had neither knowledge nor inclination, and he falls short therefore of the highest rank amongst great generals; but his place amongst the greatest of soldiers is beyond challenge.
See Thiébault’s Éloge funèbre, and Koch’s Mémoires de Masséna (4 vols., 1849), a valuable work, carefully compiled. In more modern times E. Gachot has produced several important works dealing with Masséna’s campaigns.
MASSENBACH, CHRISTIAN KARL AUGUST LUDWIG VON (1758–1827), Prussian soldier, was born at Schmalkalden on
the 16th of April 1758, and educated at Heilbronn and Stuttgart,
devoting himself chiefly to mathematics. He became an officer
of the Württemberg army in 1778, and left this for the service of
Frederick the Great in 1782. The pay of his rank was small, and
his appointment on the quartermaster-general’s staff made it
necessary to keep two horses, so that he had to write mathematical
school-books in his spare time to eke out his resources.
He was far however from neglecting the science and art of war,
for thus early he had begun to make his name as a theorist as
well as a mathematician. After serving as instructor in mathematics
to the young prince Louis, he took part with credit in the expedition into Holland, and was given the order Pour le mérite. On returning to Prussia he became mathematical instructor at the school of military engineering, leaving this post in 1792 to take part as a general staff officer in the war against France. He was awarded a prebend at Minden for his services as a topographical engineer on the day of Valmy, and after serving through the campaigns of 1793 and 1794 he published a number of memoirs on the military history of these years. He was chiefly occupied however with framing schemes for the reorganization of the then neglected general staff of the Prussian army, and many of his proposals were accepted. Bronsart von Schellendorf in his Duties of the General Staff says of Massenbach’s work in this connexion, “the organization which he proposed and in the main carried out survived even the catastrophes of 1806–1807, and exists even at the present moment in its original outline.” This must be accounted as high praise when it is remembered how much of the responsibility for these very disasters must be laid to Massenbach’s account. The permanent gain to the service due to his exertions was far more than formal, for it is to him that the general staff owes its tradition of thorough and patient individual effort. But the actual doctrine taught by Massenbach, who was now a colonel, may be summarized as the doctrine of positions carried to a ludicrous excess; the claims put forward for the general staff, that it was to prepare cut-and-dried plans of operations in peace which were to be imposed on the troop leaders in war, were derided by the responsible generals; and the memoirs on proposed plans of campaign to suit certain political combinations were worked out in quite unnecessary detail. It was noteworthy that none of the proposed plans of campaign considered France as an enemy.
In 1805 came threats of the war with Napoleon which Massenbach had strongly opposed. He was made quartermaster-general (chief of staff) to Prince Hohenlohe, over whom he soon obtained a fatal ascendancy. War was averted for a moment by the result of the battle of Austerlitz, but it broke out in earnest in October 1806. Massenbach’s influence clouded all the Prussian operations. The battles of Jena and Auerstädt were lost, and the capitulation of Prince Hohenlohe’s army was negotiated. Even suggestions of disloyalty were not wanting; an attempt to try him by court-martial was only frustrated by Prince Hohenlohe’s action in taking upon himself, as commander-in-chief, the whole responsibility for Massenbach’s actions. He then retired to his estate in the Posen province, and occupied himself in writing pamphlets, memoirs, &c. When his estates passed into the grand duchy of Warsaw, he chose to remain a Prussian subject, and on the outbreak of the war of liberation he asked in vain for a post on the Prussian staff. After the fall of Napoleon he took part in Württemberg politics, was expelled from Stuttgart and Heidelberg, and soon afterwards arrested at Frankfurt, delivered over to the Prussian authorities and condemned to fourteen years’ fortress imprisonment for his alleged publication of state secrets in his memoirs. He was kept in prison till 1826, when Frederick William III., having recovered from an accident, pardoned those whom he considered to have wronged him most deeply. He died on the 21st of November 1827, at his estate of Bialokoscz, Posen.
