609 



HUMBERT, JOSEPH AMABLE. 



HUMBOLDT, BARON VON. 



BIO 



the month Rubby al Avul, A.H. 933 (21st of January 1556), in his 

 forty-eighth year, in consequence of a fall from the terrace of his 

 palace. He was succeeded by his son Akbar. 



Humaiun was distinguished by a greater love of justice and humanity 

 than we usually meet with in Oriental sovereigns. He frequently 

 pardoned his brothers who rebelled against him, and was with great 

 difficulty persuaded to consent to the punishment of Kamran. We 

 are informed by Feri^hta, that " he devoted himself to the sciences 

 of astronomy and geography, and not only wrote dissertations on the 

 nature of the elements, but had terrestrial and celestial globes con- 

 structed for his use." He also wrote several poetns, which were extant 

 in the time of Ferishta. 



An interesting account of the life of Humaiun is given in the 

 ' Tezkreh al Vakiat, or Private Memoirs of the Mogul Emperor 

 Hnmayun, written in the Persian language by Jouher, a confidential 

 domestic of His Majesty;' of which au English translation was pub- 

 lished by Major 0. Stewart, London, 1832. See also Ferishta's 

 ' History,' translated by Lieutenant-Colonel Briggs, vol. ii. pp. 70 97 ; 

 154-180. 



HUMBERT, JOSEPH AMABLE, a French general, was born at 

 Rouvray, near Remiremont, November 25,1767. Deprived of both 

 his parents in childhood, he wag indebted for his imperfect education 

 to an aunt, from whose house he ran away at sixteen. From this 

 time he led a vagrant life for nearly nine years; at one time a servant 

 to a tradesman at Nancy ; then a cornmoj workman at Lyon, and for 

 several years A hawker of rabbit-skins in his own neighbourhood. In 

 this situation the Revolution found him, when he enlisted as a volun- 

 teer, in June 1792. Being one of the finest men in the French army, 

 extremely brave, ready witted, and presumptuous, his natural gifts 

 suited the times, so that he rose very rapidly, and within six months 

 became a lieutenant, a captain, and a colonel In April 1793 he was 

 made a general of brigade; and during the invasion of Troves, in 

 August 1791, be gave proofs of reckless daring as a soldier. But his 

 siiiritof insubordination, at this period, drew upon him a severe rebuke 

 from his commander, General Bournonville, in consequence of which 

 he was removed to the army of the west, operating against the insur- 

 gent* of La Vend<5e. Here he distinguixhed himself on several occasions 

 under General lloehe, whose confidence he acquired; but having been 

 employed to superintend the slaughter of the Royalist prisoners at 

 Quiberon, whom he had induced to capitulate oa the promise of 

 honourable treatment, he bore for several years the stigma, which 

 belonged rather to Tallien and the government. Nearly a thousand 

 men were shot in this massacre, among whom were M. de Sombreuil, 

 and several royalist officers of rank. In 1796 General Hoche, after 

 great efforts to stimulate the Directory, was sent with an army of 9000 

 men to invade Ireland : he took with him General Humbert, who 

 wag made a general of division. But this expedition came] to nothing, 

 a violent storm having scattered the several ships of the squadron, 

 and obliged Hoche to regain the French coast. At length, about the 

 middle of August 1793, General Humbert was led to undertake a 

 landing in Ireland, with a single division, consisting of 1600 troops. 

 With this small force he landed at Killala, August 22, and took 

 possession of the town. Three days after he marched from Killala 

 to meet General Lake, who had with him a force superior in numbers, 

 but consisting chiefly of yeomanry and militia. The forces encountered 

 near Caatlebar, and Lake was defeated. Humbert now took possession 

 of Castlebar, which became his head-quarters. He and his lieutenant, 

 Sarrazen, made the greatest efforts to induce the Irish to join his 

 standard, in which he was assisted by one or two rebels of note 

 belonging to the country. But the recent disastrous battle of Vinegar 

 Hill (May 23, 1798); the weakness of his army, reduced to less than 

 a thousand men ; and his want of money even to pay his own troops, 

 proved unfavourable to big views, and rendered his object abortive. 

 Iu this forlorn condition he was met by the advanced guard of Lord 

 Cornwallis and beaten; and goon after wag obliged to capitulate, Sep- 

 tember H, 1793. He wag exchanged in March 1799, and returned to 

 France. 



In 1802 he was ordered to join the expedition of General Leclerc, 

 destined against the blacks of St. Domingo, whom he repeatedly 

 defeated. After the death of Leclerc he returned to France in the 

 game ship with the widow of his leader, the beautiful Pauline, who 

 it said to have promised him her hand when the term of her mourn- 

 ing had arrived. This presumption proved the ruin of Humbert ; the 

 indignant First Consul at once ordered him to leave Paris, and would 

 have proceeded to harsher measures, had not the unfortunate general 

 made his escape to America in 1804. He never afterwards appeared 

 in his native country, but led for many years a new course of adventure 

 among the Spanish settlement;. Humbert died at New Orleans, 

 February 27, 1823. 



