whole English force, which he held until 1607, being opposed to Ambrosio Spinola, the most famous of the continental generals of the time, against whom he manoeuvred and fought in a manner equal to the best of his brother’s, or even of Parma’s, work. From 1607 to 1620 he saw but little active service except the siege of Julich (1610). In 1620 he accepted the command of the volunteers who were going to the assistance of the Elector Palatine. This famous expedition to the Rhine and the Main was from the first a forlorn hope. Opposed by his old adversary Spinola, Vere manoeuvred with success for two campaigns, but he was helpless against the armies of Tilly and Cordova, and in the end he could only furnish scanty garrisons for Frankenthal, Heidelberg and Mannheim. Each of these places fell after a desperate resistance, and their garrisons returned to England. In 1624 Vere was once more on service in the United Provinces. The attempted relief of Breda in the following year was considered one of the most brilliant feats of the time, and the general was made Baron Vere of Tilbury. In 1629 the sieges of Bois-le-duc (s’Hertogenbosch) and of Maestricht closed his military career. Lord Vere died suddenly in 1635 and was buried by the side of his brother in Westminster Abbey.
See Clements C. Markham, The Fighting Veres (London, 1888).
VERESHCHAGIN, VASSILI VASSILIEVICH (1842–1904),
Russian artist and traveller, was born at Tcherepovets, in the
government of Novgorod, on the 26th of October 1842. His
father was a Russian landowner of noble birth, and from his
mother he inherited Tatar blood. When he was eight years
old he was sent to Tsarskoe Selo to enter the Alexander cadet
corps, and three years later he entered the naval school at
St Petersburg, making his first voyage in 1858. He graduated
first in the list from the naval school, but left the service immediately to begin the study of drawing in earnest. He won a medal two years later, in 1863, from the St Petersburg
Academy for his “Ulysses slaying the Suitors.” In 1864 he
proceeded to Paris, where he studied under Gerome, though
he dissented widely from his master’s methods. In the Salon
of 1866 he exhibited a drawing of “Doukhobors chanting their
Psalms,” and in the next year he accompanied General Kauffmann’s expedition to Turkestan, his military service at the siege of Samarkand procuring for him the cross of St George. He was an indefatigable traveller—in Turkestan in 1869, the Himalayas, India and Tibet in 1873, and again in India in 1884. After a period of hard work in Paris and Munich he exhibited some of his Turkestan pictures in St Petersburg in 1874, among them two which were afterwards suppressed on
the representations of Russian soldiers—“The Apotheosis of
War,” a pyramid of skulls dedicated “to all conquerors, past,
present and to come,” and “Left Behind,” the picture of a
dying soldier deserted by his fellows. Vereshchagin was with
the Russian army during the Turkish campaign of 1877; he
was present at the crossing of the Shipka Pass and at the siege of Plevna, where his brother was killed; and he was dangerously wounded during the preparations for the crossing of the Danube near Rustchuk. At the conclusion of the war he acted as secretary to General Skobelev at San Stefano. After the war he settled at Munich, where he produced his war pictures so rapidly that he was freely accused of employing assistants. The sensational subjects of his pictures, and their didactic aim—the promotion of peace by a representation of the horrors of war—attracted a large section of the public not usually interested in art to the series of exhibitions of his pictures in Paris in 1881 and subsequently in London, Berlin, Dresden, Vienna and other cities. He aroused much controversy by his series of three pictures of a Roman execution (the Crucifixion), of sepoys blown from the guns in India, and of the execution of Nihilists in St Petersburg. A journey in Syria and Palestine in 1884 furnished him with an equally discussed
set of subjects from the New Testament. The “1812” series
on Napoleon’s Russian campaign, on which he also wrote a
book, seem to have been inspired by Tolstoi’s War and Peace,
and were painted in 1893 at Moscow, where the artist eventually settled. Vereshchagin was in the Far East during the Chino-Japanese War, with the American troops in the Philippines, and with the Russian troops in Manchuria. He perished in the sinking of the Russian flagship, “Petropavlovsk,” on the 13th of April 1904. His last work, a picture of a council of war presided over by Admiral Makaroff, was recovered almost
uninjured.
See E. Zabel, “Wereschtschagin” (1900), in Knackfuss’s Künstlermonographien (Bielefeld and Leipzig). The finest collection of his pictures is in the Tretiakov gallery in Moscow.
VERGA, GIOVANNI (1840–), Italian novelist, was born at Catania, Sicily. In 1865 he published Storia di una peccatrice and I Carbonari della montagna, but his literary reputation was established by his Eva and Storia di una capinera (1869). Other novels followed, the best of which are Malavoglia (1881) and Maestro Don Gesualdo (1889). His finest work, however, is seen in his short stories and sketches of Sicilian peasantry, Medda (1874) and Vita dei campi (1880); and his Cavalleria Rusticana acquired new popularity from its dramatization and from Mascagni’s opera on this subject. Verga and Fogazzaro between them may be said to have faithfully chronicled the inner and popular life of southern and northern Italy.
VERGE (Lat. virga, a rod), originally a staff denoting authority, whence (from the ceremony in swearing fealty to a lord) the sense of a measurement, and so boundary or border, of land, or generally a margin of space. In architecture, a verge is the edge of the tiling projecting over the gable of a roof; that on the horizontal portion being called “eaves.” The term “verge board,” generally now known as barge board, is the name given to the board under the verge of gables, sometimes moulded, and often very richly carved, perforated and cusped, and frequently having pendants and sometimes finials at the apex.
VERGENNES, CHARLES GRAVIER, Comte de (1717–1787), French statesman, was born at Dijon on the 20th of December 1717. He was introduced to the profession of diplomacy by his uncle, M. de Chavigny, under whom he saw his first service at Lisbon. His successful conduct of French interests at the court of Trier in 1750 and the following years led to his being sent to Constantinople in 1755 at first as minister plenipotentiary, then as ambassador. In 1768 he was recalled, ostensibly because of a mesalliance with Mme Testa, widow of a Pera surgeon, but really because Choiseul thought him not zealous enough in provoking a quarrel between Russia and Turkey. After Choiseul’s death he was sent to Stockholm with instructions to help the aristocratic party of the “Hats” with advice and money. The revolution by which Gustavus III. (August 19, 1772) secured for himself the reality instead of the shadow of power was a great diplomatic triumph for France. With the accession of Louis XVI. Vergennes became foreign minister. His general policy was one of friendly relations with Austria, combined with the limitation of Joseph II.’s ambitious designs; the protection of Turkey; and opposition at all points to England. His hatred of England and his desire to avenge the disasters of the Seven Years’ War led to his support of the American States in the War of Independence, a step of which the moral and financial results had not a little to do with the Revolution of 1789. Vergennes sought by a series of negotiations to secure the armed neutrality of the Northern Powers eventually carried out by Catherine II.; he ceded to the demands of Beaumarchais that France should secretly provide the Americans with arms and volunteers. In 1777 he informed the American commissioners that France acknowledged the Republic and was willing to form an offensive and defensive alliance with the new state. In domestic affairs Vergennes belonged to the old school. He intrigued against Necker, whom he regarded as a dangerous innovator, a republican, a foreigner and a Protestant. In 1781 he became chief of the council of finance, and in 1783 he supported the nomination of Calonne as controller general. Vergennes died on the 13th of February 1787, before the meeting of the Assembly of Notables which he is said to have suggested to Louis XVI.
