MARQUIS DE

See also:

• EMMANUEL, or IMMANUEL

EMMANUEL

See also:

• MARQUIS DE EMMANUEL GROUCHY (1766-1847)

GROUCHY (1766-1847)  , marshal of France, was born in Paris on the 23rd of October 1766 . He entered the French artillery in 1779, transferred to the cavalry in 1782, and to the Gardes du corps in 1786 . In spite of his aristocratic birth and his connexions with the court, he was a convinced supporter of the principles of the Revolution, and had in consequence to leave the Guards . About the time of the outbreak of war in 1792 he became colonel of a cavalry regiment, and soon afterwards, as a marechal de camp, he was sent to serve on the south-eastern frontier . In 1793 he distinguished himself in La Vendee, and was promoted general of division . Grouchy was shortly afterwards deprived of his rank as being of noble birth, but in 1795 he was again placed on the active list . He served on the staff of the Army of Ireland (1796-1797), and took a conspicuous part in the Irish expedition . In 1798 he administered the civil and military government of Piedmont at the time of the abdication of the king of Sardinia, and in 1799 he distinguished himself greatly as a divisional commander in the campaign against the Austrians and Russians . In covering the retreat of the French after the defeat of Novi, Grouchy received fourteen wounds and was taken prisoner . On his release he returned to France . In spite of his having protested against the coup d'etat of the 18th of Brumaire he was at once re-employed by the First Consul, and distinguished himself again at Hohenlinden . It was not long before he accepted the new regime in France, and from 18o1 onwards he was employed by Napoleon in military and political positions of importance .

He served in

Austria in 1805, in Prussia in 18o6, Poland in 1807, Spain in 18o8, and commanded the cavalry of the Army of Italy in 1809 in the Viceroy Eugene's advance to Vienna . In 1812 he was made commander of one of the four cavalry corps of the Grand Army, and during the retreat from Moscow Napoleon appointed him to command the escort squadron, which was composed entirely of picked officers . His almost continuous service with the cavalry led Napoleon to decline in 1813 to place Grouchy at the head of an army corps, and Grouchy thereupon retired to France . In1814, however, he hastened to take part in the defensive campaign in France, and he was severely wounded at Craonne . At the Restoration he was deprived of the post of colonel-general of chasseurs a cheval and retired . He joined Napoleon on his return from Elba, and was made marshal and peer of France . In the campaign of Waterloo he commanded the reserve cavalry of the army, and after Ligny he was appointed to command the right wing to pursue the Prussians . The march on Wavre, its influence on the result of the campaign, and the controversy to which Grouchy's conduct on the day of Waterloo has given rise, are dealt with briefly in the article WATERLOO CAMPAIGN, and at length in nearly every work on the campaign of 1815 . Here it is only necessary to say that on the 17th Grouchy was unable to close with the Prussians, and on the 18th, though urged to march towards the sound of the guns of Waterloo, he permitted himself, from whatever cause, to be held up by a Prussian rearguard while the Prussians and English united to crush Napoleon . On the 19th Grouchy won a smart victory over the Prussians at Wavre, but it was then too late . So far as resistance was possible after the great disaster, Grouchy made it . He gathered up the wrecks of Napoleon's army, and retired, swiftly and unbroken, to Paris, where, after interposing his reorganized forces between the enemy and the capital, he resigned his command into the hands of Marshal Davout .

