1909 Captain Fiegenschuh, with a small force of tirailleurs, and Acyl’s contingents, advanced up the Batha to a place within 15 m. of Abeshr, where, on the 1st of June, the enemy were defeated. The next day another fight took place close to Abeshr. The Wadaians were again put to flight and the town bombarded with cannon. Doud Murra with a small following fled north, and Abeshr was occupied by the French. The prince Acyl was subsequently placed on the throne, and, under French guidance, governed Wadai proper, Dar Sila, Dar Runga and other tributary states being directly governed by French residents.
The war was not, however, ended by the occupation of Abeshr. Captain Fiegenschuh’s column, operating south-east of Abeshr, was cut off by the Massalit Arabs near the Darfur frontier, but a punitive force retrieved this disaster in April following. While these operations were in progress, Lieut. Boyd Alexander (b. 1873), who had previously crossed from the Niger to the Nile, the first British explorer to enter Wadai, passed through Abeshr on his way to Darfur. At the station of Nyeri, in Dar Tama, on the Darfur border, he was murdered on the 2nd of April 1910.
In November 1910 a French column, 300 strong, under Colonel Moll, while operating in the Massalit country was attacked by 5000 men under Doud Murra and the sultan of the Massalit. The enemy was beaten off, but the French had over 100 casualties, including Colonel Moll killed.
See G. Nachtigal, Sahara und Sudan (3 vols., Berlin, 1879–1889); Captain Julien, “Le Dar Ouadai,” Renseign. colon. comité de l’Afrique française (1904); J. van Vollenhoven, “Le Voyage de Nachtigal au Ouadai,” Renseign. colon. (1903); Captain Repoux, “Le Ouadai,” B.S.G. Com. Bordeaux (1909); Commandant Bordeaux, “Deux Contre-rezzous dans l'Ouaddai,” La Géog. B.S.G. Paris (1908); A. Ferrier, “La Prise d’Abecher,” L’Afrique française (1909); A. H. Keane, “Wadai,” Travel and Exploration (July 1910); Sir H. H. Johnston, “Lieutenant Boyd Alexander,” Geog. Jour. (July 1910); The Times, July 21st, 1910 (details of Boyd Alexander's murder). See also Senussi.
WADDING, LUKE (1588–1657), Irish Franciscan friar and historian, was born in Waterford in 1588 and went to study at Lisbon. He became a Franciscan in 1607, and in 1617 he was made president of the Irish College at Salamanca. The next year he went to Rome and stayed there till his death. He collected the funds for the establishment of the Irish College of St Isidore in Rome, for the education of Irish priests, opened 1625, and for fifteen years he was the rector. A voluminous writer, his chief work was the Annales Minorum in 8 folio vols. (1625–1654), re-edited in the 18th century and continued up to the year 1622; it is the classical work on Franciscan history. He published also a Bibliotheca of Franciscan writers, an edition of the works of Duns Scotus, and the first collection of the writings of St Francis of Assisi. (E. C. B.)
WADDINGTON, WILLIAM HENRY (1826–1894), French statesman, was born at St Remi-sur-l’Avre (Eure-et-Loir) on the 11th of December 1826. He was the son of a wealthy Englishman who had established a large spinning factory in France and had been naturalized as a French subject. After receiving his early education in Paris, he was sent to Rugby, and thence proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was second classic and chancellor’s medallist, and rowed for the university in the winning boat against Oxford. Returning to France, he devoted himself for some years to archaeological research. He undertook travels in Asia Minor, Greece and Syria, the fruits of which were published in two Mémoires, crowned by the Institute, and in his Mélanges de numismatique et de philologie (1861). Except his essay on “The Protestant Church in France,” published in 1856 in Cambridge Essays, his remaining works are likewise archaeological. They include the Fastes de l’empire romain, and editions of Diocletian’s edict and of Philippe Lebas’s Voyage archéologique (1868–1877). He was elected in 1865 a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres.
