Page:EB1911 - Volume 21.djvu/608

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582
PICHLER—PICKERING, E. C.
  

campaign. On the 28th of December he crossed the Meuse on the ice, and stormed the island of Bommel, then crossed the Waal in the same manner, and, driving the English before him, entered Utrecht on the 19th of January, and Amsterdam on the 20th of January, and soon occupied the whole of Holland. This grand feat of arms was marked by many points of interest, such as the capture of the Dutch ships, which were frozen in the fielder, by the French hussars, and the splendid discipline of the ragged battalions in Amsterdam, who, with the richest city of the continent to sack, yet behaved with a self-restraint which few revolutionary and Napoleonic armies attained. The former friend of Saint just now offered his services to the Therniidorians, and after receiving from the Convention the title of “Sauveur de la Patrie,” subdued the sans-culoltes of Paris, when they rose in insurrection against the Convention on 12 Germinal (April 1). Pichegru then took command of the armies of the North, the Sambre-and-Meuse, and the Rhine, and crossing the Rhine in force took Mannheim in May 1795. When his fame was at its height he allowed his colleague Iourdan to be beaten, betrayed all his plans to the enemy, and took part in organizing a conspiracy for the return of Louis XVIII., in which he was to play, for his own aggrandizement, the part that Monk played from higher motives in the English revolution. His intrigues were suspected, and when he offered his resignation to the Directory in October 1795 it was to his surprise promptly accepted. He retired in disgrace, but hoped to serve the royalist cause by securing his electron to the Council of Five Hundred in May 1797. He was there the royalist leader, and planned a coup d'élal, but on the 18th Fructidor l1e was arrested, and with fourteen others deported to Cayenne in 1797. Escaping, he reached London in 1798, and served on General Korsakov’s staff in the campaign of 1799. He went to Paris in August 1803 with Georges Cadoudal to head a royalist rising against Napoleon; but, betrayed by a friend, he was arrested on the 28th of February I8C4, and on the 15th of April was found strangled in prison. It has often been asserted that he was murdered by the orders of Napoleon, but there is no foundation for the story. Pichegru’s campaigns of 1794 are marked by traits of an audacious genius which would not have disgraced Napoleon. His tremendous physical strength, the personal ascendancy he gained by this and by his powers of command made him a peculiarly formidable opponent, and thus enabled him to maintain a discipline which guaranteed the punctual execution of his orders He had also, strangely enough, the power of captivating honest men like Moreau. He iiattered in turn Saint Just and the Terrorists, the Thermidorians and the Directors, and played always for his own hand-a strange egoist who rose to fame as the leader of an idealist and sentimental crusade.

There is no really good life of Pichegru; perhaps the best is J. M. Gassier’s Vie du général Pichegru (Paris, 1815). For his treason, trial and death, consult Montga1llard’s Mémoires concernant la lrahlson de Pichegru (1804); Fauche-Borel’s Mémoires; Savary, Mémoires sur la mort de Pichegru (Paris, 1825); and G. Pierret, Pichegru, son procés et sa mort (1826).


PICHLER, KAROLINE (1769–1843), Austrian novelist, was born at Vienna on the 7th of September 1769, the daughter of Hofrat Franz von Greiner, and married, in 1796, Andreas Pichler, a government official. For many years her salon was the centre of the literary life in the Austrian capital, where she died on the 9th of July 1843 Her early works, Olwzer, first published anonymously (1802), Iriyllen (1803) and Ruth (1805), though displaying considerable talent, were immature. She made her mark in historical roniance, and the first of her novels of this class, Agathocles (1808), an answer to Gibbon’s attack on that hero in the Deelzne and Fall of the Roman Empire, attained great popularity. Among her other novels may be mentioned Die Belagerung Wiens (1824); Die Sckweden in Prag (1827); Die Wzedereroberung Ofens (1829) and H enrietle von England (1832). Her last work was Zeitbilder (1840).

