in physical
geography to denote a semicircular crater-like amphitheatre
at the head of a valley, or in the side of a glaciated mountain.
The valley cirque is characteristic of calcareous districts. In
the Chiltern Hills especially, and generally along the chalk
escarpments, a flat-bottomed valley with an intermittent
stream winds into the hill and ends suddenly in a cirque. There
is an excellent example at Ivinghoe, Buckinghamshire, where
it appears as though an enormous flat-bottomed scoop had been
driven into the hillside and dragged outwards to the plain. In
all cases it is found that the valley floor consists of hard or
impervious rock above which lies a permeable or soluble stratum
of considerable thickness. In the case of the chalk hills the
upper strata are very porous, and the descending water with
atmospheric and humous acids in solution has great solvent
power. During the winter this upper layer becomes saturated
and some of the water drains away along joints in the escarpment.
An underground stream is thus developed carrying away a great
deal of material in solution, and in consequence the ground above
slowly collapses over the stream, while the cirque at the head,
where the stream issues, gradually works backward and may
pass completely through the hills, leaving a gap of which another
drainage system may take possession. In the limestone country
of the Cotteswold Hills, many small intermittent tributary
streams are headed by cirques, and some of the longer dry valleys
have springs issuing from beneath their lower ends, the dry
valleys being collapsed areas above underground streams not
yet revealed. In this case the pervious limestone is underlain
by beds of impervious clay. There are many of these in the
Jura Mountains. The Cirque de St Sulpice is a fine example
where the impervious bed is a marly clay.
The origin of the glacial cirque is entirely different and is said by W. D. Johnson (Journal of Geology, xii. No. 7, 1904) to be due to basal sapping and erosion under the bergschrund of the glacier. In this he is supported by G. K. Gilbert in the same journal, who produces some remarkable examples from the Sierra Nevada in California, where the mountain fragments have been left behind “like a sheet of dough upon a board after the biscuit tin has done its work”; so that above the head of the glaciers “the rock detail is rugged and splintered but its general effect is that of a great symmetrical arc.” Descending one of the bergschrunds of Mt. Lyell to a depth of 150 ft., Johnson found a rock floor cumbered with ice and blocks of rock and the rock face a literally vertical cliff “much riven, its fracture planes outlining sharp angular masses in all stages of displacement and dislodgment.” Judging from these facts, he interprets the deep valleys with cirques at their head in formerly glaciated regions where at the head there is a “reversed grade” of slope, as due to ice-erosion at valley-heads where scour is impossible at the sides of the mountain but strongest under the glacier head where the ice is deepest. The opponents of ice-erosion nevertheless recognize the very frequent occurrence of glacial cirques often containing small lakes such as that under Cader Idris in Wales, or at the head of Little Timber Creek, Montana, and numerous examples in Alpine districts.
CIRTA (mod. Constantine, q.v.), an ancient city of Numidia,
in Africa, in the country of the Massyli. It was regarded by
the Romans as the strongest position in Numidia, and was made
by them the converging point of all their great military roads
in that country. By the early emperors it was allowed to fall
into decay, but was afterwards restored by Constantine, from
whom it took its modern name.
CISSEY, ERNEST LOUIS OCTAVE COURTOT DE (1810–1882), French general, was born at Paris on the 23rd of September 1810, and after passing through St Cyr, entered the army in 1832, becoming captain in 1839. He saw active service in Algeria, and became chef d’escadron in 1849 and lieutenant-colonel in 1850. He took part as a colonel in the Crimean War, and after the battle of Inkerman received the rank of general of brigade. In 1863 he was promoted general of division. When the Franco-German War broke out in 1870, de Cissey was given a divisional command in the Army of the Rhine, and he was included in the surrender of Bazaine’s army at Metz. He was released from
captivity only at the end of the war, and on his return was at once appointed by the Versailles government to a command in the army engaged in the suppression of the Commune, a task in the execution of which he displayed great rigour. From July 1871 de Cissey sat as a deputy, and he had already become minister of war. He occupied this post several times during the critical period of the reorganization of the French army. In 1880, whilst holding the command of the XI. corps at Nantes, he was accused of having relations with a certain Baroness Kaula, who was said to be a spy in the pay of Germany, and
