Part 12

GERARD, ETIENNE MAURICE, COUNT (1773-1852), French general, was born at Damvilliers (Meuse), on the 4th of April 1773. He joined a battalion of volunteers in 1791, and served in the campaigns of 1792-1793 under Generals Dumouriez and Jourdan. In 1795 he accompanied Bernadotte as aide-de-camp. In 1799 he was promoted _chef d'escadron_, and in 1800 colonel. He distinguished himself at the battles of Austerlitz and Jena, and was made general of brigade in November 1806, and for his conduct in the battle of Wagram he was created a baron. In the Spanish campaign of 1810 and 1811 he gained special distinction at the battle of Fuentes d'Onor; and in the expedition to Russia he was present at Smolensk and Valutina, and displayed such bravery and ability in the battle of Borodino that he was made general of division. He won further distinction in the disastrous retreat from Moscow. In the campaign of 1813, in command of a division, he took part in the battles of Lutzen and Bautzen and the operations of Marshal Macdonald, and at the battle of Leipzig (in which he commanded the XI. corps) he was dangerously wounded. After the battle of Bautzen he was created by Napoleon a count of the empire. In the campaign of France of 1814, and especially at La Rothiere and Montereau, he won still greater distinction. After the first restoration he was named by Louis XVIII. grand cross of the Legion of Honour and chevalier of St Louis. In the Hundred Days Napoleon made Gerard a peer of France and placed him in command of the IV. corps of the Army of the North. In this capacity Gerard took a brilliant part in the battle of Ligny (see WATERLOO CAMPAIGN), and on the morning of the 18th of June he was foremost in advising Marshal Grouchy to march to the sound of the guns. Gerard retired to Brussels after the fall of Napoleon, and did not return to France till 1817. He sat as a member of the chamber of deputies in 1822-1824, and was re-elected in 1827. He took part in the revolution of 1830, after which he was appointed minister of war and named a marshal of France. On account of his health he resigned the office of war minister in the October following, but in 1831 he took the command of the northern army, and was successful in thirteen days in driving the army of Holland out of Belgium. In 1832 he commanded the besieging army in the famous scientific siege of the citadel of Antwerp. He was again chosen war minister in July 1834, but resigned in the October following. In 1836 he was named grand chancellor of the Legion of Honour in succession to Marshal Mortier, and in 1838 commander of the National Guards of the Seine, an office which he held till 1842. He became a senator under the empire in 1852, and died on the 17th of April in the same year.

GERARD, FRANCOIS, BARON (1770-1837), French painter, was born on the 4th of May 1770, at Rome, where his father occupied a post in the house of the French ambassador. At the age of twelve Gerard obtained admission into the Pension du Roi at Paris. From the Pension he passed to the studio of Pajou (sculptor), which he left at the end of two years for that of the painter Brenet, whom he quitted almost immediately to place himself under David. In 1789 he competed for the Prix de Rome, which was carried off by his comrade Girodet. In the following year (1790) he again presented himself, but the death of his father prevented the completion of his work, and obliged him to accompany his mother to Rome. In 1791 he returned to Paris; but his poverty was so great that he was forced to forgo his studies in favour of employment which should bring in immediate profit. David at once availed himself of his help, and one of that master's most celebrated pictures--Le Pelletier de St Fargeau--may owe much to the hand of Gerard. This painting was executed early in 1793, the year in which Gerard, at the request of David, was named a member of the revolutionary tribunal, from the fatal decisions of which he, however, invariably absented himself. In 1794 he obtained the first prize in a competition, the subject of which was "The Tenth of August," and, further stimulated by the successes of his rival and friend Girodet in the Salons of 1793 and 1794, Gerard (nobly aided by Isabey the miniaturist) produced in 1795 his famous "Belisaire." In 1796 a portrait of his generous friend (in the Louvre) obtained undisputed success, and the money received from Isabey for these two works enabled Gerard to execute in 1797 his "Psyche et l'Amour." At last, in 1799, his portrait of Madame Bonaparte established his position as one of the first portrait-painters of the day. In 1808 as many as eight, in 1810 no less than fourteen portraits by him, were exhibited at the Salon, and these figures afford only an indication of the enormous numbers which he executed yearly; all the leading figures of the empire and of the restoration, all the most celebrated men and women of Europe, sat to Gerard. This extraordinary vogue was due partly to the charm of his manner and conversation, for his _salon_ was as much frequented as his studio; Madame de Stael, Canning, Talleyrand, the duke of Wellington, have all borne witness to the attraction of his society. Rich and famous, Gerard was stung by remorse for earlier ambitions abandoned; at intervals he had indeed striven to prove his strength with Girodet and other rivals, and his "Bataille d'Austerlitz" (1810) showed a breadth of invention and style which are even more conspicuous in "L'Entree d'Henri IV" (Versailles)--the work with which in 1817 he did homage to the Bourbons. After this date Gerard declined, watching with impotent grief the progress of the Romantic school. Loaded with honours--baron of the empire, member of the Institute, officer of the legion of honour, first painter to the king--he worked on sad and discouraged; the revolution of 1830 added to his disquiet; and on the 11th of January 1837, after three days of fever, he died. By his portraits Gerard is best remembered; the colour of his paintings has suffered, but his drawings show in uninjured delicacy the purity of his line; and those of women are specially remarkable for a virginal simplicity and frankness of expression.