The edition of Karoline Pichler’s Sämtliche Werke (1820–1845) comprises no less than 60 volumes. Her Denkwürdzgkelten aus meinem Leben (4 vols) was published posthumously in 1844. A selection of her narratives, Ausgewéhlte Erzahlungen, appeared in 4 vols. in 1894.


PICKENS, ANDREW (1739–1817), American soldier in the War of Independence, was born in Paxton, Bucks county, Pennsylvania, on the 19111 of September 1739. His family settled at the Waxhaws (in what is now Lancaster county), South Carol1na, in 1752. He fought against the Cherokees in 1761 as a lieutenant. In the War of Independence he rose to brigadier-general (after Cowpens) in the South Carolina militia. He was a captain among the American troops which surrendered at Ninety Six in November 1775. On the 14th of February 1779, with 300-400 men, he surprised and defeated about 700 Loyalists under Colonel Boyd on Kettle Creek, Wilkes county, Georgia; on the 20th of June he fought at Stono Ferry, and later in the same year at Tomassee defeated the Cherokees, who were all1ed with the British. Upon the surrender of Charleston (May 1780) he became a prisoner on parole, which he observed rigidly until, contrary to the promises made to him, Major James Dunlap plundered his plantation; he then returned to active service. His command (about 150 men) joined General Daniel Morgan immediately before the battle of Cowpens, in which Pickens commanded an advance guard (270-3 50 men from Georgia and North Carolina) and twice rallied the broken American militia; for his services Congress gave him a sword. With Colonel Henry Lee he harassed Lieut.-Colonel Banastre Tarleton, who was attempting to gather a Loyalist force just before the battle of Guilford Court House; and with Lee and others, he captured Augusta (June 5, 1781) after a siege. At Eutaw Springs (Sept. 8, 1781) he commanded the left wing and was wounded. In 1782 he defeated the Cherokees again and forced them to surrender all lands south of the Savannah and east of the Chattahoochee. After the war he was a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives for a number of years, of the state Constitutional Convention in 1790, and of the National House of Representatives in 1793–1795. He died in Pendleton district, South Carolina, on the 17th of August 1817. He had married in 1765 Rebecca Calhoun, an aunt of John C. Calhoun. Their son, Andrew Pickens (1779–1838), served as a lieutenant-colonel in the War of 1812, and was governor of South Carolina in 1816–1818.


PICKENS, FRANCIS WILKINSON (1805–1869), American politician, was born in Togadoo, St Paul’s parish, South Carolina, on the 7th of April 1805, son of Andrew Pickens (1779–1838) and grandson of General Andrew Pickens (1739–1817). He was educated at Franklin College, Athens, Georgia, and at South Carolina College, Columbia, and was admitted to the bar in 1829. In 1832 he was elected to the state House of Representatives, where, as chairman of a sub-committee, he submitted a report denying the right of Congress to exercise any control over the states. He was a Democratic member of the National House of Representatives in 1834–1843, served in the South Carolina. Senate in 1844–1845, was a delegate to the Nashville Southern Convention (see NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE) in 1850, was United States minister to Russia in 1858–1860, and in 1860–1862 was governor of South Carolina. He strongly advocated the secession of the Southern states; signed the South Carolina ordinance of secession; protested against Major Robert Anderson’s removal from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter; sanctioned the firing upon the “Star of the West” (Jan. 9, 1861), which was bringing supplies to Anderson, and the bombardment of Fort Sumter, and was a zealous supporter of the Confederate cause. At the close of his term he retired to his home at Edgefield, South Carolina, where he died on the 25th of January 1869.


PICKERING, EDWARD CHARLES (1846–), American physicist and astronomer, was born in Boston on the 19th of July 1846. He graduated in 1865 at the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard, where for the next two years he was a teacher of mathematics. Subsequently he became professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and in 1876 he was appointed professor of astronomy and director of the Harvard College observatory. In 1877 he decided to