command of a battalion. For his bravery at the siege of Toulon in 1793 he was raised to the rank of general of brigade. He afterwards served for some time with the army of the Eastern Pyrenees, and in the Italian campaign of 1796-97 he so acquitted himself at Mondovi, Roveredo and Mantua that he was promoted to be general of division. After commanding for some time the forces in the department of La Vendée, he was again employed in Italy, where he did good service against the papal troops, and he took a very important part in the battle of Marengo. In 1802 he was governor of the colony of Louisiana for a short time, in 1803 he commanded the Batavian army, and afterwards he acted for eighteen months (1805-6) as French plenipotentiary at Copenhagen. On the outbreak of hostilities with Prussia he joined the V. army corps (Marshal Lannes) as chief of the general staff. He distinguished himself at Saalfeld and Jena, and at Friedland he commanded the I. corps in such a manner that Napoleon gave him the marshalate. After the peace of Tilsit he became governor of Berlin, and in 1808 he was created duke of Belluno. In the same year he was sent to Spain, where he took a prominent part in the Peninsular War (especially at Espinosa, Talavera, Barrosa and Cadiz), until his appointment in 1812 to a corps command in the invasion of Russia. Here his most important service was in protecting the retreating army at the crossing of the Beresina. He took an active part in the wars of 1813-14, till in February of the latter year he had the misfortune to arrive too late at Montereau-sur-Yonne. The result was a scene of violent recrimination and his supersession by the emperor, who transferred his command to Gérard. Thus wounded in his amour-propre, Victor now transferred his allegiance to the Bourbon dynasty, and in December 1814 received from Louis XVIII. the command of the second military division. In 1815 he accompanied the king to Ghent, and on the second restoration he was made a peer of France. He was also president of a commission which inquired into the conduct of the officers during the Hundred Days, and dismissed Napoleon's sympathizers. In 1821 he was appointed war minister and held this office for two years. In 1830 he was major-general of the royal guard, and after the revolution of that year he retired altogether into private life. His death took place at Paris on the 1st of March 1841.
His papers for the period 1793-1800 have been published (Paris, 1846).
VICTUAL, food, provisions, most commonly in the plural, “victuals.” The word and its pronunciation came into English from the O. Fr. vitaille. The modern French and English spelling are due to a pedantic approximation to the Latin original, victualia, a neuter plural substantive formed from victualis, victus, nourishment, provisions (vivere, to live). The most familiar use of the term is in “licensed victualler,” to which the Licensing Act 1872 (§ 27) has applied the wide significance of any person selling any intoxicating liquor under a licence from a justice of the peace. Properly a “victualling house” is one where persons are provided with food and drink but not lodgings, and is thus distinct from an inn, which also provides the last.
VICUGÑA, one of
Head of Vicugña.
the two wild living
South American
representatives of the
camel-tribe, a
Camelidae (see Tylopoda).
From its relative the
guanaco the vicugña
(Lama vicunia) differs by its inferior stature, more slender build
and shorter head, as well as by the absence of bare patches or
callosities on the hind limbs. The general colour of the woolly
coat is orange-red. Vicugñas live in herds on the bleak and
elevated parts of the mountain range bordering the region of
perpetual snow, amidst rocks and precipices, occurring in
various parts of Peru, in the southern part of Ecuador, and as
far south as the middle of Bolivia. The wool is extremely
delicate and soft, and highly valued for the purposes of weaving,
but the quantity which each animal produces is not great.
VIDA, MARCO GIROLAMO (c. 1489-1566), Italian scholar and Latin poet, was born at Cremona shortly before the year 1490. He received the name of Marcantonio in baptism, but changed this to Marco Girolamo when he entered the order of the Canonici Regolari Lateranensi. During his early manhood he acquired considerable fame by the composition of two didactic poems in the Latin tongue, on the Game of Chess (Scacchiae Ludus) and on the Silkworm (Bombyx). This reputation induced him to seek the papal court in Rome, which was rapidly becoming the headquarters of polite learning, the place where students might expect advancement through their literary talents. Vida reached Rome in the last years of the pontificate of Julius II. Leo X, on succeeding to the papal chair (1513), treated him with marked favour, bestowed on him the priory of St Sylvester at Frascati, and bade him compose a heroic Latin poem on the life of Christ. Such was the origin of the Christiad, Vida's most celebrated, if not his best, performance. It did not, however, see the light in Leo's lifetime. Between the years 1520 and 1527 Vida produced the second of his masterpieces in Latin hexameters, a didactic poem on the Art of Poetry (see Baldi's edition, Würzburg, 1881). Clement VII raised him to the rank of apostolic protonotary, and in 1532 conferred on him the bishopric of Alba. It is probable that he took up his residence in this town soon after the death of Clement; and here he spent the greater portion of his remaining years. Vida attended the council of Trent, where he enjoyed the society of Cardinals Cervini, Pole and Del Monte, together with his friend the poet Flaminio. A record of their conversations may be studied in Vida's Latin dialogue De Republica. Among his other writings should be mentioned three eloquent orations in defence of Cremona against Pavia, composed upon the occasion of some dispute as to precedency between those two cities. Vida died at Alba on the 27th of September 1566.
See the Life by Lancetti (Milan, 1840).
VIDAME (Lat. vice-dominus), a French feudal title. The vidame was originally, like the avoué (advocatus), an official chosen by the bishop of the diocese, with the consent of the count (see Advocate) Unlike the advocate, however, the vice-dominus was at the outset an ecclesiastic, who acted as the bishop's lieutenant (locum tenens) or vicar But the causes that changed the character of the advocatus operated also in the case of the vidame. During the Carolingian epoch, indeed, advocatus and vice-dominus were interchangeable terms, and it was only in the 11th century that they became generally differentiated: the title of avoué being commonly reserved for nobles charged with the protection of an abbey, that of vidame for those guarding an episcopal see. With the crystallization of the feudal system in the 12th century the office of vidame, like that of avoué, had become an hereditary fief. As a title, however, it was much less common and also less dignified than that of avoué. The advocati were often great barons who added their function of protector of an abbey to their own temporal sovereignty, whereas the vidames were usually petty nobles, who exercised their office in strict subordination to the bishop. Their chief functions were: to protect the temporalities of the see, to represent the bishop at the count's court of justice, to exercise the bishop's temporal jurisdiction in his name (placitum or curia vice-domini) and to lead the episcopal levies to war. In return they usually had a house near the episcopal palace, a domain within and without the city, and sometimes the right to levy certain dues on the city. The vidames usually took their title from the see they represented, but not infrequently they styled themselves, not after their official fief, but after