M. Ch. Lenormant published in 1846 _Essai de biographie et de critique sur Francois Gerard_, a second edition of which appeared in 1847; and M. Delecluze devoted several pages to the same subject in his work _Louis David, son ecole et son temps_.

GERARD, JEAN IGNACE ISIDORE (1803-1847), French caricaturist, generally known by the pseudonym of Grandville--the professional name of his grandparents, who were actors--was born at Nancy on the 13th of September 1803. He received his first instruction in drawing from his father, a miniature painter, and at the age of twenty-one came to Paris, where he soon afterwards published a collection of lithographs entitled _Les Tribulations de la petite propriete_. He followed this by Les Plaisirs de toutage and _La Sibylle des salons_; but the work which first established his fame was _Metamorphoses du jour_, published in 1828, a series of seventy scenes in which individuals with the bodies of men and faces of animals are made to play a human comedy. These drawings are remarkable for the extraordinary skill with which human characteristics are represented in animal features. The success of this work led to his being engaged as artistic contributor to various periodicals, such as _La Silhouette_, _L'Artiste_, _La Caricature_, _Le Charivari_; and his political caricatures, which were characterized by marvellous fertility of satirical humour, soon came to enjoy a general popularity. Besides supplying illustrations for various standard works, such as the songs of Beranger, the fables of La Fontaine, _Don Quixote_, _Gulliver's Travels_, _Robinson Crusoe_, he also continued the issue of various lithographic collections, among which may be mentioned _La Vie privee et publique des animaux_, _Les Cent Proverbes_, _L'Autre Monde_ and _Les Fleurs animees_. Though the designs of Gerard are occasionally unnatural and absurd, they usually display keen analysis of character and marvellous inventive ingenuity, and his humour is always tempered and refined by delicacy of sentiment and a vein of sober thoughtfulness. He died of mental disease on the 17th of March 1847.

A short notice of Gerard, under the name of Grandville, is contained in Theophile Gautier's _Portraits contemporains_. See also Charles Blanc, _Grandville_ (Paris, 1855).

GERARD, JOHN (1545-1612), English herbalist and surgeon, was born towards the end of 1545 at Nantwich in Cheshire. He was educated at Wisterson, or Willaston, 2 m. from Nantwich, and eventually, after spending some time in travelling, took up his abode in London, where he exercised his profession. For more than twenty years he also acted as superintendent of the gardens in London and at Theobalds, in Hertfordshire, of William Cecil, Lord Burghley. In 1596 he published a catalogue of plants cultivated in his own garden in Holborn, London, 1039 in number, inclusive of varieties of the same species. Their English as well as their Latin names are given in a revised edition of the catalogue issued in 1599. In 1597 appeared Gerard's well-known _Herball_, described by him in its preface as "the first fruits of these mine own labours," but more truly an adaptation of the _Stirpium historiae pemptades_ of Rembert Dodoens (1518-1585), published in 1583, or rather of a translation of the whole or part of the same by Dr Priest, with M. Lobel's arrangement. Of the numerous illustrations of the _Herball_ sixteen appear to be original, the remainder are mostly impressions from the wood blocks employed by Jacob Theodorus Tabernaemontanus in his _Icones stirpium_, published at Frankfort in 1590. A second edition of the _Herball_, with considerable improvements and additions, was brought out by Thomas Johnson in 1633, and reprinted in 1636. Gerard was elected a member of the court of assistants of the barber-surgeons in 1595, by which company he was appointed an examiner in 1598, junior warden in 1605, and master in 1608. He died in February 1612, and was buried at St Andrews, Holborn.

