879 



YORCK VON WARTENBURG. 



YORK, HOUSE OF. 



880 



were devoted to birds, as the following titles of some of his first 

 scientific contributions show: 'On the Change in the Plumage of 

 some Hen-Pheasants ' (' Philosophical Transactions,' 117); 'On the Oc- 

 currence, of some rare British Birds' ('Zool. Journal,' II.) ; 'On the 

 email horny appendage to the upper mandible in very young chickens' 

 (Ibid.) ; ' On the Anatomy of Birds of Prey' (' Zool. Journal,' III.) ; 'On 

 the Structure of the Beak and its Muscles in the Crossbill' ('Zool. 

 Journal,' IV.). He was one of the first members of the Zoological 

 Society and contributed many papers to the Proceedings of the Com- 

 mittee of that body. In the first volume of papers published by the 

 Society, Mr. Yarrell contributed no less than seventeen. They exhibit 

 a wide and accurate knowledge of the forms not only of birds but of 

 fishes and mammals. In these papers his dissections are very nume- 

 rous, and they are* very accurate. This is the more remarkable as Mr. 

 Yarrell had not the benefit of a medical education nor any further 

 means of instruction than those supplied by his own industry. It 

 was in these earlier papers that he demonstrated the true nature of 

 White Bait, and showed that this pet morsel of the London epicure is 

 a true species of fish and not the young of the Shad, the Herring, or 

 any other species of fish as had been supposed up to his time. He 

 did not however confine himself to British zoology, many of his 

 papers being devoted to foreign animals, as the following : 'On the 

 Anatomy of the Lesser American Flying Squirrel ; ' ' On the Woolly 

 and Hairy Penguins of Dr. Latham; ' ' On the Trachea of the Stanley 

 Crane ; ' the subjects of his research being in this case the animals 

 dying in the menagerie of the Zoological Society in Regent's Park. He 

 was always an active fellow of the Society and one of its vice-presi- 

 dents at the time of his death. He took a deep interest in the pro- 

 gress and development of the Gardens, as well as in the diffusion 

 amongst the people of a taste for his favourite science. His various 

 papers amounting to upwards of seventy, the names of which are 

 given in the 'Zoological Bibliography of the Ray Society,' prepared him 

 for the two great works of his life, the histories of British Birds and 

 British Fishes. The 'History of British Fishes' appeared in two 

 vols. 8vo in 1836. It contained original descriptions with an account 

 of the habits and a wood-engraving of every British fish. It was in 

 every way an admirable work, containing accounts of several new 

 fishes, with such descriptions as enabled the naturalist to distinguish 

 them, whilst they were rendered by the agreeable style in which they 

 were written attractive to the dullest of angler?. A second edition 

 of this work appeared in 1851. 'The History of British Birds' 

 appeared in 1843. It was on the same plan as that of the fishes. The 

 illustrations in wood were accurate and beautiful and highly creditable 

 to the enterprise and taste of his publisher Mr. Van Voorst. No 

 work on this subject since the time of Bewick's ' Birds ' have been so 

 popular. In many of his details, especially his picturesque tail-pieces, 

 lie imitated his great predecessor, but in point of accuracy of description 

 and the homely truthfulness of his account of the habits of birds Mr. 

 Yarrell has had no equal. At the time of his death Mr. Yarrell was 

 treasurer of the Linnsean Society, and had been elected vice-president 

 during the presidency of Robert Brown. Although one of his earliest 

 papers was published iu the 'Philosophical Transactions' Mr. Yarrell 

 was never made a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was once proposed, 

 but some unworthy objections having been made to his admission he 

 withdrew bis certificate, and although in the latter part of his life, the 

 Royal Society would have gladly admitted him amongst its fellows, and 

 his certificate was signed, it was too late, he positively refused. In 

 August 1856 he was attacked with paralysis, but although he suffi- 

 ciently recovered to make a voyage to Yarmouth, he was seized with 

 another fit on the evening of his arrival and died on the morning of 

 September 1st, 1856. He was interred at Bayford in Hertfordshire. 



YORCK VON WARTENBURG, HANS DAVID LUDWIG, GRAF, 

 was born on the 26th of September 1759, at Kb'nigsberg, in East 

 Prussia, of an old English family which had settled in Pomerania. 

 In 1772 he entered the Prussian military service, and after having 

 suffered imprisonment on account of a duel, he entered that of Hol- 

 land in 1782. After serving in the Dutch East Indian colonies in 

 1783-4, and attaining the rank of captain, he re-entered the Prussian 

 service, and in 1806 became captain of a jager corps. In the campaign 

 of this year he commanded first the advance-guard and then the rear- 

 guard of the army under the Duke of Saxe- Weimar, whose passage of 

 the Elbe, after his defeat on the Saale, he covered with great skill and 

 prudence. At the storming of the little town of Wahren in Mecklen- 

 burg he was wounded and taken prisoner, but was soon after liberated 

 on exchange, at the same time with Bliicher. In 1807 he was advanced 

 to the rank of major-general. In 1808, on the re-organisation of the 

 Prussian army, he was promoted to the command of tLe West Prussian 

 division ; and in 1810 entrusted with the inspection of the whole of 

 the light troops. In the Russian campaign of 1812 he commanded 

 the Prussian auxiliary corps under General Grawert, on whose sick- 

 ness he succeeded to the chief command. This corps formed part of 

 the tenth division of the French army under Marshal Macdonald, and 

 his position became a critical one when Bonaparte ordered the tenth 

 division to retreat to Memel. Yorck's corps formed the third column, 

 and brought up the rear. On December 20, 1812, he quitted Mitau, 

 followed by Wittgenstein, whose advanced troops reached Memel on 

 December 27. It was perhaps not so much a sense of his critical 

 situation, as a keen perception of the state of political affairs, that led 



Yorck, on his own responsibility, to enter into the convention of 

 Tauroggen on December SO, by which he agreed to withdraw his 

 forces from the French army, and as an independent force agreed to 

 remain neuter. The king of Prussia, straitened as he was in his poli- 

 tical relations, could not avoid at first publicly avowing his displeasure, 

 but subsequently testified his perfect satisfaction with his conduct. 