After standing unsuccessfully for the department of the Aisne in 1865 and 1869, Waddington was returned by that constituency at the election of 1871. He was minister of public instruction in the short-lived cabinet of the 19th of May 1873, and in 1876, having been elected senator for the Aisne, he was again entrusted by Dufaure with the ministry of public instruction, with which, as a Protestant, he was not permitted to combine the ministry of public worship. His most important project, a bill transferring the conferment of degrees to the stale, passed the Chamber, but was thrown out by the Senate. He continued to hold his office under Jules Simon, with whom he was overthrown on the famous seize mai 1877. The triumph of the republicans at the general election brought him back to power in the following December as minister of foreign affairs under Dufaure. He was one of the French plenipotentiaries at the Berlin Congress. The cession of Cyprus to Great Britain was at first denounced by the French newspapers as a great blow to his diplomacy, but he obtained, in a conversation with Lord Salisbury, a promise that Great Britain in return would allow France a free hand in Tunis.
Early in 1879 Waddington succeeded Dufaure as prime minister. Holding office by sufferance of Gambetta, he halted in an undetermined attitude between the radicals and the reactionaries till the delay of urgent reforms lost him the support of all parties. He was forced on the 27th of December to retire from office. He refused the offer of the London embassy, and in 1880 was reporter of the committee on the adoption of the scrutin de liste at elections, on which he delivered an adverse judgment. In 1883 he accepted the London embassy, which he continued to hold till 1893, showing an exceptional tenacity in defence of his country’s interests. He died on the 13th of January 1894. His wife, an American lady, whose maiden name was Mary A. King, wrote some interesting recollections of their diplomatic experiences—Letters of a Diplomatist’s Wife, 1883–1900 (New York, 1903), and Italian Letters (London, 1905).
WADE, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1800–1878), American statesman, was born near Springfield, Massachusetts, on the 27th of October 1800, of Puritan ancestry. He was reared on a farm, receiving little systematic education, and in 1821 he removed with his family to Andover, in the Western Reserve of Ohio. Here he spent two more years on a farm, and then, securing employment as a drover, worked his way to Philadelphia and finally to Albany, New York, where for two years he taught school, studied medicine, and was a labourer on the Erie Canal. Returning to Ohio in 1825, he studied law at Canfield, was admitted to the bar in 1827, and began practice at Jefferson, Ashtabula county, where from 1831 to 1837 he was a law partner of Joshua R. Giddings, the anti-slavery leader. During 1837–1839 and 1841–1843 he was a Whig member of the Ohio State Senate. From 1847 until 1851 he was a state district judge, and from 1851 until 1869 was a member of the United States Senate, first as an anti-slavery Whig and later as a Republican. In the Senate Wade was from the first an uncompromising opponent of slavery, his bitter denunciations of that institution and of the slaveholders receiving added force from his rugged honesty and sincerity. His blunt, direct style of oratory and his somewhat rough manners were characteristic. After the outbreak of the Civil War he was one of the most vigorous critics of the Lincoln administration, whose Ohio member, Salmon P. Chase, had long been a political rival. He advocated the immediate emancipation and arming of the slaves, the execution of prominent Southern leaders, and the wholesale confiscation of Confederate property. During 1861–1862 he was chairman of the important joint-committee on the conduct of the war, and in 1862, as chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, was instrumental in abolishing slavery in the Federal Territories. In 1864, with H. W. Davis (q.v.), he secured the passage of the Wade-Davis Bill for the reconstruction of the Southern States), the fundamental principle of which was that reconstruction was a legislative, not an executive, problem. This bill was passed by both houses of Congress, just before their adjournment, but President Lincoln withheld his signature, and on the 8th of July issued a proclamation explaining his course and defining his position. Soon afterward (Aug. 5) Wade and Davis published in the New York Tribune the famous “Wade-Davis Manifesto,” a vituperative document impugning the President’s honesty of
