supplement to Militär. Wochenblatt (Berlin, 1878); Organ des militärwissenschaftl.
Vereins (Vienna, 1881); Reale instituto veneto di
scienze, viii. 5, 6 (Venice, 1881); Rivista militare Italiana (March
and April 1882); Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, vol. xxii. (Leipzig,
1885). Important controversial works are those of Turpin and
Warnery, two distinguished soldiers of the 18th century (Commentaires
sur les mémoires, &c. (Paris), 1769, and Commentaires sur les
comm. . . . du comte Turpin, Breslau, 1777). A critical estimate of
Montecucculi’s works will be found in Jähns Gesch. der Kriegswissenschaften,
ii. 1162–1178 (Leipzig, 1890).
MONTEFALCO, a town of the province of Perugia, Italy, 6 m. S.W. of Foligno, situated on a hill, 1550 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1901), 3397 (town); 5726 (commune). Its churches contain a number of pictures of the Umbrian school; S. Francesco has good frescoes (scenes from the life of S. Francis) of 1452, by Benozzo Gozzoli, in the choir. There is also a communal picture-gallery in the picturesque Palezzo Comunale.
MONTEFIASCONE, a town and episcopal see of the province
of Rome, Italy, built on a hill (2077 ft.) on the S.E. side of the
Lake of Bolsena, 70 m. by rail N.W. of Rome. Pop. (1901),
3041 (town); 9731 (commune). The cathedral (1519) is one of
the earliest structures by Sammicheli, S. Maria della Grazie is
also by him. The town has in San Flaviano (built in 1032,
repaired and enlarged in the Gothic style late in the 14th century),
a curious double church of importance in the history of architecture
(cf. G. T. Rivoira, Origini dell’ architettura lombarda, i. 326
sqq.); in its interior some 14th-century frescoes were discovered
in 1896. In the crypt is the grave of a traveller, who succumbed
to excessive drinking of the local wine known as Est, est, est.
The story is that his valet who preceded him wrote “est” on
the doors of all the inns where good wine was to be had, and that
here the inscription was thrice repeated. It is possible that
Montefiascone occupies the site of the Fanum Voltumnae, at
which the representatives of the twelve chief cities of Etruria
met in the days of their independence; while under the Empire
the festival was held near Volsinii.
MONTEFIORE, SIR MOSES HAIM (1784–1885), Jewish
philanthropist, eldest son of Joseph Elias Montefiore, a London
merchant, and of Rachel, daughter of Abraham Lumbroso de
Mattos Mocatta, was born at Leghorn, on the 24th of October
1784. His paternal ancestors were Jewish merchants who settled
at Ancona and Leghorn in the 17th century, whilst his grandfather,
Moses Haim Montefiore, emigrated from the latter town
to London in 1758. Montefiore entered the Stock Exchange, his
uncle purchasing for him at a cost of £1200 the right to practise
as one of the twelve Jewish brokers licensed by the city of
London. Although belonging to the Sephardic or “Spanish”
congregation of Jews, he married in 1812 Judith, a daughter of
Levi Barent Cohen, of the “German” Jews, another of whose
daughters was the wife of Nathan Mayer Rothschild, the head
of the great banking firm; this relationship led to a close connexion
in business between Montefiore and that house, and his
brother Abraham married Henrietta Rothschild, a sister of the
financier. In 1824 Montefiore, having amassed a fortune,
retired from the Stock Exchange. From his forty-third year
Montefiore devoted all his energies to ameliorating the lot of his
co-religionists. His first pilgrimage to Palestine was undertaken
in 1827, and resulted in a friendship with Mehemet Ali which
was to lead to much practical good. Immediately on his return,
Montefiore began to take an active part in the struggle which
British Jews were then carrying on to obtain full political and
civic rights. In 1837 he became the city of London’s second
Jewish sheriff, and was knighted. In 1838, accompanied by
Lady Montefiore, he started on a second voyage to Palestine,
in order to submit to Mehemet Ali a scheme for Jewish colonization
in Syria. Though political disturbances rendered his
efforts again unsuccessful, the year 1840 brought Montefiore
once more before Mehemet, this time to plead the cause of some
Jews imprisoned at Damascus on a charge of ritual murder.
