of the sieges have resulted in its capture. The investment by the French under Marshal Hocquincourt in 1653, that of 1684 by the French under Marshal Bellefonds, and the successful enterprise of Marshal Noailles in 1694 are the three great events of its history in the 17th century. Surrendered by the French at the peace of Ryswick, it was again captured by the younger Marshal Noailles in 1706, after a brilliant defence; and in 1717 it held out against the Austrians. But its noblest resistance was yet to be made. In May 1809 it was besieged by the French, with 35,000 troops, under J. A. Verdier, P. F. Augereau and Gouvion St Cyr; forty batteries were erected against it and a heavy bombardment maintained; but under the leadership of Mariano Alvarez de Castro it held out till famine and fever compelled a capitulation on the 12th of December. The French, it is said, had spent 20,000 bombs and 60,000 cannon balls, and their loss was estimated at 15,000 men.
See Juan Gaspar Roig y Jalpi, Resumen de las Grandezas, &c. (Barcelona, 1678); J. A. Nieto y Samaniego, Memorias (Tarragona, 1810); G. E. Street, Gothic Architecture in Spain (London, 1869).
GEROUSIA (Gr. γερουσία, Doric γερωΐα), the ancient council
of elders at Sparta, corresponding in some of its functions to the
Athenian Boulē. In historical times it numbered twenty-eight
members, to whom were added ex officio the two kings and, later,
the five ephors. Candidates must have passed their sixtieth
year, i.e. they must no longer be liable to military service, and
they were possibly restricted to the nobility. Vacancies were
filled by the Apella, that candidate being declared elected whom
the assembly acclaimed with the loudest shouts—a method which
Aristotle censures as childish (Polit. ii. 9, p. 1271 a 9). Once
elected, the gerontes held office for life and were irresponsible.
The functions of the council were among the most important
in the state. It prepared the business which was to be submitted
to the Apella, and was empowered to set aside, in conjunction
with the kings, any “crooked” decision of the people. Together
with the kings and ephors it formed the supreme executive
committee of the state, and it exercised also a considerable
criminal and political jurisdiction, including the trial of kings;
its competence extended to the infliction of a sentence of exile
or even of death. These powers, or at least the greater part of
them, were transferred by Cleomenes III. to a board of patronomi
(Pausanias ii. 9. 1); the gerousia, however, continued to exist
at least down to Hadrian’s reign, consisting of twenty-three
members annually elected, but eligible for re-election (Sparta Museum Catalogue, Nos. 210, 612 and Introduction § 17).
Fuller discussions of the gerousia will be found in Aristotle, Politics, ii. 9, 17-19: Plutarch, Lycurgus, 5, 26; G. F. Schömann, Antiquities of Greece; The State (Eng. trans.), p. 230 ff.; G. Gilbert, Constitutional Antiquities of Sparta and Athens (Eng. trans.), p. 47 ff.; C. O. Müller, History and Antiquities of the Doric Race (Eng. trans.), iii. c. 6, §§ 1-3; G. Busolt, Die griechischen Staats- und Rechtsaltertümer (Iwan Müller’s Handbuch der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, iv. 1), § 89; Griechische Geschichte, 2te Auflage i. 550 ff.; A. H. J. Greenidge, Handbook of Greek Constitutional History, 100 ff.; H. Gabriel, De magistratibus Lacedaemoniorum, 31 ff. (M. N. T.)
GERRESHEIM, a town of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine
Province, 6 m. by rail E. of Düsseldorf. It contains a fine
Romanesque church, dating from the 13th century, which forms
a portion of an ancient nunnery (founded in the 10th century and
secularized in 1806), and has extensive glass manufactures and
wire factories. Pop. (1905) 14,434.
GERRHA (Arab. al-Jar ʽa), an ancient city of Arabia, on the
west side of the Persian Gulf, described by Strabo (Bk. xvi.)
as inhabited by Chaldean exiles from Babylon, who built their
houses of salt and repaired them by the application of salt water.
Pliny (Hist. Nat. vi. 32) says it was 5 m. in circumference with
towers built of square blocks of salt. Various identifications of
the site have been attempted, J. P. B. D’Anville choosing El
Katif, C. Niebuhr preferring Kuwet and C. Forster suggesting
the ruins at the head of the bay behind the islands of Bahrein.
