dans notre monarchie constitutionnelle (1818), and De la responsabilité des agents du gouvernement. In the former he claimed, for the protection of the rights of private persons in the administration of justice, the institution of a special court whose members should be irremovable, the right of oral defence, and publicity of trial. In 1822 appeared his Questions de droit administratif, in which he for the first time brought together and gave scientific shape to the scattered elements of administrative law. These he arranged and stated clearly in the form of aphorisms, with logical deductions, establishing them by proofs drawn from the archives of the council of state. This is recognized as his most important work as a jurist. The fifth edition (1840) was thoroughly revised.
In 1828 Cormenin entered the Chamber of Deputies as member for Orleans, took his seat in the Left Centre, and began a vigorous opposition to the government of Charles X. As he was not gifted with the qualifications of the orator, he seldom appeared at the tribune; but in the various committees he defended all forms of popular liberties, and at the same time delivered, in a series of powerful pamphlets, under the pseudonym of “Timon,” the most formidable blows against tyranny and all political and administrative abuses. After the revolution of July 1830, Cormenin was one of the 221 who signed the protest against the elevation of the Orleans dynasty to the throne; and he resigned both his office in the council of state and his seat in the chamber. He was, however, soon re-elected deputy, and now voted with the extreme Left. The discussions on the budget in 1831 gave rise to the publication of his famous series of Lettres sur la liste civile, which in ten years ran through twenty-five editions. In the following year he was elected deputy for Belley. In 1834 he was elected by two arrondissements, and sat for Joigny, which he represented till 1846. In this year he lost his seat in consequence of the popular prejudice aroused against him by his trenchant pamphlet Oui et non (1845) against attacks on religious liberty, and a second entitled Feu! Feu! (1845), written in reply to those who demanded a retractation of the former. Sixty thousand copies were rapidly sold.
Cormenin was an earnest advocate of universal suffrage before the revolution of February 1848, and had remorselessly exposed the corrupt practices at elections in his pamphlet—Ordre du jour sur la corruption électorale. After the revolution he was elected by four departments to the Constituent Assembly, and became one of its vice-presidents. He was also member and president of the constitutional commission, and for some time took a leading part in drawing up the republican constitution. But the disputes which broke out among the members led him to resign the presidency. He was soon after named member of the council of state and president of the comité du contentieux. It was at this period that he published two pamphlets—Sur l’indépendance de l’Italie. After the coup d’état of December 2, 1851, Cormenin, who had undertaken the defence of Prince Louis Napoleon after his attempt at Strassburg, accepted a place in the new council of state of the empire. Four years later, by imperial ordinance, he was made a member of the Institute. One of the most characteristic works of Cormenin is the Livre des orateurs, a series of brilliant studies of the principal parliamentary orators of the restoration and the monarchy of July, the first edition of which appeared in 1838, and the eighteenth in 1860. In 1846 he published his Entretiens de village, which procured him the Montyon prize, and of which six editions were called for the same year. His last work was Le Droit de tonnage en Algérie (1860). He died at Paris, on the 6th of May 1868. Two volumes of his Reliquiae were printed in Paris in the same year.
CORMON, FERNAND (1845– ), French painter, was born in Paris. He became a pupil of Cabanel, Fromentin and Portaels, and one of the leading historical painters of modern France. At an early age he attracted attention by the better class of
sensationalism in his art, although for a time his powerful brush dwelled with particular delight on scenes of bloodshed, such as
the “Murder in the Seraglio” (1868) and the “Death of Ravara, Queen of Lanka” at the Toulouse Museum. The Luxembourg has his “Cain flying before Jehovah’s Curse”; and for the
Mairie of the fourth arrondissement of Paris he executed in grisaille a series of Panels: “Birth,” “Death,” “Marriage,” “War,” &c. “A Chief’s Funeral,” and pictures having the
Stone Age for their subject, occupied him for several years. He was appointed to the Legion of Honour in 1880. Subsequently he also devoted himself to portraiture.
CORMONTAINGNE, LOUIS DE (c. 1697–1752), French military engineer, was born at Strassburg. He was present as a volunteer
at the sieges of Freiburg and Landau in the later years of the
War of the Spanish Succession, and in 1715 he entered the
engineers. After being stationed for some years at Strassburg
he became captain, and was put in charge (at first in a subordinate
capacity, and subsequently as chief engineer) of the new works, Forts Moselle and Bellecroix, at Metz, which he built according to his own system of fortification. He was present at the siege of Philipsburg in 1733, and as a lieutenant-colonel
took part in most of the sieges in the Low Countries during the War of the Austrian Succession. He attained the rank of brigadier and finally that of maréchal de camp, and was employed
in fortification work until his death. His Architecture militaire, written in 1714, was long kept secret by order of the authorities,
but, an unauthorized edition having appeared at the Hague in 1741, he himself prepared another version called Premier mémoire sur la fortification, which from 1741 onwards was followed by others. His ideas are closely modelled on those of Vauban
(q.v.), and in his lifetime he was not considered the equal of such
engineers as d’Asfeld and Filley. It was not until twenty years
after his death that his system became widely known. Fourcroy
de Rainecourt, then chief of engineers, searching the archives
for valuable matter, chose the numerous memoirs of Cormontaingne
for publication amongst engineer officers in 1776. Even
then they only circulated privately, and it was not until the
engineer Bousmard published Cormontaingne’s Mémorial de
l’attaque des places (Berlin, 1803) that Fourcroy, and after him
General La Fitte de Clavé, actually gave to the general public
the Œuvres posthumes de Cormontaingne (Paris, 1806–1809).
His system of fortification was not marked by any great originality of thought, which indeed could not be expected of a member of the corps du génie, the characteristics of which were a close caste spirit and an unquestioning reverence for the authority of Vauban. Forts Moselle and Bellecroix are still in existence.
See Von Brese-Winiari, Über Entstehen etc. der neueren Befestigungsmethode (Berlin, 1844); Prévost du Vernois, De la fortification depuis Vauban (Paris, 1861); Cosseron de Villenoisy, Essai historique sur la fortification (Paris, 1869).
CORMORANT (from the Lat. corvus marinus,[1] through the Fr., in some patois of which it is still “cor marin”; in certain Ital. dialects are the forms “corvo marin” or “corvo marino”),
a large sea-fowl belonging to the genus Phalacrocorax[2] (Carbo, Halieus and Graculus of some ornithologists), and that group of
the Linnaean order Anseres, now partly generally recognized by Illiger’s term Steganopodes, of which it with its allies forms a family Phalacrocoracidae.
The cormorant (P. carbo) frequents almost all the sea-coast of Europe, and breeds in societies at various stations, most generally on steep cliffs, but occasionally on rocky islands as well as on trees. The nest consists of a large mass of sea-weed, and, with the ground immediately surrounding it, generally looks as though bespattered with whitewash, from the excrement of the bird, which lives entirely on fish. The eggs, from four to six in number, are small, and have a thick, soft, calcareous shell, bluish-white when first laid, but soon becoming discoloured. The young are hatched blind, and covered with an inky-black skin. They remain for some time in the squab-condition, and are then highly esteemed for food by the northern islanders, their flesh being said to taste as well as a roasted hare’s. Their first plumage is of a sombre brownish-black above, and more or less white beneath. They take two or three years to assume the fully adult
