moreover, so shaken that they never recovered their confidence to the end of the campaign. The battle of Oudenarde was not the greatest of Marlborough's victories, but it affords almost the best illustration of his military character. Contrary to all the rules of war then in vogue, he fought a piecemeal and unpremeditated battle, with his back to a river, and with wearied troops, and the event justified him. An ordinary commander would have avoided fighting altogether, but Marlborough saw beyond the material conditions and risked all on his estimate of the moral superiority of his army and of the weakness of the French leading. His conduct of the battle, once it had opened, was a model of the “partial” victory—the destruction of a part of the enemy’s forces under the eyes of the rest—which was in the 17th and 18th centuries the tactician’s ideal, and was sufficient to ensure him the reputation of being the best general of his age. But it is in virtue of having fought at all that he passes beyond the criteria of the time and becomes one of the great captains of history.
OUDINÉ, EUGÈNE ANDRÉ (1810–1887), French sculptor and medallist, was born in Paris in 1810, and devoted himself from the beginning to the medallist’s branch of sculpture, although he also excelled in monumental sculpture and portrait busts. Having carried off the grand prize for medal engraving in 1831, he had a sensational success with his “Wounded Gladiator,” which he exhibited in the same year. He subsequently occupied official posts as designer, first to the Inland Revenue Office, and then to the Mint. Among his most famous medals are that struck in commemoration of the annexation of Savoy by France, and that on the occasion of the peace of Villafranca. Other remarkable pieces are “The Apotheosis of Napoleon I.,” “The Amnesty,” “Le Duc d’Orleans,” “Bertholet,” “The Universal Exposition,” “The Second of December, 1851,” “The Establishment of the Republic,” “The Battle of Inkermann," and “Napoleon’s Tomb at the Invalides.” For the Hotel de Ville in Paris he executed fourteen bas-reliefs, which were destroyed in 1871. Of his monumental works, many are to be seen in public places in and near Paris. In the Tuileries gardens is his group of “Daphnis and Hebe”; in the Luxembourg gardens the “Queen Bertha”; at the Louvre the “Buffon”; and in the courtyard of the same palace the “Bathsheba.” A monument to General Espagne is at the Invalides, and a King Louis VIII. at Versailles. Oudine, who may be considered the father of the modern medal, died in Paris in 1887.
OUDINOT, CHARLES NICOLAS (1767–1847), duke of Reggio, marshal of France, came of a bourgeois family in Lorraine, and was born at Bar-le-duc on the 25th of April 1767. He had a passion for a military career, and served in the regiment of Medoc from 1784 to 1787, when, having no hope of promotion on account of his non-noble birth, he retired with the rank of sergeant. The Revolution changed his fortunes, and in 1792, on the outbreak of war, he was elected lieutenant-colonel of the 3rd battalion of the volunteers of the Meuse. His gallant defence of the little fort of Bitsch in the Vosges in 1792 drew attention to him; he was transferred to the regular army in November 1793, and after serving in numerous actions on the Belgian frontier he was promoted general of brigade in June 1794 for his conduct at the battle of Kaiserslautern. He continued to serve with the greatest distinction on the German frontier under Hoche, Pichegru and Moreau, and was repeatedly wounded and once (in 1795) made prisoner. He was Massena’s right hand all through the great Swiss campaign of 1799—first as a general of division, to which grade he was promoted in April, and then as chief of the staff—and won extraordinary distinction at the battle of Zürich. He was present under Masséna at the defence of Genoa, and so distinguished himself at the combat of Monzambano that Napoleon presented him with a sword of honour. He was made inspector-general of infantry, and, on the establishment of the empire, given the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, but was not included in the first creation of marshals. He was at this time elected a member of the chamber of deputies, but he had little time to devote to politics. He took a conspicuous part in the war of 1805 in command of the famous division of the “grenadiers