823 



WRAY, ROBERT BATEMAN. 



WREDE, KARL PHILIP, PRINCE. 



defence in two pamphlets. Still, though no doubt he is to bo mis- 

 trusted where he does not rest upon authority, he had mixed so much 

 in society, was so inquisitive, and to the best of his abilities observant, 

 that he could not fail to bring together a mass of curious and some- 

 times important matter. In 1813 he had been created a baronet, and 

 after the revision of the second edition of the 'Memoirs' in 1816 he 

 published no more ; but after his death there appeared in 1836, in 

 3 vols., ' Posthumous Memoirs of his own Time.' They include anec- 

 dotes of the most distinguished political and other personages in the 

 latter part of the reign of George III., coming down however only to 

 the year 1789, and resemble in character the previous volumes, embit- 

 tered somewhat perhaps by a remembrance of his punistiment: a 

 repetition of which, he says in an introduction dated in 1825, he was 

 determined to avoid, though he felt such a result would be no unlikely 

 consequence if they appeared during his life. He died at Dover, on 

 the 7th of November 1831, while on a journey to Naples. 



WRAY, ROBERT BATEMAN, an engraver of gems, was a son of 

 the Rev. William Wray, rector of Newtontony in Wiltshire, and after- 

 wards vicar of Broadchalk in the same county, where Robert Bateman 

 Wray was born on the 16th of March 1715. Both on the father's and 

 the mother's side he was allied to some of the best families in the 

 county. On the death of the Rev. William Wray, which happened in 

 1724, the widow and her young family went to reside at Pottern in 

 Wiltshire, where her brothers Edward and Thomas Byng then lived. 

 Edward was a portrait-painter, who had been a pupil and became 

 an assistant of Sir Godfrey Knellsr, with whom he coutiaued to reside 

 till the death of that artist in 1723. Sir Godfrey showed his con- 

 fidence in Byng's abilities by having directed in his will that the 

 portraits which his sitters had contracted for should be finished by 

 Byng. 



During the years occupied in his education Wray learnt, under the 

 tuition of his uncle Edward, to draw the human figure with grace and 

 precision, and acquired such a taste for the fine arts, that when it 

 became necessary for him to make choice of a profession he selected 

 that of seal-engraving, an art which at that time was scarcely advanced 

 beyond the delineation of heraldic figures, and was open therefore to 

 great improvement, offering some encouragement to his ambition, as 

 well as the promise of an honourable maintenance. To learn the 

 mechanical part of the business he was placed under a seal-engraver 

 named Gosset, residing in Berwick-street, Soho, where his rapid pro- 

 gress excited a degree of jealousy that led to a speedy dissolution of 

 the connection. Although Mr. Wray began by engraving the types of 

 ancient heraldry as sculptured on the tombs and seals of the middle 

 ages, his innate taste, fostered by the society of the painters whom he 

 met at his uncle's house, and stimulated by a contemplation of the 

 works of the aucieuts, soon prompted him to a nobler field of exertion, 

 and to endeavour to imitate, if he could not rival, the productions of 

 the Greek masters. Thus, whilst he continued to prosecute, or at 

 least to give the finishing touches to the common works required by 

 his employers, his choicer hours were devoted to the delineation of 

 nature, and especially of the human figure, until he had succeeded in 

 representing some of the most distinguished personages of English 

 history, or remains of ancient sculpture, or the ideal designs of modern 

 contemporary artists. 



Before Mr. Wray had completed his twenty-fourth year he had exe- 

 cuted the front face and one of the profiles of Milton, and in another 

 the second profile. Mr. Tassie, of Soho-square, who had recently 

 invented a method of copying ancient engraved gems, was so much 

 impressed with the merits of Mr. Wray's works of the same kind, that 

 he sold copies of them together with those of his own collection. 

 Mr. Wray's name thus became extensively known, and his original 

 productions were sought after with avidity even in Italy. At a sub- 

 sequent period, when Henry, eighth Lord Arundel, visited Rome to 

 collect works of art for the purpose of decorating his new mansion of 

 Wardour, he was surprised to hear of the fame of a man who was 

 then residing within a few miles of his own gates in England ; for in 

 1759, after a residence of more than than thirty years in London, 

 circumstances had induced Mr. Wray to quit the metropolis, and to 

 fix himself at a house in Church-street, Salisbury. To an artist of the 

 celebrity which he had now acquired, locality of abode was of little 

 moment. 



It was at Salisbury that he produced some of his best works, and 

 those on which his reputation with posterity will chiefly depend. The 

 difficulty of engraving figures on hard stones in the manner of the 

 ancient Greeks is shown by its rarity in modern times ; and although 

 it has been cultivated in Italy with great success, in England Wray 

 has scarcely had a rival. If some of the Italians have surpassed him 

 in facility of execution, and in the number of their works, none have 

 been his superiors in expressing the affections, and in female grace and 

 beauty. That Wray never acquired more than a decent competence 

 by his talents will be easily imagined, when it is stated that the head 

 of the dying Cleopatra, which he esteemed the most perfect, as it was 

 the most difficult of his works, was sold to the Duke of Northumber- 

 land for 201. But in no branch of art were the labours of native 

 artists very liberally rewarded in those times, except in some rare 

 instances. 