The obituary in Neuer Nekrolog der Deutschen, pt. ii. (Ilmenau, 1827) is founded on a memoir (Der Oberst C. v. Massenbach) which was published at the beginning of his imprisonment.
MASSENET, JULES ÉMILE FRÉDÉRIC (1842–), French composer, was born at Montaud, on the 12th of May 1842. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire, where he obtained the Grand Prix de Rome in 1863 with the cantata David Rizzio. Massenet became one of the most prolific composers of his time. His operas include the following: La Grande tante, one act, opéra comique (1867); Don César de Bazan, three acts, opéra comique (1872); Le Roi de Lahore, five acts, opéra (1877); Hérodiade, five
acts (Brussels, 1881); Manon, five acts, opéra comique (1884); Le Cid, four acts, opera (1885); Esclarmonde, four acts, opéra comique (1889); Le Mage, five acts, opera (1891); Werther, four acts (Vienna, 1892); Thaïs, three acts, opera (1894); Le Portrait de Manon, one act, opéra comique (1894); La Navarraise, two acts (Covent Garden, 1894); Sapho, opéra comique (1897); Cendrillon, opéra comique (1900); Grisélidis, opéra comique
(1901); Le Jongleur de Notre Dame (Mentone, 1902). Of these the most popular is Manon. Massenet’s other works include Marie Madeleine, sacred drama (1873); Eve, a mystery (1875); La Vierge, sacred legend (1880); six orchestral suites entitled Scènes hongroises,
Scènes pittoresques, Scènes dramatiques, Scènes napolitaines, Scènes de féerie, Scènes alsaciennes; music to the tragedy Les Erynnies, to Théodora, Le Crocodile, L’Hetman; a requiem, Narcisse; an idyll, Biblis; a Scène antique; several sets of songs, entitled Poème d’avril, Poème d’amour, Poème d’hiver, Poème d’octobre, Poème pastoral, Poème du souvenir; also a
large number of detached songs. He was professor of composition at the Conservatoire from 1878 to 1896, among his pupils being Hillemacher, Marty, Bruneau, Vidal, Pierné, Leroux and Charpentier. Massenet undoubtedly possesses a style of his own. He is at his best in music descriptive of the tender passion, and
many of the love scenes in his operas are very beautiful.
MASSEREENE, JOHN CLOTWORTHY, 1st Viscount (d. 1665), Anglo-Irish politician, was a son of Sir Hugh Clotworthy, sheriff of county Antrim. He was elected to the Irish parliament as member for county Antrim in 1634, and was a member both of the Short and of the Long Parliament in England. Clotworthy was a vehement opponent of the earl of Strafford, in whose impeachment he took an active share. He also took part in the prosecution of Archbishop Laud. Having unsuccessfully negotiated with Ormond for the surrender of Dublin to the Parliamentary forces in 1646, he was accused in the following year of having betrayed his cause, and also of embezzlement; in consequence of these charges he fled to the Continent, but returned to parliament in June 1648. On the 12th of December in that year he was arrested, and remained in prison for nearly three years. Having taken an active part in forwarding the Restoration, he was employed in Ireland in arranging the affairs of the soldiers and other adventurers who had settled in Ireland Clotworthy in no way abated his old animosity against “papists” and high Anglicans, and he championed the cause of the Irish Presbyterians; but being personally agreeable to Charles II., his ecclesiastical views were overlooked, and on the 21st of November 1660 he was created Baron Loughneagh and Viscount Massereene in the Irish peerage, with remainder in default of male heirs to his son-in-law, Sir John Skeffington. Massereene died without male issue in September 1665, and the title devolved on Skeffington, whose great-grandson, the fifth viscount, was created earl of Massereene in 1756. The earldom became extinct on the death of the fourth earl without male issue in 1816, the viscounty and barony of Loughneagh descending to his daughter Harriet, whose husband, Thomas Foster, took the name of Skeffington, and inherited from his mother in 1824 the titles of Viscount Ferrard and Baron Oriel of Collon in the Irish peerage, and from his father in 1828 that of Baron Oriel of Ferrard in the peerage of the United Kingdom.