The

rest of his life was spent in defending himself . An attempt to have him condemned to death by a court-martial failed, but he was exiled and lived in America till amnestied in 1821 . On his return to France he was reinstated as general, but not as marshal nor as peer of France . For many years thereafter he was equally an object of aversion to the court party, as a member of their own caste who had followed the Revolution and Napoleon, and to his comrades of the Grand Army as the supposed betrayer of Napoleon . In 183o Louis Philippe gave him back the marshal's baton and restored him to the Chamber of Peers . He died at St-Etienne on the 29th of May 1847 . See Marquis de Grouchy, Memoires du marechal Marquis de Grouchy (Paris, 1873-1874); General Marquis de Grouchy, Le General Grouchy en Mande (Paris, 1866), and Le Marechal Grouchy du 16 au 18 juin, 1815 (Paris, 1864) ; Appel a l'histoire sur les faites de l'aile droite de l'armee francaise (Paris, n.d.); Severe Justice sur les fails . . . du 28 juin an 3 juillet, 1815 (Paris, 1866) ; and the literature of the Waterloo campaign . Marshal Grouchy himself wrote the following: Observations sur la relation de la campagne de 1815 par le general de Gourgaud (Philadelphia and Paris, 1818) ; Refutation de quelques articles des memoires de M. le Duc de Rovigo (Paris, 1829); Fragments historiques relatifs a la campagne et a la bataille de Waterloo (Paris, 1829-183o, in reply to Barthelemy and Wry, and to Marshal Gerard) ; Reclamation du marechal de Grouchy (Paris, 1834) ; Plainte contre le general Baron Berthezene (Berthezene, .formerly a divisional commander under Gerard, stated in reply to this defence that he had no intention of accusing Grouchy of ill faith) . GROUND-ICE,' ice formed at the bottom of streams while the temperature of the water is above freezing-point . Every-thing points to radiation as the prime cause of the formation of ground-ice . It is formed only under a clear sky, never in cloudy weather; it is most readily formed on dark rocks, and never under any covering such as a bridge, and rarely under surface-ice .

Professor Howard T . Barnes of McGill University concludes that the radiation from a river bed in cold and clear nights goes through the water in long rays that penetrate much more easily from below upwards than the sun's heat rays from above down-wards, which are mostly absorbed by the first few feet of water . On a cold clear night, therefore, the radiation from the bottom is excessive, and loosely-grown spongy masses of anchor-ice form on the bottom, which on the following bright sunny day receive just sufficient heat from the sun to detach the mass of ' The O . Eng. word grund,ground,is common to Teutonic languages, cf . Du. grond, Ger . Grund, but has no cognates outside Teutonic . The suggestion that the origin is to be found in " grind," to crush small, reduce to powder, is plausible, but the primary meaning seems to be the lowest part or bottom of anything rather than grit, sand or gravel . The main branches in sense appear to be, first, bottom, as of the sea or a river, cf. the use, in the plural, for dregs; second, base or foundation, actual, as of the first or main surface of a painting, fabric, &c., or figurative, as of a principle or reason; third, the surface of the earth, or a particular part of that surface . ice, which rises to the surface with considerable force . It is probable that owing to surface tension a thin film of stationary water rests upon the boulders and sand over which a stream flows, and that this, becoming frozen owing to radiation, forms the foundation for the anchor-ice and produces a surface upon which the descending frazil-ice (see below) can lodge . The theory of radiation from the boulders is supported by the fact that as the ice is formed upon them in response to a sudden fall in the air temperature, it is only released under the influence of a strong rise of temperature during the morning . It may not rise for several days, but the advent of bright sunlight is followed by the appearance on the surface of masses of ground-ice .

This ice has a spongy texture and frequently carries gravel with it when it rises . It is said that the bottom of

Lake Erie is strewn with gravel that has been floated down in this way . This " anchor-ice," as it was called by Canadian trappers, frequently forms dams across narrow portions of the river where the floating masses are caught . Dr H . Landor pointed out that the Mackenzie and Mississippi rivers, which rise in the same region and flow in opposite directions, carry ground-ice from their head-waters for a considerable distance down stream, and suggested that here and in Siberia many forms of vegetable and animal life may be distributed from a centre by this agency, since the material carried by the floating ice would contain the seeds and eggs or larvae of many forms . Besides ground-ice and anchor-ice this formation is called also bottom-ice, ground-gru and lappered ice, the two last names being Scottish . In France it is called glace du fond, in Germany Grundeis, and in French Canada moutonne from the appearance of sheep at rest, since the ice formed at the bottom grows in woolly, spongy masses upon boulders or other projections . " Frazil-ice " is a Canadian term from the French for " forge-cinders." It is surface ice formed in spicules and carried down-wards in water agitated by winds or rapids . The frazil-ice may render swiftly moving water turbid with ice crystals, it may be swirled downwards and accumulated upon the ground ice, or it may be swept under the sheet of surface-ice, coating the under surface of the sheet to a thickness as great as 8o ft. of loose spicular ice . See W . G . Thompson, in Nature, i .

555 (1870) ; H . Landor, in

Geological Magazine, decade II., vol. iii., p . 459 (1876); H . T . Barnes, Ice Formation with special Reference to Anchor-ice and Frazil (1906) .