* HUMBOLDT, FRIEDRICH-HEINRICH-ALKXANDER, BARON 

 VON, waa born at Berlin September 14, 1769, two years after his 

 brother, the celebrated philologist, Wilhelm. His father, Major Von 

 Humboldt, had been in the g-rvice of Frederick the Great, and was a 

 man of some distinction in Prussia, and possessed of considerable pro- 

 perty : he died in 1779, but his widow survived till 1796. After having 

 been carefully educated at home under tutors, Alexander von Hum- 

 boldt went, in 1736, along with his elder brother, to the University ol 

 Frankfurt ou-the-Oder, where he studied natural science and political 



iconomy, while his brother studied law. Already the two brothers 

 lad revealed the difference of their tastes William devoting himself 

 chiefly to philology, history, and art, while the passion of Alexander 

 was for all studies referring to physical nature. In 1788 Alexander 

 transferred himself to Gottingen, the university of which was then 

 adorned by Blumenbach, Heyne, and Eichhorn. Here both brothers 

 formed an intimate acquaintance with George Forster, Heyne's son-in- 

 aw, who had been the companion of Captain Cook in his voyage to 

 the South seas. Forster's enthusiastic disposition made a strong im- 

 pression on both the brothers, but especially on Alexander, whose 

 eagerness for foreign travel, as well as the liberal and patriotic character 

 >f his political opinions, may be traced in part to this early friendship. 

 In 1790 he made his first tour in Forster's company, visiting the Rhine 

 countries, Holland, and England ; and the result w.is his first work as 

 a naturalist, entitled ' Mineralogische Betrachtungen iiber einige Basalto 

 aui Rhein' (' Mineralogical Considerations on certain Basaltic Forma- 

 tions on the Rhine '), Brunswick, 1790. As Humboldt had destined 

 himself for official employment under the Prussian government, he 

 went, on his return from this tour, to Hamburg, to learn book-keeping 

 and the like at a commercial academy there ; after which, as the par- 

 ticular employment for which he had devoted himself was one in 

 connection with mining and metallurgical works, he betook himself, 

 for special instruction in this department, to Freiburg, where Werner 

 was then director of a mining academy (1791). In 1792 he was 

 appointed to a post in the mining and smelting department of the 

 Prussian public works, and was located at Bayreuth as mining super- 

 intendent. He remained in this situation till 1795, contributing during 

 these years scientific articles on various subjecta to German periodicals, 

 besides writing and publishing by itself, in Latin, a botanical work of 

 some importance, entitled 'Specimen of the Flora of Freiburg, exhibit- 

 ing the Cryptogamic and especially the Subterranean Plants of the 

 district ; to which are added Aphorisms on the Chemical Physiology 

 of Plants,' 4to, Berlin, 1793. In 1795 he resigned his mining appoint- 

 ment, having set his heart on travelling over some little-explored part 

 of the globe as a naturalist. " I had from my earliest youth," he says, 

 " felt a burning desire to travel in distant lands unexplored by Euro- 

 peans." Owing to the state of the continent however, involved at that 

 time in the general war consequent on the French revolution, it was 

 not easy for the young naturalist to carry out his project. For a year 

 or two he resided in various parts of Germany, more particularly at 

 Jena, where he and his brother became intimately acquainted with 

 Giithe and .Schiller, and where high expectations were formed by these 

 and other great Germans of the future career of a naturalist possessing 

 go conspicuously as Alexander von Humboldt did, a keen spirit of 

 generalisation, combined with a knowledge of all that had yet been 

 done by his predecessors in every department of physical and physio- 

 logical inquiry. His reputation in these respects was increased by two 

 treatises published about this time the one entitled ' Investigations 

 on the Muscles and Nerve-Fibres, with Conjectures on the Chemical 

 Process of Life in the Animal and Vegetable World,' Posen and 

 Berlin, 1797; the other, 'On Subterranean kinds of Gas, and the 

 Means of Lessening their Bad Effects,' Brunswick, 1799. At length, 

 after whetting rather than abating his appetite for travel by a short 

 tour in some parts of Italy, and finding it impossible to carry out a 

 plan for visiting Kgypt, Humboldt removed to Paris, in order to become 

 acquainted with the distinguished savans then resident in that capital, 

 and to make arrangements for accompanying, if even at his own ex- 

 pense, an expedition of exploration in the Southern hemisphere, then 

 being fitted out under the auspices of the French government. This 

 expedition was abandoned, but Humboldt had formed an acquaintance 

 with a congenial spirit in Bonpland, who was to have been the naturalist 

 of the expedition, and the two friends resolved to direct their joint 

 energies towards some equivalent enterprise. They schemed a journey 

 in Northern Africa; but that failing, they visited Spain, the govern- 

 ment of which country gave their sanction to a plan of the two 

 naturalists for an exploration of the Spanish dominions in South 

 America. On the 4th of June 1799, Humboldt and Bouplaud sailed 

 from Corunna, escaped the English cruisers, and, after visiting Teneriffe, 

 where they ascended the Peak and collected some interesting obser- 

 vations on the natural history of the island, landed at Cumaua, on the 

 South American coast, on the 16th of July. The travellers were now 

 in their element; and for five years they occupied themselves inces- 

 santly in travelling through tracts of the earth rich in all that could 

 interest the scientific observer, and till then never scientifically de- 

 scribed. Their journeyings during these five years form a story of 

 personal adventure and scientific research, to which there are few 

 parallels. They explored the regions of South America watered by 

 the Oronoco and the upper part of the Rio Negro, fully tracing the 

 connection between the Orouoco and the Amazon ; they returned to 

 the coast and sailed for Cuba, where they remained some months ; 

 leaving Cuba in March 1801, they returned to the South American 

 continent, sailed up the Magdaleua as far as they could pursued their 

 route by land to Popayan and Quito, and thence as far south as Lima, 

 crossing the Cordilleras of the Andes no fewer than five times in the 

 course of their journey, and, besides other mountain-ascents, climbing 

 Chimborazo (June 23, 1802) to an elevation of 19,300 feet, being the 

 highest point of the Andes ever reached by man ; from Lima they sailed 

 to Guayaquil, and thence to Acapulco oil the western coast of Mexico 



