41 



WURMSEB, COUNT OF. 



WYATT, JAMES. 



612 



same favour with Rufus winch he had enjoyed with his father; and in 

 the beginning of the new king's reign, old as he was, he proved very 

 serviceable in putting down an insurrection of the adherents of Duke 

 Robert of Normandy, defending his city of Worcester against an army 

 of the rebels led by Roger de Montgomery. Wulstan almost rebuilt 

 the cathedral of Worcester from the foundation ; and he died in that 

 city, at the age of eighty -seven, on the 19th of January 1095, 

 Wulstau is not known to have written anything either in Saxon or 

 Latin, though William of Malmesbury states that he was a ready and 

 effective speaker in the former language ; but in the work entitled 

 'Ancient History, English and French, exemplified in a regular dissec- 

 tion of the Saxon Chronicle,' 12mo, London, 1880, an attempt is made 

 to show that he was the author of the portion of that venerable 

 record extending from 1034 A.D. to the end of the reign of William 

 the Conqueror. There are two accounts of Wulstan by William of 

 Malmesbury : one in his work ' De Gestis Pontificum ; ' the other a 

 separate Life, in three books, which is published in the second volume 

 of Wharton's ' Anglia Sacra.' 



(Wright's Biographia Britannica Literaria, vol. i.) 



WURMSER, DAGOBERT-SIGISMUND, COUNT OF, a distin- 

 guished Austrian general, was born on the 22nd of September 1724, in 

 Alsace the territory which now constitutes the French departments 

 of the Upper and Lower Rhine. He commenced his military career 

 in the French service, and having distinguished himself by his courage 

 in the campaigns of 1745-46-47, was raised to the rank of captain in 

 the cavalry. His father having resolved to settle in the Austrian 

 states, and become an Austrian subject in 1750, Dagobert resigned his 

 commission and accompanied him. Such emigrants from the French 

 Rhine provinces were at that time far from uncommon : the Alsatians, 

 though French subjects, were then unmixed Germans ; indeed the 

 century which has since elapsed has only stripped their character of 

 its German nationality, without giving them a French one. 



Dagobert-Sigismund Wurmser was well received at Vienna. Maria 

 Theresa conferred upon him the office of gentleman of the bed- 

 chamber (Kammerherr), and, what he valued more, a troop of hussars, 

 which he continued to command throughout the whole of the Thirty 

 Years' War. After the battle of Prague he was made Major ; after that 

 of Lissa, Colonel ; after that of Hochkirchen, Major-general ; and after 

 that of Leignitz he obtained the cross of the order of Maria Theresa. 

 His kind disposition and generosity rendered him the idol of both 

 the officers and men under his command. There is a story told of 

 him illustrative of these features of his character. Hearing, after the 

 battle of Gorlitz, that a brave but poor lieutenant of cavalry had lost 

 his horse in the action, Wurmser sent him one of the best in his 

 stables, with a message to the effect that, having sworn this horse 

 should belong to one of the bravest men in the army, he begged his 

 acceptance of it. In 1773 Wurmser became proprietary colonel of 

 the regiment of hussars which subsequently bore his name; and, 

 when the war broke out again in 1778, he was raised to the rank of 

 Lieutenant-general. At the head of a body of 12,000 men, he broke 

 into the territory of Glatz, and on the 18th of January 1779, surprised 

 the Prussians at Kubelschwerd and defeated them, taking 1200 pri- 

 soners. The peace of Tetschen arrested his victorious career, and 

 the collar of commander of the order of Maria Theresa was the reward 

 of his exploits during that short campaign. 



In 1787 he was appointed general-commander of the province of 

 Galicia, and although the inhabitants were extremely averse'to the 

 Austrian yoke, he contrived to make himself a personal favourite. 

 The Emperor Joseph bestowed upon him the appointment of feld- 

 zeug-meister (master of the ordnance when the army was in the 

 field). Wurmser was not employed in the war against the Turks 

 in 1789. 



The period of Wurmser's career which obtained for him a European 

 reputation commenced in 1793. In February of that year he was 

 ordered to draw together an army in the Breisgau. By the end of 

 the month he was in a condition to advance. On the 3rd of March 

 he entered Mannheim and Spire; and attacked the rear-guard of 

 Custine, who retreated to Landau. Wurmser pursued him as far as 

 Landau, which he summoned, but without effect. Falling back upon 

 the Rhine, Wurmser joined the Prince of Conde" at Spire ; and having 

 effected a junction with the Prussian army of observation under the 

 Duke of Brunswick, he took up a position at Germersheim to assist 

 in covering the siege of Mayence. After the capitulation of Mayence, 

 Wurmser again pushed forward his corps to the environs of Landau ; 

 attacked the fort of Jocknum, and advanced to the base of the Vosges. 

 On the 13th of October, in concert with the Duke of Brunswick, he 

 attacked and forced the lines of Weissembourg. Wurmser pursued the 

 French into his native province ; occupied Hagenau ; bombarded Fort 

 Louis, which capitulated on the 14th of November ; took up a posi- 

 tion on the Sarre ; and pushed on his outposts to Wantzenau in the 

 vicinity of Strassburg. The miscarriage of an attack by his right on 

 the bridge hampered him considerably; and the Prussians having 

 failed to take Landau, be was left entirely to his own resources. 