He obtained their release, and on his way back wrung from the
Porte a decree giving Jews throughout Turkey the utmost
privileges accorded to aliens. In 1846 the threatened re-issue
in Russia of an Imperial ukase (first promulgated in 1844)
ordering the withdrawal of all Jews from within 50 versts of the
German and Austrian frontiers, caused Montefiore to proceed
to St Petersburg, where in an interview with the tsar he succeeded
in getting the ukase rescinded. On his return, Queen
Victoria, on the recommendation of Sir Robert Peel, made him a
baronet. In 1859 a case of injustice which attracted the attention
of all Europe brought Sir Moses to the gates of the Vatican.
A Jewish child named Mortara had been secretly baptized by
its nurse and stolen from its mother, who died of grief. Cardinal
Antonelli, in the name of the pope, refused to give up the boy,
who became a priest. In 1863 we find Montefiore on a mission
in Constantinople to obtain from the Sultan, Abdul Aziz, the
confirmation of his predecessor’s decrees in favour of the Jews;
in 1864 in Morocco to combat an outbreak of anti-Semitism; in
1866 in Syria, relieving the distress resulting from a plague of
locusts and an epidemic of cholera; and in 1867 in Rumania,
once more pleading the cause of the oppressed Jews with Prince
Charles. In 1872 Montefiore was deputed by the British Jews
to present to Alexander II. their congratulations on the bicentenary
of the birth of Peter the Great, and was received by the
tsar with great honour at the Winter Palace. His seventh and
last pilgrimage to the Holy Land was made in 1875, of which he
wrote an account in his Narrative of a Forty Days’ Sojourn in the
Holy Land, published in that year. The last decade of his life
was passed in comparative quiet upon his estate near Ramsgate,
in Kent; and there, after having received general congratulations
on the completion of his hundredth year, he passed peacefully
away on the 28th of July 1885. Sir Moses Montefiore was a
strictly orthodox Jew, scrupulously observant of both the
spirit and the letter of the Scriptures; in his grounds he had a
synagogue built where services are still held twice a day, a
college where ten rabbis live and expound the Jewish law,
and a mausoleum that contains the remains of himself and
of Lady Montefiore, who died in 1862.
MONTEFRIO, a town of southern Spain, in the province of
Granada, on the river Bilano. Pop. (1900), 10,725. Montefrio
is largely Moorish in character, and dominated by a Moorish
castle. Being built midway between the Sierra de Priego and
Sierra Parapanda, and commanding the open valley between
these ranges, it became one of the chief frontier fortresses of the
Moors in the 15th century. Its industries include manufactures
of cotton stuffs, alcohol and soap.
MONTÉGUT, JEAN BAPTISTE JOSEPH ÉMILE (1825–1895),
French critic, was born at Limoges on the 14th of June 1825.
He began to write for the Revue des deux mondes in 1847,
contributing between 1851 and 1857 a series of articles on the
English and American novel, and in 1857 he became chief literary
critic of the review. Émile Montégut translated Essais de
philosophies américaine (1850) from Emerson; Révolution de 1688
(2 vols. 1853) from Macaulay’s History; and also produced the
Œuvres completès (10 vols. 1868–1873) of Shakespeare. Among
his numerous critical works are Écrivains modernes d’Angleterre
(3rd series, 1885–1892) and, Heures de lecture d’un critique (1891),
studies of John Aubrey, Pope, Wilkie Collins and Sir John
Mandeville. Montégut died in Paris on the 11th of December
1895.
MONTEIL, AMANS ALEXIS (1769–1850), French historian, was born at Rodez in 1769, and died at Cely (Seine-et-Marne) in 1850. His tastes were historical, and he taught history at Rodez, at Fontainebleau and at St Cyr. He held that a disproportionate importance had been given to kings, their ministers and generals, and that it was necessary rather to study the people. In his Histoire des français des divers états, ou histoire de France aux cinq derniers siècles (10 vols., 1828–1844) he undertook to describe the different classes and occupations of the community. For this he made a collection of manuscripts, which he sold in 1835 (many of them passed into the library of Sir Thomas Philipps), drawing up a catalogue under the singular title of Traité de matériaux manuscrits de divers genres d’histoire. He boasted of having been the first to write really “national” history, and he wished further to show this in a memoir entitled L’Influence de l’histoire des divers états, ou comment fût allée la France si elle eût eu cette histoire (1840; reprinted in 1841 under