Oudinot,” formed of picked troops and organized by him, with which he seized the Vienna bridges, received a wound at Hollabrünn, and delivered the decisive blow at Austerlitz. In 1806 he won the battle of Ostrolenka, and fought with resolution and success at Friedland. In 1808 he was made governor of Erfurt and count of the Empire, and in 1809, after displaying brilliant courage at Wagram, he was promoted to the rank of marshal. He was made duke of Reggio, and received a large money grant in April 1810. Oudinot administered the government of Holland from 1810 to 1812, and commanded the II. corps of the Grande Armée in the Russian campaign. He was present at Lützen and Bautzen, and when holding the independent command of the corps directed to take Berlin was defeated at Gross Beeren (see Napoleonic Campaigns). He was then superseded by Ney, but the mischief was too great to be repaired, and Ney was defeated at Dennewitz. Oudinot was not disgraced, however, holding important commands at Leipzig and in the campaign of 1814. On the abdication of Napoleon he rallied to the new government, and was made a peer by Louis XVIII., and, unlike many of his old comrades, he did not desert to his old master in 1815. His last active service was in the French invasion of Spain in 1823, in which he commanded a corps and was for a time governor of Madrid. He died as governor of the Invalides on the 13th of September 1847. Oudinot was not, and made no pretence of being, a great commander, but he was a great general of division. He was the beau-ideal of an infantry general, energetic, thoroughly conversant with detail, and in battle as resolute and skilful as any of the marshals of Napoleon.
Oudinot’s eldest son, Charles Nicolas Victor, 2nd duke of Reggio (1791–1863), lieutenant-general, served through the later campaigns of Napoleon from 1809 to 1814, being in the latter year promoted major for gallant conduct. Unlike his father he was a cavalryman, and as such held command of the cavalry school at Saumur (1822–1830), and the inspector-generalcy of cavalry (1836–1848). He is chiefly known as the commander of the French expedition which besieged and took Rome in 1840 and re-established the temporal power of the pope. After the coup d’état of the 2nd of December 1851, in resistance to which he took a prominent part, he retired from military and political life, dying at Paris on the 7th of June 1863.
The 2nd duke wrote Aperçu historique sur la dignité de maréchal de France (1833); Considérations sur les ordres militaires de Saint Louis, &c. (1833); L’Emploi des troupes aux grands travaux d’utilité publique (1839); De la Cavalerie et du casernement des troupes à cheval (1840); Des Remontes de l’armée (1840); and a brief account of his Italian operations of 1849.
OUGHTRED, WILLIAM (fl. 1575–1660), English mathematician, was born at Eton, and educated there and at King’s College, Cambridge, of which he became fellow. Being admitted to holy orders, he left the university about 1603, and was presented to the rectory of Aldbury, near Guildford in Surrey; and about 1628 he was appointed by the earl of Arundel to instruct his son in mathematics. He corresponded with some of the most eminent scholars of his time on mathematical subjects; and his house was generally full of pupils from all quarters. It is said that he expired in a sudden transport of joy upon hearing the news of the vote at Westminster for the restoration of Charles II.
He published, among other mathematical works, Clavis Mathematical in 1631, in which he introduced new signs for certain mathematical operations (see Algebra); a treatise on navigation entitled Circles of Proportion, in 1632; works on trigonometry and dialling, and his Opuscula Mathematica, published posthumously in 1676.
OUIDA, the pen name—derived from a childish attempt to pronounce “Louisa”—of Maria Louise [de la] Ramée (1839–1908), English novelist, born at Bury St Edmunds, where her birth was registered on the 7th of January 1839. Her father, Louis Ramée, was French, and her mother, Susan Sutton, English. At an early age she went to live in London, and there began to contribute to the New Monthly and Bentley’s Magazine. In 1860 her first story, afterwards republished as Held in Bondage (1863), appeared in the New Monthly under the title of Granville de Vigne, and this was followed in quick succession by Strathmore
