B L A 



509 



B L E 



fiver, but it went to decay upon the erection of the town of 

 Port Louis close by in the reign of Louis XIII. 



BLAYE, a town in France in the department of Gironde, 

 and on the north-east or right bank of the river Gironde. 

 It is probably about 370 miles from Paris, S.W. by S., 

 through Chartres, Tours, Poitiers, AngoulSme, and Bar- 

 bezieux ; it is 33 miles N. of Bordeaux. It is in 45 T 

 N. lat., 40' W. long. 



Blaye existed in the time of the Romans. It is men- 

 tioned in the Itinerary of Antoninus under the name of 

 Blavium or Blavutum, and in the Theodosian Table, and by 

 Ausonius under the name of Blavia. (D'Anville, Notice 

 de. I'Ancienne Gaule.) In the middle ages the position of 

 Blaye and its military strength caused it to be the subject 

 of contest between the dukes of Gascogne and Aquitaine, 

 at the time when these duchies existed separately. At a some- 

 what later period Blaye with its territory was erected into 

 a county, and was held, as a fief under the dukes of Guienne, 

 by a younger branch of the family of the counts of Angou- 

 leme. In the religious wars of the sixteenth century, Blaye 

 was taken in 1 568 by tho Calvinists, who committed great 

 excesses. After this it fell into the hands of the party of 

 the League, and was besieged in vain in 1593 by the army 

 of the king, Henry IV., under the command of Marcchal 

 de Matignon. 



The town is divided into two parts, the upper and lower 

 town. The upper town is built upon a rock : it is fortified 

 with four large bastions and other works of defence, and is 

 surrounded by a wide and deep ditch : this upper town is 

 sometimes called the citadel of Blaye. In it is an antient 

 castle. The lower town, which seems to have been originally 

 a suburb of the upper town (from which it is separated by a 

 small river, into which the tide Hows), is the residence of the 

 merchants, who have their store-houses there. The port is 

 frequented by foreign ships, and by smaller vessels from 

 Brctagne (Brittany), which come here to take in a cargo of 

 the wines of the district. By an old ordinance of Louis XI., 

 which long continued in force, vessels coming to Bordeaux 

 were obliged to land their cannons at Blaye. The exports 

 are chiefly wine, brandy, oil, soap, resin, fruit, and timber. 

 A considerable quantity of corn is also shipped here, brought 

 from the neighbouring departments, or the produce of some 

 very fertile marshes near the town, which were drained in 

 the early part of the last century. Vessels coming from 

 Bordeaux take in provisions at Blaye. 



There were at Blaye, before the Revolution, two abbeys, 

 one of Benedictines, and one of the order of St. Augustin ; 

 but the societies were extinct, and the revenues held ' in 

 commendam ' (en commende). In the church of the abbey 

 of the Aiicustinians was the tomb of King Caribert, whom 

 writers state to have died in the year 570 ; but whose death 

 (if he be, as is likely, Caribert, king of Aquitaine, brother 

 of Dagobert I., see Biographie Universelle) should rather 

 be placed in 631. 



The river Gironde at Blaye is very wide. Piganiol de la 

 Force (Nourelle Description de la France) states that it is 

 1900 toises (equal to two miles and a quarter) across. Other 

 authorities make the width as much as two leagues, or 

 nearly six miles, but this is an exaggeration. The passage 

 was not, therefore, thought to be sufficiently protected by 

 the guns of the fortress of Blaye and those of the Fort 

 Medoc on the opposite bank. In consequence a fort of four 

 bastions and other batteries, the works of which were formed 

 of earth and of turf, was, in 1689, erected on a small islet 

 in the mid channel. In the centre of this fort of earth a 

 handsome tower of masonry was constructed. This fort is 

 called Pate de Blaye, and is considered to render impracti- 

 cable any attempt upon Bordeaux by the river. 



Blaye has an agricultural society and a theatre. Its 

 population in 1832 was 3322 for the town, or 3855 for the 

 whole commune. Many pilots reside here, who conduct 

 vessels into and out of the Gironde, the navigation of which 

 is much disturbed by shifting sands. It is the capital of an 

 arrondissement comprehending 732 square miles, or 463,480 

 acres, and having in 1832 a population of 56,406. This ar- 

 rondissement is subdivided into four cantons, and thirty- 

 seven communes or parishes. 



