superior ability. He continued his education at the college of Soissons, and thence passed at the age of fifteen to the artillery school of La Fère. After eighteen months’ successful study he entered the army, served his first campaign in Flanders (1791–92), and was present at the battle of Jemmapes. He soon attained the rank of captain, and served successively under Dampierre, Jourdan, Pichegru and Houchard. In 1794, in consequence of having spoken freely against the violence of the extreme party at Paris, he was imprisoned by order of the commissioner of the Convention, Joseph Lebon, at Cambray, but regained his liberty soon after the fall of Robespierre. He served under Moreau in the campaigns of 1796 and 1797, distinguishing himself in many engagements. The leisure which the treaty of Campo Formio gave him he devoted to the study of public law and modern history, attending the lectures of Christoph Wilhelm von Koch (1737–1813), the famous professor of public law at Strassburg. He was recommended by Desaix to the notice of General Bonaparte, but declined to serve on the staff of the Egyptian expedition. In the campaign of Switzerland (1798) he distinguished himself afresh, though he served only with the greatest reluctance against a people which possessed republican institutions. In Masséna’s brilliant campaign of 1799 Foy won the rank of chef de brigade. In the following year he served under Moncey in the Marengo campaign and afterwards in Tirol.
Foy’s republican principles caused him to oppose the gradual rise of Napoleon to the supreme power and at the time of Moreau’s trial he escaped arrest only by joining the army in Holland. Foy voted against the establishment of the empire, but the only penalty for his independence was a long delay before attaining the rank of general. In 1806 he married a daughter of General Baraguay d’Hilliers. In the following year he was sent to Constantinople, and there took part in the defence of the Dardanelles against the English fleet. He was next sent to Portugal, and thenceforward he served in the Peninsular War from first to last. Under Junot he won at last his rank of general of brigade, under Soult he held a command in the pursuit of Sir John Moore’s army, and under Masséna he fought in the third invasion of Portugal (1810). Masséna reposed the greatest confidence in Foy, and employed him after Busaco in a mission to the emperor. Napoleon now made Foy’s acquaintance for the first time, and was so far impressed with his merits as to make him a general of division at once. The part played by General Foy at the battle of Salamanca won him new laurels, but above all he distinguished himself when the disaster of Vittoria had broken the spirit of the army. Foy rose to the occasion; his resistance in the Pyrenees was steady and successful, and only a wound (at first thought mortal) which he received at Orthez prevented him from keeping the field to the last. At the first restoration of the Bourbons he received the grand cross of the Legion of Honour and a command, and on the return of Napoleon from Elba he declined to join him until the king had fled from the country. He held a divisional command in the Waterloo campaign, and at Waterloo was again severely wounded at the head of his division (see Waterloo Campaign). After the second restoration he returned to civil life, devoting his energies for a time to his projected history of the Peninsular War, and in 1819 was elected to the chamber of deputies. For this position his experience and his studies had especially fitted him, and by his first speech he gained a commanding place in the chamber, which he never lost, his clear, manly eloquence being always employed on the side of the liberal principles of 1789. In 1823 he made a powerful protest against French intervention in Spain, and after the dissolution of 1824 he was re-elected for three constituencies. He died at Paris on the 28th of November 1825, and his funeral was attended, it is said, by 100,000 persons. His early death was regarded by all as a national calamity. His family was provided for by a general subscription.
The Histoire de la guerre de la Péninsula sous Napoléon was published from his notes in 1827, and a collection of his speeches (with memoir by Tissot) appeared in 1826 soon after his death. See Cuisin, Vie militaire, politique, &c., du général Foy; Vidal, Vie militaire et politique du général Foy.
