Richelieu, partly because of his medical reputation, but more because of his philanthropy. He received the titles of physician and councillor to the king, and was desired to organize a scheme of public assistance. Many difficulties were put in his way, however, and he therefore returned until 1624 to Poitou, where Richelieu made him “ commissary general of the poor.” It was six years before he was able to begin his work in Paris by opening an information bureau at the sign of the Grand Coq near the Pont Saint-Michel. This bureau d'adresse was labour bureau, intelligence department, exchange and charity organization in one; and the sick were directed to doctors prepared to give them free treatment. Presently he established a free dispensary in the teeth of the opposition of the faculty in Paris. The Paris faculty refused to accept the new medicament's proposed by the heretic from Montpellier, restricting themselves to the old prescriptions of blood-letting and purgation. In addition to his bureau d'adresse Renaud established a system of lectures and debates on scientific subjects, the reports of which from 1633 to 1642 were published in 1651 with the title Recueil des conférences publiques; Under the protection of Richelieu he started the first French newspaper, the Gazette (1631), which appeared weekly and contained political and foreign news. He also edited the Mercure français and published all manner of reports and pamphlets. In 1637 he opened in Paris the first Mont de Piété, an institution of which he had seen the advantages in Italy. In 1640 the medical faculty, headed by Guy Patin, started a campaign against the innovator of the Grand Coq. After the death of Richelieu and of Louis XIII. the victory of Renaudot's enemies was practically certain. The parlement of Paris ordered him to return the letters patent for the establishment of his bureau and his Mont de Piété, and refused to allow him to practise medicine in Paris. The Gazette remained, and in 1646 Renaudot was appointed by Mazarin historiographer to the king. During the first Fronde he had his printing presses at Saint-Germain. He died on the 25th of October 1653. His difficulties had been increased by his Protestant opinions. His sons Isaac (d. 1688) and Eusèbe (d. 1679) were students for ten years before they could obtain their doctorates from the faculty. They carried on their father's work, and defended the virtues of antimony, laudanum and quinine against the schools.
See E. Hatin, Théodore Renaudot (Poitiers, 1883), and La Maison du Coq (Paris, 1885); Michel Emery, Renaudot et l'introduction de la médication chimique (Paris, 1889); and G. Bonnefont, Un Oublié. Théophraste Renaudot (Limoges, n.d.).
RENDEZVOUS, a place of meeting appointed or arranged
for the assembling of troops, ships or persons. The word was
adopted in English at the end of the 16th century from the
French substantival use of the imperative rendez vous, i.e.
" render or betake yourselves."
RENDSBURG, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein, situated on the Eider and on the Kaiser Wilhelm canal, in a flat and sandy district, 20 m. W. of Kiel, on the Altona-Vamdrup railway. Pop. (1905) 15,577. It consists of three parts-the crowded Altstadt, on an island in the Eider;
the Neuwerk, on the south bank of the river; and the Kronwerk, on the north bank.
Rendsburg is the chief place in the basin of the Eider, and when in the possession of Denmark was maintained as a fortress. Its present importance, however, rests on the commercial facilities afforded by its connexion with the North Sea and the Baltic through the Kaiser Wilhelm canal, by which transit trade is carried on in grain, timber, Swedish iron and coals. The principal industries are cotton-weaving, tanning and the manufacture of artificial manures. Rendsburg came into existence under the shelter of a castle founded by the Danes about the year 1100 on an island of the Eider, and was an object of dispute between the Danish kings and the counts of Holstein. In 1252 it was adjudged to the latter. The town was surrounded with ramparts in 1539, but the fortifications of the Kronwerk were not constructed till the end of the 17th century. During the Thirty Years' War Rendsburg was taken both by the Imperialists and the Swedes, but in 1645 it successfully resisted a second siege by the latter.
The war of 1848–50 began with the capture of Rendsburg by the Holsteiners by a coup de main, and it formed the centre of the German operations. On the departure of the German troops in 1852 the Danes demolished the fortifications on the north side. Immediately after the death of King Frederick VII. (15th of November 1863) the town was occupied by the Saxon troops acting as the executive of the German Confederation, and it was the base of the operations of the Austrians and Prussians against Schleswig in the spring of the following year. On the termination of the Danish war in 1864 Rendsburg was jointly occupied by Austrian and Prussian military until 1866, when it fell to Prussia.
See Warmstedt, Rendsburg (Kiel, 1850).
RENÉ I. (1409-1480), duke of Anjou, of Lorraine and Bar, count of Provence and of Piedmont, king of Naples, Sicily and Jerusalem, was born at Angers on the 16th of January 1409, the second son of Louis II., king of Sicily, duke of Anjou, count of Provence, and of Yolande of Aragon. Louis II. died in 1417, and his sons, together with their brother-in-law, afterwards Charles VII. of France, were brought up under the guardianship of their mother. The elder, Louis III., succeeded to the crown of Sicily and to the duchy of Anjou, René being known as the count of Guise. By his marriage treaty (1419) with Isabel, elder daughter of Charles II., duke of Lorraine, he became heir to the duchy of Bar, which was claimed as the inheritance of his mother Yolande, and, in right of his wife, heir to the duchy of Lorraine. René, then only ten, was to be brought up in Lorraine under the guardianship of Charles II. and Louis, cardinal of Bar, both of whom were attached to the Burgundian party, but he retained the right to bear the arms of Anjou. He was far from sympathizing with the Burgundians, and, joining the French army at Reims in 1429, was present at the Coronation of Charles VII. When Louis of Bar died in 1430 René came into sole possession of his duchy, and in the next year, on his father-in-law's death, he succeeded to the duchy of Lorraine. But the inheritance was claimed by the heir-male, Antoine de Vaudémont, who with Burgundian help defeated René at Bulgnéville in July 1431. The Duchess Isabel effected a truce with Antoine de Vaudémont, but the duke remained a prisoner of the Burgundians until April 1432, when he recovered his liberty on parole on yielding up as hostages his two sons, Jean and Louis of Anjou. His title as duke of Lorraine was confirmed by his suzerain, the Emperor Sigismund, at Basel in 1434. This proceeding roused the anger of the Burgundian duke, Philip the Good, who required him early in the next year to return to his prison, from which he was released two years later on payment of a heavy ransom. He had succeeded to the kingdom of Naples through the deaths of his brother Louis III. and of Jeanne II. de Duras, queen of Naples, the last heir of the earlier dynasty. Louis had been adopted by her in 1431, and she now left her inheritance to René. The marriage of Marie de Bourbon, niece of Philip of Burgundy, with John, duke of Calabria, René's eldest son, cemented peace between the two princes. After appointing a regency in Bar and Lorraine, he visited his provinces of Anjou and Provence, and in 1438 set sail for Naples, which had been held for him by the Duchess Isabel. René's captivity, and the poverty of the Angevin resources due to his ransom, enabled Alphonso of Aragon, who had been first adopted and then repudiated by Jeanne II., to make some headway in the kingdom of Naples, especially as he was already in possession of the island of Sicily. In 1441 Alphonso laid siege to Naples, which he sacked after a six months' siege. René returned to France in the same year, and though he retained the title of king of Naples his effective rule was never recovered. Later efforts to recover his rights in Italy failed. His mother Yolande, who had governed Anjou in his absence, died in 1442. René took part in the negotiations with the English at Tours in 1444, and peace was consolidated by the marriage of his younger daughter, Margaret, with Henry VI. at Nancy. René now made over the government of Lorraine to John, duke of Calabria, who was, however, only formally installed as duke of Lorraine on the death of Queen Isabel in