The following are the most remarkable of Mr. Wray's works, and 

 they are here placed in the order in which their merit is supposed by 



some competent judges to rank : 1, Dying Cleopatra ; 2, Medusa's 

 Head, a copy from the Strozzi Medusa ; 3, a Magdalen ; 4, Flora ; 

 5, Madonna; 6, ideal female head; 7, ditto; 8, ditto; 9, Milton, front 

 face; 10, Milton, profile; 11, ditto; 12, Cicero ; 13, Pope; 14, Shaka- 

 pere; 15, Zingara; 16, Antinous. 



Mr. Wray died at Salisbury in the year 1770, in the sixty-fifth year 

 of his age. 



WREDE, KARL PHILIP, PRINCE, a field-marshal in the Bava- 

 rian service, and designated by Napoleon I. as one of the ablest 

 generals of his time, was born at Heidelberg, on the 29th of April 

 1767. Having received a good education, in which law and the 

 valuation of forest lands made part of his studies, he was appointed 

 assessor to the High Court of Heidelberg, in 1792. The war between 

 France and Austria having broken out soon after, be was chosen by 

 Prince Hohenlohe as civil commissioner for the palatinate, in the 

 Austrian army. For several years he continued to discharge his com- 

 missariat functions in the different German armies, but he had like- 

 wise taken part in the military operations, as early as the age of 

 twenty-six ; and he had, in 1795, risen to the rank of colonel. During 

 the campaign of 1799, under the auspices of the Archduke Charles, he 

 raised a corps of volunteers among his own countrymen, which he 

 brought to the main army on the 14th of October, along with two 

 Austrian divisions. Placed at the head of one of these regiments, he 

 distinguished himself by repeated acts of daring during the campaigns 

 of 1799 and 1800, and in the latter year, his conduct at the battle of 

 Hohenlinden (December 3), when he covered the retreat of the 

 Austrian troops, acquired him the rank of major-general. In 1804, 

 the commander-in-chief of the Bavarian auxiliaries, General Deroy, 

 having been compelled by his wounds to relinquish his post, it was 

 conferred for the rest of the campaign upon Wrede, who had just been 

 made lieutenant-general ; from which period his reputation as a brave 

 and skilful general rose continually. 



The great campaign of 1805 furnished him with signal opportunities 

 of obtaining new honours; but no longer in the same service. The 

 policy of Napoleon had succeeded in detaching Bavaria from the 

 interests of Austria, and the contingent supplied by the king, amount- 

 ing to 25,000 men, formed the 10th corps of that powerful army, 

 which for its numbers, its equipment and its discipline, was perhaps 

 the most formidable France had ever collected. For the first time, it 

 was called the ' grande arme'e :' eight of the corps were commanded 

 by eight marshals of France; the host mustered 250,000 combatants. 

 This great army having reached the banks of the Rhine between the 

 17th and 23rd of September 1805, General Wrede joined with Berna- 

 dotte, and the united troops passed through the Prussian territory, 

 and on the 7th of October, crossed the Danube. On the 13th of 

 October, General Wrede led the French vanguard at the battle of 

 Memmingen, pursued the retreating enemy for several miles off the field, 

 and captured 1500 Austrians. In 1 806, the grand cordon of the legion of 

 honour was conferred on him. He was present, the following year, at 

 the siege of Dantzig, which lasted from March 20th to May 27th, 1807. 

 For several months during the campaigns of 1808, General Wrede 

 was detached from the main army, and sent to support the authority 

 of the French empire in the Tyrol. In 1809, under the Prince Royal 

 of Bavaria, he was ordered to take charge of a division of the army, 

 stationed in front of the capital for its defence. Here he attacked the 

 enemy several times, and carried two of their best positions. At the 

 battle of Abensberg, April 20th, 1809, Napoleon commanded the 

 Bavarian troops in person, when they took eight standards, 12 guns, 

 and 1800 prisoners. The following day, General Wrede marched on 

 the Inn, in pursuit of the fugitives, and having overtaken the Austrian 

 rear-guard at Laufen, on the 27th, defeated them a second time, with 

 the loss of all their baggage. Two days later, on the 29th, he repulsed 

 the enemy from the position they had taken up in front of Salzburg, 

 after a most obstinate resistance. 



Wrede had already taken rank by the side of the best generals in 

 the French armies, when his dashing exploit, the capture of Innspruck, 

 and his opportune arrival and zealous behaviour at the battle of 

 Wagram, July 6th, 1809, in which he was wounded, procured him the 

 grade of field-marshal, from the Bavarian government, and the title of 

 count from that of France. The years 1810 and 1811 (hostilities 

 being at that time suspended between France and the Q^rman States), 

 were spent by the marshal in the peaceful enjoyment of domestic 

 intercourse. About this juncture however he was incited to maintain 

 the honour of his countrymen in a private matter, which provoked 

 much contemporary scandal on the continent. A packet of official 

 letters having been seized in the bags of a Swedish courier, aud im- 

 mediately published by Napoleon's directions, some of the despatches 

 were found to contain reflections adverse to the conduct of the 

 Bavarian army. These despatches bearing the signature of Count de 

 Duber, the Swedish charge^ d'affaires, that nobleman was challenged 

 by Wrede, and a duel fought between them, but without personal 

 injury to either. 



Throughout the arduous campaign of 1812, when Napoleon invaded 

 Russia, Marshal Wrede commanded the Bavarian cavalry, dividing 

 with General Deroy the lead of the auxiliary force of that nation, and 

 his name frequently recurs in the French bulletins. At the battle of 

 Polotsk, August 22, though eventually defeated by Wittgenstein, his 

 energy was conspicuous, and his companion in arms, Deroy, having 



