made use of them to protect his kingdom against the Picts and Scots, and rewarded them for their services with a grant of land. Later we find the Britons at war with the new-comers, now established in Kent, and four battles are fought, in the last of which, according to the Historia Brittonum, the king's son Vortemir, their leading opponent, is slain. The Historia Brittonum is our only authority for the marriage of Vortigern with the daughter of Hengest before the war. It also records the massacre of the British nobles after the death of Vortemir and the subsequent grant of Essex and Sussex to the invaders by Vortigern.
See Historia Brittonum, ed. Th. Mommsen in Mon. Hist. Germ. xiii.; Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. Earle and Plummer (Oxford, 1899); Bede, Hist. Eccl., ed. C. Plummer (Oxford, 1896).
VOSGES, a frontier department of eastern France, formed in 1790 chiefly of territory previously belonging to Lorraine, together with portions of Franche-Comté and Champagne, and bounded N. by the department of Meurthe-et-Moselle, E. by Alsace, S.E. by the territory of Belfort, S. by the department of Haute-Saône, W. by Haute-Marne and N.W. by Meuse. Pop. (1906) 429,812; area, 2279 sq. m. The Vosges mountains (see below) form a natural boundary on the east, their highest French eminence, the Hohneck, attaining 4482 ft. The Monts Faucilles traverse the south of the department in a broad curve declining on the north into elevated plateaus, on the south encircling the upper basin of the Saône. This chain, dividing the basins cf the Rhone and the Rhine, forms part of the European watershed between the basins of the Mediterranean and Atlantic. The Moselle and the Meuse, tributaries of the Rhine, have the largest drainage areas in the department; a small district in the N.W. sends its waters to the Seine, the rest belongs to the basin of the Rhone. The Moselle rises in the Col de Bussang in the extreme south-east, and in a N.N.W. course of about 70 m. in the department receives the Moselotte and the Vologne on the right; the Mortagne and Meurthe on the right and the Madon on the left bank also belong to this department though they join the Moselle outside its borders. The source of the Saône is on the southern slope of the Faucilles. On the shore of Lake Gérardmer lies the beautifully situated town of Gérardmer, a well-known centre for mountain excursions.
The elevation and the northward exposure of the valleys make the climate severe, and a constant dampness prevails, owing both to the abundance of the rainfall and to the impermeability of the subsoil. The average temperature at Épinal (1070 ft.) is 49° F. The annual rainfall at Épinal is 28 in., at St Dié 32 in. and in the mountains more. Arable farming flourishes in the western districts where wheat, oats and potatoes are largely grown. The vine is cultivated on the river banks, to best advantage on those of the Moselle. Pasture is abundant in the mountainous region, where cheese-making is carried on to some extent, but the best grazing is in the central valleys. Forests, which occupy large tracts on the flanks of the Vosges, cover about one-third of the department, and are a principal source of its wealth. Sawmills are numerous in the Vosges and the manufacture of furniture, sabots, brushes and woodworking in general are prominent industries. The department has mines of lignite and stone quarries of various kinds. There are numerous mineral springs, of which those of Contrexéville, Plombières, Vittel, Bains-les-Bains, Martigny-les-Bains and Bussang may be named. The manufacture of textiles is the chief industry, comprising the spinning and weaving of cotton, wool, silk, hemp and flax, and the manufacture of hosiery and of embroidery and lace, Mirecourt (pop. 5092) being an important centre for the two last. The department forms the diocese of St Dié (province of Besançon), has its court of appeal and educational centre at Nancy, and belongs to the district of the XX. Army Corps. It is divided into the arrondissements of Épinal, Mirecourt, Neufchâteau, Remiremont and St Dié, with 29 cantons and 530 communes.
VOSGES (Lat. Vogesus or Vosagus, Ger. Wasgau or Vogesen), a mountain range of central Europe, stretching along the west side of the Rhine valley in a N.N.E. direction, from Basel to Mainz, for a distance of 150 m. Since 1871 the southern portion, from the Ballon d'Alsace to Mont Donon, has been the frontier between France and Germany. There is a remarkable similarity between the Vosges and the corresponding range of the Black Forest on the other side of the Rhine: both lie within the same degrees of latitude and have the same geological formation; both are characterized by fine forests on their lower slopes, above which are open pasturages and rounded summits of a uniform altitude; both have a steep fall to the Rhine and a gradual descent on the other side. The Vosges in their southern portion are mainly of granite, with some porphyritic masses, and of a kind of red sandstone (occasionally 1640 ft. in thickness) which on the western versant bears the name of “grès Vosgien.”