See Johnson's preface to his edition of the _Herball_; and _A Catalogue of Plants cultivated in the Garden of John Gerard in the years 1596-1599, edited with Notes, References to Gerard's Herball, the Addition of modern Names, and a Life of the Author, by Benjamin Daydon Jackson, F.L.S._, privately printed (London, 1876, 4to).

GERARDMER, a town of north-eastern France, in the department of Vosges, 33 m. E.S.E. of Epinal by rail. Pop. (1906) of the town, 3993; of the commune, 10,041. Gerardmer is beautifully situated at a height of 2200 ft. at the eastern end of the small Lake of Gerardmer (285 acres in extent) among forest-clad mountains. It is the chief summer-resort of the French Vosges and is a centre for excursions, among which may be mentioned those to the Hohneck (4481 ft.), the second highest summit in the Vosges, the Schlucht, the mountain pass from France to Germany, and, nearer the town, the picturesque defile of Granges, watered by the Vologne, which at one point forms the cascade known as the Saut des Cuves. The town itself, in which the chief object of interest is the huge lime-tree in the market-place, carries on cloth-weaving, bleaching, wood-sawing and the manufacture of wooden goods; there is trade in the cheeses (_geromes_) manufactured in the neighbourhood. Gerardmer is said to owe its name to Gerard of Alsace, 1st duke of Lorraine, who in the 11th century built a tower on the bank of the lake or _mer_, near which, in 1285, a new town was founded.

GERASA (mod. _Gerash_ or _Jerash_), a city of Palestine, and a member of the league known as the Decapolis (q.v.), situated amid the mountains of Gilead, about 1757 ft. above the sea, 20 m. from the Jordan and 21 m. N. of Philadelphia. Of its origin nothing is known; it has been suggested that it represents the biblical Ramoth Gilead. From Josephus we learn that it was captured by Alexander Jannaeus (c. 83 B.C.), rebuilt by the Romans (c. A.D. 65), burned by the Jews in revenge for the massacre at Caesarea, and again plundered and depopulated by Annius, the general of Vespasian; but, in spite of these disasters, it was still in the 2nd and 3rd centuries of the Christian era one of the wealthiest and most flourishing cities of Palestine. It was a centre of Greek civilization, devoted especially to the worship of Artemis, and producing famous teachers, of whom Stephen the Byzantine mentions Ariston, Kerykos and Plato. As late as 1121 the soldiers of Baldwin II. found it defended by a castle built by a king of Damascus; but at the beginning of the following century the Arabian geographer Yaqut speaks of it as deserted and overthrown. The ruins of Jerash, discovered about 1806, and since then frequently visited and described, still attest the splendour of the Roman city. They are distributed along both banks of the Kerwan, a brook which flows south through the Wadi-ed-Der to join the Zerka or Jabbok; but all the principal buildings are situated on the level ground to the right of the stream. The town walls, which can still be traced and indeed are partly standing, had a circuit of not more than 2 m., and the main street was less than half a mile in length; but remains of buildings on the road for fully a mile beyond the south gate, show that the town had outgrown the limit of its fortifications. The most striking feature of the ruins is the profusion of columns, no fewer than 230 being even now in position; the main street is a continuous colonnade, a large part of which is still entire, and it terminates to the south in a forum of similar formation. Among the public buildings still recognizable are a theatre capable of accommodating 6000 spectators, a naumachia (circus for naval combats) and several temples, of which the largest was probably the grandest structure in the city, possessing a portico of Corinthian pillars 38 ft. high. The desolation of the city is probably due to earthquake; and the absence of Moslem erections or restorations seems to show that the disaster took place before the Mahommedan period.