 The step certainly displayed bis sagacity and strength of character, 

 and was the first bold measure by which tho independence of Prussia 

 was secured. As soon as the Prussian army, which at the command 

 of Napoleon had been rendered insignificant, had been re-organised and 

 armed, he conducted it to the Elbe, where, at Dannekow, he defeated, 

 on April 5, 1813, the French army under Murat, which had been 

 forced to evacuate Magdeburg. On May 19 he fought at Weissig 

 against the greatly superior force under Sebastiani, maintaining his 

 position with skill and firmness, and then took part in the battle of 

 Bautzen. During a truce which followed he strengthened his army 

 considerably, and then joined the Silesian army under Bliicher, t iking 

 a decided part in the victory on the Katzbach on August 26. On 

 October 3 he gained an important victory with his own corps over 

 Bertrand at Wartenberg, which enabled Bliicher to pass to the left 

 bank of the Elbe. At the battle of Leipzig he also played a distin- 

 guished part, driving Marmont from an important point after an 

 obstinate conflict on October 16. On the retreat of the French he 

 pressed the flying foe in their passage over the Unstrutt near Freiberg. 

 When the allied army had entered France as victors, Yorck found an 

 opportunity of displaying his military skill. On February 11, 1814, 

 General Sacken had too hastily engaged in battle with Napoleon at 

 Montmirail, and would have been totally defeated had not Yorck come 

 to his assistance, by which he was enabled, though with considerable 

 loss, to effect an orderly retreat. He likewise distinguished himself at 

 the battle of Laon on March 9, where, in conjunction with General 

 Kleist, he conducted the night attack on the right wing of the French 

 army, which caused the dispersion of the corps under Marmont and 

 Arrighi. After the capture of Paris he accompanied his sovereign to 

 London, was created a count with a considerable revenue, and ap- 

 pointed to the command of the army in Silesia and Posen. On the 

 return of Bonaparte from Elba he was nominated to the command of 

 the army assembled on the Elbe and Saale, but as it was not called 

 into action, he did not actually assume it. On July 1, 1815, his only 

 son, an officer in the Brandenberg hussars, was killed in a skirmish at 

 Versailles; the loss greatly affected him, aud he applied for and 

 obtained permission to retire from the service. He afterwards lived 

 in retirement on his estate at Klein-Ols in Silesia, where he died on 

 October 4, 1830, after having been created a field-marshal in 1821. 



YORK, HOUSE OF. Otho, afterwards Otho IV., emperor of Ger- 

 many, son of Henry V., surnamed the Lion, duke of Bavaria, by Maud, 

 eldest daughter of Henry II. of England, is said to have been created 

 Earl of York by his relation King Richard I. But, with this excep- 

 tion (if it be one), the peerage distinguished by the title of York has 

 always been a dukedom, and has never been conferred except on a 

 son, brother, or uncle of the reigning king. The first Duke of York 

 was Edmund Plantagenet, surnamed De Langley, the fifth and youngest 

 son of Edward III., who, having been made Earl of Cambridge by his 

 father in 1362 on reaching his majority, was afterwards created Duke 

 of York in 1385 by his nephew Richard II. From him sprung the 

 line known in our history as the House of York, in which the right 

 of succession to the throne eventually came to reside, so far as it 

 depended upon descent or birth. The right came into this line by 

 the marriage of Richard Earl of Cambridge, second son of the first 

 duke, to Anne Mortimer, daughter of Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, 

 who, by virtue of her descent from Lionel, Duke of Clarence, third 

 son of Edward III., whose great-granddaughter she was, inherited or 

 conveyed to her issue, after the death of her brother Edmund Mor- 

 timer, Earl of March, in 1424, the true representation of Edward III. 

 after the failure of the line of that king's eldest son ou the death of 

 Richard II. in 1399. The reigning king Henry VI. and his two imme- 

 diate predecessors, Henry IV. and Henry V., were descended only 

 from John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the fourth son of Edward III. 

 The son of the Earl of Cambridge and of Anne Mortimer was Richard 

 Plantagenet, who became the third Duke of York, on the death with- 

 out issue of his uncle Edward, the second duke, slain at Agiucourt in 

 1415. To him therefore fell the true title by descent to the throne 

 after the death of his brother. He was slain at the battle of Wake- 

 field, in December 1460; on which the title of Duke of York came to 

 his eldest son Edward, who ascended the throne as Edward IV. in 

 March the following year. After the death of Edward V. and his 

 brother, some time in 1483, the representation of Edward IV. rested 

 in his eldest daughter Elizabeth, who married Henry VII., and 

 became by him the mother of Henry VIII., and also, through her 

 eldest daughter Margaret, who married James IV. of Scotland, the 

 ancestress of James I., who, in virtue of that descent, succeeded to 

 the throne of England, on the failure of the line of Henry VIII., in 

 1603. The present royal family is descended from Elizabeth, the 

 eldest daughter of James I., the line of his son Charles (with the ex- 

 ception only of Mary and Anne, the daughters of James II., neither of 

 whom left any issue) having been expelled from the throne at the 

 Revolution of 1688. 



Since the time of Edward IV. the title of Duke of York has been 