 Pichegru, who had been placed at the head of the army of the Rhine 

 in October, and who had judiciously adopted a war of outposts, sharp- 

 shooters, and sudden surprises well adapted to the brave but raw 

 troops under his command, when opposed to steady old disciplined 

 troops, harassed him incessantly. Wurmser was obliged to retire 



within the lines which he had established on the Motter during his 

 advance. The fort of Frischweiler, defended by the elector-palatine, 

 was forced on the 22nd of December, and nothing prevented the 

 French from overwhelming Wurmser. His men gave way in utter 

 confusion at all points, and he was only able to collect the wreck of 

 his army on the right bank of the Rhine. Having succeeded in the 

 course of January 1794, in re-establishing something like organisation 

 among them, h$ hastened to Vienna, where the emperor by numerous 

 marks of his esteem sought to express his conviction that Wurmser's 

 reverses were owing solely to the faults of others. 



Six months later Wurmser was again appointed to command the 

 army of the Upper Rhine. An accident revealed to him the secret of 

 the correspondence between the Prince of Cond^ and Pichegru. That 

 Austria should have made no effort to turn that negociation to account 

 was not surprising. In the sincerity of the republican general that 

 power could have little confidence, and in the judgment of the Prince 

 of Condd still less. Besides the anxiety of Conde" and Pichegru to 

 keep their intercourse a secret from the Austrian government was of 

 itself suspicious. The conspiracy was allowed by Wurmser, the Arch- 

 duke Charles, and the cabinet of Vienna to take its course, and it led 

 to nothing but its very natural termination in the ruin of the general 

 who had intrigued with the enemies of his country to subvert the 

 government from which he held his commission. Wurmser defeated 

 the French on the banks of the Neckar, on the 28th and 29th of 

 October 1794, and entered Mannheim ; the citadel surrendered after a 

 bombardment which lasted a few days. 



On the 1st of January 1796, Wurmser received the grand cross of 

 the order of Maria Theresa. Hostilities did not recommence that 

 year till the month of May. On the 15th of June Wurmser gave way 

 before the attack of Moreau and abandoned Frankenthal. The 

 Austrian cabinet, which had relinquished the idea of assuming the 

 offensive in Alsace and on the Rhine, ordered him to move thirty 

 thousand of the best troops in the army under his command without 

 delay upon the north of Italy. An opponent full of the impetuosity 

 of youth and the resources of genius awaited the sexagenarian here. 



On the 29th of July Wurmser advanced towards Mantua. He 

 drove in the French outposts on the Lago di Garda ; but Bonaparte, 

 having abruptly broken up the siege of Mantua to precipitate himself 

 on his adversary, met and beat him at Lonato on the 3rd of August, 

 at Castiglione on the 5th, then at Roveredo, and on the 8th at the 

 gorges of the Brenta. The Austrian general far from despairing made 

 an attempt upon Verona ; but, repulsed by General Kilmaine, he 

 retreated along the Adige with 5000 foot and 15,000 cavalry ; and, 

 after evading two French divisions detached to watch his motions, 

 threw himself into Mantua. This place was vigorously and skilfully 

 defended by Wurmser ; but the defeat of the troops under Alvinzy, 

 want of provisions, and sickness among the garrison, forced him to 

 surrender on the 2nd of February 1797. Bonaparte, with that 

 chivalrous spirit which marked his early career, left the veteran entire 

 personal liberty, saying that he respected his years, and did not wish 

 to make him the victim of the intriguers who would doubtless avail 

 themselves of his absence to undermine him at Vienna. Wurmser 

 repaid the generosity of the French general in kind ; having detected 

 a plot to poison Bonaparte, he put him upon his guard. 



On Wurmser's return to Vienna, the emperor appointed him 

 governor of Hungary, with a salary of 14,000 florins. He did not 

 however survive to take possession of his government, dying at 

 Vienna in the month of June 1797. He was never married : hia 

 estates and honours were inherited by a nephew. 



WYATT, JAMES, an architect, who occupies a conspicuous place 

 in the history of the art in this country during the latter part of the 

 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, was born in 1746, at 

 Burton Constable in Staffordshire, where his father was both a farmer 

 and a dealer in timber. At an early age James Wyatt was introduced 

 to Lord Bagot, who, being then about to set out for Italy as ambas- 

 sador to the pope, took him with him, from which it is probable that 

 his lordship was struck by some symptoms of extraordinary talent, to 

 take charge of a boy of fourteen in order to afford him the opportu- 

 nity of pursuing studies which he could then hardly have commenced. 

 Arrived at Rome, young Wyatt spent three or four years in that city, 

 examining and measuring the principal monuments of ancient archi- 

 tecture, but, it would seem, without imbibing any taste for its modern 

 ones, since no traces of it are discoverable in his own works. On 

 quitting Rome he proceeded to Venice, where he studied for two 

 years more under Vincentini, an architect and painter, and then 

 returned to England, after being absent altogether about six years, 

 that is, till about 1766 or 1767. Whether his early patron continued 

 to notice, or helped to push him in his profession, we are unable to 

 say ; neither do we know with whom the scheme of the Oxford-street 

 Pantheon originated, or whether Wyatt had actually executed any- 

 thing previously to being employed upon that building, which was 

 finished and opened in 1772 ; but it at once stamped his celebrity, 

 and he thenceforth became the ' fashionable ' architect of the day. 

 " The Winter Ranelagh of the metropolis," as Walpole calls it, estab- 

 lished under the auspices of high fashion, and itself the fashion and 

 the rage as a place of amusement, was admired of course by all who 

 pretended to taste or good breeding. It was fitted up in a style of 

 splendour till then unprecedented in this country, and was eminently 