The town is now occupied by a colony of Circassians, whose houses have been built with materials from the earlier buildings, and there has been much destruction of the interesting ruins. "The country of the Gerasenes" (Matt. viii. 28 and parallels; other readings, Gadarenes, Gergesenes) must be looked for in another quarter--on the E. coast of the Sea of Galilee, probably in the neighbourhood of the modern Khersa (C.W. Wilson in _Recovery of Jerusalem_, p. 369). (R. A. S. M.)

GERAULT-RICHARD, ALFRED LEON (1860- ), French journalist and politician, was born at Bonnetable in the department of Sarthe, of a peasant family. He began life as a working upholsterer, first at Mans, then at Paris (1880), where his peasant and socialist songs soon won him fame in the Montmartre quarter. Lissagaray, the communist, offered him a position on _La Bataille_, and he became a regular contributor to the advanced journals, especially to _La Petite Republique_, of which he became editor-in-chief in 1897. In 1893 he founded _Le Chambard_, and was imprisoned for a year (1894) on account of a personal attack upon the president, Casimir-Perier. In January 1895 he was elected to the chamber as a Socialist for the thirteenth arrondissement of Paris. He was defeated at the elections of 1898 at Paris, but was re-elected in 1902 and in 1906 by the colony of Guadeloupe.

GERBER, ERNST LUDWIG (1746-1819), German musician, author of a famous dictionary of musicians, was born at Sondershausen in the principality of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen on the 29th of September 1746. His father, Henry Nicolas Gerber (1702-1775), a pupil of J.S. Bach, was an organist and composer of some distinction, and under his direction Ernst Ludwig at an early age had made great progress in his musical studies. In 1765 he went to Leipzig to study law, but the claims of music, which had gained additional strength from his acquaintanceship with J.A. Hiller, soon came to occupy almost his sole attention. On his return to Sondershausen he was appointed music teacher to the children of the prince, and in 1775 he succeeded his father as court organist. Afterwards he devoted much of his time to the study of the literature and history of music, and with this view he made himself master of several modern languages. His _Historisch-biographisches Lexikon der Tonkunstler_ appeared in 1790 and 1792 in two volumes; and the first volume of what was virtually an improved and corrected edition of this work was published in 1810 under the title _Neues historisch-biographisches Lexikon der Tonkunstler_, followed by other three volumes in 1812, 1813 and 1814. Gerber also contributed a number of papers to musical periodicals, and published several minor musical compositions. He died at Sondershausen on the 30th of June 1819.

GERBERON, GABRIEL (1628-1711), French Jansenist monk, was born on the 12th of August 1628 at St Calais, in the department of Sarthe. At the age of twenty he took the vows of the Benedictine order at the abbey of Ste Melaine, Rennes, and afterwards taught rhetoric and philosophy in several monasteries. His open advocacy of Jansenist opinions, however, caused his superiors to relegate him to the most obscure houses of the order, and finally to keep him under surveillance at the abbey of St Germain-des-Pres at Paris. Here he wrote a defence of the doctrine of the Real Presence against the Calvinists in the form of an apology for Rupert, abbot of Deutz (_Apologia pro Ruperto abbate Tuitensi_, Paris, 1669). In 1676 he published at Brussels, under the name of "Sieur Flore de Ste Foi" his _Miroir de la piete chretienne_, an enlarged edition of which appeared at Liege in the following year. This was condemned by certain archbishops and theologians as the repetition of the five condemned propositions of Jansen, and Gerberon defended it, under the name of "Abbe Valentin" in _Le Miroir sans tache_ (Paris, 1680). He had by this time aroused against him the full fury of the Jesuits, and at their instigation a royal provost was sent to Corbie to arrest him. He had, however, just time to escape, and fled to the Low Countries, where he lived in various towns. He was invited by the Jansenist clergy to Holland, where he wrote another controversial work against the Protestants: _Defense de l'Eglise Romain contre la calomnie des Protestants_ (Cologne, 1688-1691). This produced unpleasantness with the Reformed clergy, and feeling himself no longer safe he returned to Brussels. In 1700 he published his history of Jansenism (_Histoire generale du Jansenisme_), a dry work, by which, however, he is best remembered. He adhered firmly to the Augustinian doctrine of Predestination, and on the 30th of May 1703 he was arrested at Brussels at the instance of the archbishop of Malines, and ordered to subscribe the condemnation of the five sentences of Jansen. On his refusal, he was handed over to his superiors and imprisoned in the citadel of Amiens and afterwards at Vincennes. Every sort of pressure was brought to bear upon him to make his submission, and at last, broken in health and spirit, he consented to sign a formula which the cardinal de Noailles claimed as a recantation. Upon this he was released in 1710. The first use he made of his freedom was to write a work (which, however, his friends prudently prevented him from publishing), _Le Vaine Triomphe du cardinal de Noailles_, containing a virtual withdrawal of the compulsory recantation. He died at the abbey of St Denis on the 29th of March 1711.