See A. Sprenger, Die alte Geographie Arabiens (Bern, 1875), pp. 135-137.
GERRÚS, a small province of Persia, situated between
Khamseh and Azerbaījan in the N., Kurdistan in the W. and
Hamadan in the S. Its population is estimated at 80,000, and
its capital, Bíjár, 180 m. from Hamadan, has a population of
about 4000 and post and telegraph offices. The province is
fief of the chief of the Gerrús Kurds, pays a yearly revenue of
about £3000, and supplies a battalion of infantry (the 34th) to
the army.
GERRY, ELBRIDGE (1744–1814), American statesman, was
born in Marblehead, Massachusetts, on the 17th of July 1744,
the son of Thomas Gerry (d. 1774), a native of Newton, England,
who emigrated to America in 1730, and became a prosperous
Marblehead merchant. The son graduated at Harvard in 1762
and entered his father’s business. In 1772 and 1773 he was a
member of the Massachusetts General Court, in which he identified
himself with Samuel Adams and the patriot party, and in 1773
he served on the Committee of Correspondence, which became
one of the great instruments of intercolonial resistance. In
1774–1775 he was a member of the Massachusetts Provincial
Congress. The passage of a bill proposed by him (November
1775) to arm and equip ships to prey upon British commerce,
and for the establishment of a prize court, was, according to his
biographer, Austin, “the first actual avowal of offensive hostility
against the mother country, which is to be found in the annals of
the Revolution.” It is also noteworthy, says Austin, as “the
first effort to establish an American naval armament.” From
1776 to 1781 Gerry was a member of the Continental Congress,
where he early advocated independence, and was one of those who
signed the Declaration after its formal signing on the 2nd of
August 1776, at which time he was absent. He was active in
debates and committee work, and for some time held the chairmanship
of the important standing committee for the superintendence
of the treasury, in which capacity he exercised a predominating
influence on congressional expenditures. In February
1780 he withdrew from Congress because of its refusal to respond
to his call for the yeas and nays. Subsequently he laid his protest
before the Massachusetts General Court which voted its approval
of his action. On his return to Massachusetts, and while he was
still a member of Congress, he was elected under the new state
constitution (1780) to both branches of the state legislature,
but accepted only his election to the House of Representatives.
On the expiration of his congressional term, he was again chosen
a delegate by the Massachusetts legislature, but it was not until
1783 that he resumed his seat. During the second period of his
service in Congress, which lasted until 1785, he was a member
of the committee to consider the treaty of peace with Great
Britain, and chairman of two committees appointed to select a
permanent seat of government. In 1784 he bitterly attacked the
establishment of the order of the Cincinnati on the ground that
it was a dangerous menace to democratic institutions. In 1786
he served in the state House of Representatives. Not favouring
the creation of a strong national government he declined to
attend the Annapolis Convention in 1786, but in the following
year, when the assembling of the Constitutional Convention was
an assured fact, although he opposed the purpose for which it was
called, he accepted an appointment as one of the Massachusetts
delegates, with the idea that he might personally help to check too
strong a tendency toward centralization. His exertions in the
convention were ceaseless in opposition to what he believed to be
the wholly undemocratic character of the instrument, and eventually
he refused to sign the completed constitution. Returning to
Massachusetts, he spoke and wrote in opposition to its ratification,
and although not a member of the convention called to
pass upon it, he laid before this convention, by request, his
reasons for opposing it, among them being that the constitution
contained no bill of rights, that the executive would unduly
influence the legislative branch of the government, and that the
judiciary would be oppressive. Subsequently he served as an
Anti-Federalist in the national House of Representatives in 1789–1793,
taking, as always, a prominent part in debates and other
legislative concerns. In 1797 he was sent by President John
Adams, together with John Marshall and Charles Cotesworth
Pinckney, on a mission to France to obtain from the government
of the Directory a treaty embodying a settlement of
several long-standing disputes. The discourteous and underhanded
treatment of this embassy by Talleyrand and his agents,