Geographically the range is divided south to north into four sections: the Grandes Vosges (62 m.), extending from Belfort to the valley of the Bruche; the Central Vosges (31 m.), between the Bruche and the Col de Saverne; the Lower Vosges (30 m.), between the Col de Saverne and the source of the Lauter; and the Hardt (q.v.). The rounded summits, of the Grandes Vosges are called “ballons.” The departments of Vosges and Haute Saône are divided from Alsace and the territory of Belfort by the Ballon d'Alsace or St Maurice (4100 ft.). Thence northwards the average height of the range is 3000 ft., the highest point, the Ballon de Guebwiller (Gebweiler), or Soultz, rising to the east of the main chain to 4680 ft. The Col de Saales, between the Grandes Vosges and the central section, is nearly 1900 ft. high; the latter is both lower and narrower than the Grandes Vosges, the Mont Donon (3307 ft.) being the highest summit. The railway from Paris to Strassburg and the Rhine and Marne Canal traverse the Col de Saverne. No railway crosses the Vosges between Saverne and Belfort, but there are carriage roads over the passes of Bussang from Remiremont to Thann, the Schlucht (3766 ft.) from Gérardmer to Munster, the Bonhomme from St Did to Colmar, and the pass from St Did to Ste Marie-aux-Mines. The Lower Vosges are a sandstone plateau ranging from 1000 to 1850 ft. high, and are crossed by the railway from Hagenau to Sarreguemines, defended by the fort of Bitche.
Meteorologically the difference between the eastern and western versants of the range is very marked, the annual rainfall being much higher and the mean temperature being much lower in the latter than in the former. On the eastern slope the vine ripens to a height of 1300 ft.; on the other hand, its only rivers are the 111 and other shorter streams. The Moselle, Meurthe and Sarre all rise on the Lorraine side. Moraines, boulders and polished rocks testify the existence of the glaciers which formerly covered the Vosges. The lakes, surrounded by pines, beeches and maples, the green meadows which provide pasture for large herds of cows, and the fine views of the Rhine valley, Black Forest and snow-covered Swiss mountains combine to make the district picturesque. On the lower heights and buttresses of the main chain on the Alsatian side are numerous castles, generally in ruins. At several points on the main ridge, especially at St Odile above Ribeauville (Rappoltsweiler), are the remains of a wall of unmortared stone with tenons of wood, 6 to 7 ft. thick and 4 to 5 ft. high, called the pagan wall (Mur Payen). It was used for defence in the middle ages, and archaeologists are divided as to whether it was built for this purpose by the Romans, or before their arrival.
VOSMAER, CAREL (1826-1888), Dutch poet and art-critic, was born at the Hague on the 20th of March 1826. He was trained to the law, and held various judiciary posts, but in 1873 withdrew entirely from legal practice. His first volume of poems, 1860, did not contain much that was remarkable. His temperament was starved in the very thin air of the intellectual Holland of those days, and it was not until after the sensational appearance of Multatuli (Edward Douwes-Dekker) that Vosmaer, at the age of forty, woke up to a consciousness of his own talent. In 1869 he produced an exhaustive monograph on Rembrandt, which was issued in French. Vosmaer became a contributor to, and then the leading spirit and editor of, a journal which played an immense part in the awakening of Dutch literature; this was the Nederlandsche Spectator, in which a great many of his own works, in prose and verse, originally appeared. The remarkable miscellanies of Vosmaer, called Birds of Diverse Plumage, appeared in three volumes, in 1872, 1874 and 1876. In 1879 he selected from these all the pieces in verse, and added other poems to them. In 1881 he published an archaeological novel called Amazone, the scene of which was laid in Naples and Rome, and which described the raptures of a Dutch antiquary in love. Vosmaer