GERBERT, MARTIN (1720-1793), German theologian, historian and writer on music, belonged to the noble family of Gerbert von Hornau, and was born at Horb on the Neckar, Wurttemberg, on the 12th (or 11th or 13th) of August 1720. He was educated at Freiburg in the Breisgau, at Klingenau in Switzerland and at the Benedictine abbey of St Blasien in the Black Forest, where in 1737 he took the vows. In 1744 he was ordained priest, and immediately afterwards appointed professor, first of philosophy and later of theology. Between 1754 and 1764 he published a series of theological treatises, their main tendency being to modify the rigid scholastic system by an appeal to the Fathers, notably Augustine; from 1759 to 1762 he travelled in Germany, Italy and France, mainly with a view to examining the collections of documents in the various monastic libraries. In 1764 he was elected prince-abbot of St Blasien, and proved himself a model ruler both as abbot and prince. His examination of archives during his travels had awakened in him a taste for historical research, and under his rule St Blasien became a notable centre of the methodical study of history; it was here that Marquard Herrgott wrote his _Monumenta domus Austriacae_, of which the first two volumes were edited, for the second edition, by Gerbert, who also published a _Codex epistolaris Rudolphi I., Romani regis_ (1772) and _De Rudolpho Suevico comite de Rhinfelden, duce et rege, deque ejus familia_ (1785). It was, however, in sacramental theology, liturgiology, and notably ecclesiastical music that Gerbert was mainly interested. In 1774 he published two volumes _De cantu et musica sacra_; in 1777, _Monumenta veteris liturgiae Alemannicae_; and in 1784, in three volumes, _Scriptores ecclesiastici de musica sacra_, a collection of the principal writers on church music from the 3rd century till the invention of printing. The materials for this work he had gathered during his travels, and although it contains many textual errors, its publication has been of great importance for the history of music, by preserving writings which might either have perished or remained unknown. His interest in music led to his acquaintance with the composer Gluck, who became his intimate friend.

As a prince of the Empire Gerbert was devoted to the interests of the house of Austria; as a Benedictine abbot he was opposed to Joseph II.'s church policy. In the Febronian controversy (see FEBRONIANISM) he had early taken a mediating attitude, and it was largely due to his influence that Bishop Hontheim had been induced to retract his extreme views.

In 1768 the abbey of St Blasien, with the library and church, was burnt to the ground, and the splendid new church which rose on the ruins of the old (1783) remained until its destruction by fire in 1874, at once a monument of Gerbert's taste in architecture and of his Habsburg sympathies. It was at his request that it was made the mausoleum of all the Austrian princes buried outside Austria, whose remains were solemnly transferred to its vaults. In connexion with its consecration he published his _Historia Nigrae Silvae, ordinis S. Benedicti coloniae_ (3 vols., St Blasien, 1783).

Gerbert, who was beloved and respected by Catholics and Protestants alike, died on the 3rd of May 1793.

See Joseph Bader, _Das ehemalige Kloster St Blasien und seine Gelehrtenakademie_ (Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 1874), which contains a chronological list of Gerbert's works.