FRAAS, KARL NIKOLAS (1810–1875), German botanist and agriculturist, was born at Rattelsdorf, near Bamberg, on the 8th of September 1810. After receiving his preliminary education at the gymnasium of Bamberg, he in 1830 entered the university of Munich, where he took his doctor’s degree in 1834. Having devoted great attention to the study of botany, he went to Athens in 1835 as inspector of the court garden; and in April 1836 he became professor of botany at the university. In 1842 he returned to Germany and became teacher at the central agricultural school at Schleissheim. In 1847 he was appointed professor of agriculture at Munich, and in 1851 director of the central veterinary college. For many years he was secretary of the Agricultural Society of Bavaria, but resigned in 1861. He died at his estate of Neufreimann, near Munich, on the 9th of November 1875.
His principal works are: Στοιχεῖα τῆς Βοτανικῆς (Athens, 1835); Synopsis florae classicae (Munich, 1845); Klima und Pflanzenwelt in der Zeit (Landsh., 1847); Histor.-encyklopäd. Grundriss der Landwirthschaftslehre (Stuttgart, 1848); Geschichte der Landwirthschaft (Prague, 1851); Die Schule des Landbaues (Munich, 1852); Baierns Rinderrassen (Munich, 1853); Die künstliche Fischerzeugung (Munich, 1854); Die Natur der Landwirthschaft (Munich, 1857); Buch der Natur für Landwirthe (Munich, 1860); Die Ackerbaukrisen und ihre Heilmittel (Munich, 1866); Das Wurzelleben der Culturpflanzen (Berlin, 1872); and Geschichte der Landbau und Forstwissenschaft seit dem 16ten Jahrh. (Munich, 1865). He also founded and edited a weekly agricultural paper, the Schranne.
FRACASTORO [Fracastorius], GIROLAMO [Hieronymus] (1483–1553), Italian physician and poet, was born at Verona in 1483. It is related of him that at his birth his lips adhered so closely that a surgeon was obliged to divide them with his incision knife, and that during his infancy his mother was killed by lightning, while he, though in her arms at the moment, escaped unhurt. Fracastoro became eminently skilled, not only in medicine and belles-lettres, but in most arts and sciences. He studied at Padua, and became professor of philosophy there in 1502, afterwards practising as a physician in Verona. It was by his advice that Pope Paul III., on account of the prevalence of a contagious distemper, removed the council of Trent to Bologna. He was the author of many works, both poetical and medical, and was intimately acquainted with Cardinal Bembo, Julius Scaliger, Gianbattista Ramusio (q.v.), and most of the great men of his time. In 1517, when the builders of the citadel of San Felice (Verona) found fossil mussels in the rocks, Fracastoro was consulted about the marvel, and he took the same view—following Leonardo da Vinci, but very advanced for those days—that they were the remains of animals once capable of living in the locality. He died of apoplexy at Casi, near Verona, on the 8th of August 1553; and in 1559 the town of Verona erected a statue in his honour.
The principal work of Fracastoro is a kind of medical poem entitled Syphilidis, sive Morbi Gallici, libri tres (Verona, 1530), which has been often reprinted and also translated into French and Italian. Among his other works (all published at Venice) are De vini temperatura (1534); Homocentricorum (1535); De sympatha et antipathia rerum (1546); and De contagionibus (1546). His complete works were published at Venice in 1555, and his poetical productions were collected and printed at Padua in 1728.
FRAGONARD, JEAN-HONORÉ (1732–1806), French painter, was born at Grasse, the son of a glover. He was articled to a Paris notary when his father’s circumstances became straitened through unsuccessful speculations, but he showed such talent and inclination for art that he was taken at the age of eighteen to Boucher, who, recognizing the youth’s rare gifts but disinclined to waste his time with one so inexperienced, sent him to Chardin’s atelier. Fragonard studied for six months under the great luminist, and then returned more fully equipped to Boucher, whose style he soon acquired so completely that the master entrusted him with the execution of replicas of his paintings. Though not a pupil of the Academy, Fragonard gained the Prix de Rome in 1752 with a painting of “Jeroboam sacrificing to the Idols,” but before proceeding to Rome he continued to study for three years under Van Loo. In the year preceding his departure he painted the “Christ washing the Feet of the Apostles” now at Grasse cathedral. In 1755 he took up his abode at the French Academy in Rome, then presided over by Natoire. There he