BLAZONRY, the art of delineating figures and devices 

 in their proper colours or metals, on armorial shields : also 

 Hied to express the hatching of the same, according to their 

 different colours, by the engraver*. Du Cange says the 

 etymology of this word is uncertain. (Glossar. edit. Paris, 

 1733, torn. i. p. 1202.) Richelet soys that some have de- 



rived it from the German llasen, ' to praise,' a sense however 

 in which this word does net appear to occur ; others from 

 the same word signifying to sound a horn, because the 

 heralds at tournaments sounded a horn when they pro- 

 claimed the arrival of a combatant. (Dictionnaire de 

 la Langue Franfoise, fol. Lyons, 1759, p. 311.) Junius 

 gives the English to blaze abroad as its origin. 



Allowing the mere invention to the Germans, says Dalla- 

 way, the splendid aid that heraldry receives from the art of 

 blazonry is unquestionably the property of the French alone. 

 Theirs are the arrangement and combination of tinctures 

 and metals, the variety of figures effected by the geometrical 

 positions of lines, the attitudes of animals, and the gro- 

 tesque and almost inexplicable delineations of monsters. 

 Dallaway, as well as other writers, consider that the tourna- 

 ments held with such magnificence towards the end of the 

 tenth century, under the auspices of Hugh Capet, were in- 

 troductory of the more general usage and assumption of 

 arms. (Compare Dallaway's Inquiries into the Origin and 

 Progress of the Science of Heraldry in England, pp. 8, 9 ; 

 Gough's Sepulchr. Monuments of Great Britain, vol. i. p. 

 cxxx. : Edmondson's Heraldry, pref.) 



BLEACHING, the process by which certain animal and 

 vegetable products, and especially such as are used as arti- 

 cles of clothing, are rendered white. The principal substances 

 of the animal kingdom which are subjected to the operation 

 of bleaching are wool and silk ; those of vegetable origin 

 are chiefly cotton and flax. These bodies contain a quantity 

 of colouring matter, which though natural to them is not 

 an essential constituent; it appears also that the colouring 

 matter is more readily acted upon by chemical agents, and 

 suffers decomposition with greater facility, than the animal 

 and vegetable matters with which it is mixed. On these ac- 

 counts it is removed by operations producing little or no 

 injurious effect upon the texture or durability of the articles 

 from which it is separated; and thus not only is their 

 beauty increased, but they are fitted for the reception of 

 the colours of the dyer and the ornamental designs of the 

 calico-printer. 



The process of bleaching is one of unquestionable an- 

 tiquity, and more especially in Egypt, where white linen 

 was used as clothing. Of the Egyptian processes nothing 

 is known with certainty ; they were probably tedious and 

 imperfect ; consisting perhaps of little more than exposure 

 to air, light, and moisture. (See Plin. xix. 1 . on flax.) 



Until within a century the art of bleaching was scarcely 

 known in Great Britain, and it was usual to send the 

 brown linen manufactured in Scotland to Holland to be 

 bleached. The Dutch method consisted in steeping the 

 linen for several days in a solution of potash, which was 

 poured upon it boiling hot ; the cloth was then removed, 

 washed, and afterwards put into wooden vessels containing 

 butter-milk, for nearly a week. This operation being over, 

 the cloth was spread upon grass, and exposed to light, air, 

 and moisture for some months ; the cloth sent from Scot- 

 land to Holland was generally kept there for half a year. 

 One of the earliest improvements made in this tedious pro- 

 cess after bleaching was performed in this country, was pro- 

 posed by Dr. Home of Edinburgh, who introduced the use 

 of water acidulated with sulphuric acid, instead of the sour 

 milk previously employed: by this substitution a great 

 saving, especially of time, was effected, for the sulphuric 

 acid was as effectual in one day's application, as the sour 

 milk in six or eight weeks. 



Until the year 1787 little further alteration was made in 

 the process of bleaching. But a most important improve- 

 ment was effected in it in consequence of the discovery 

 by Scheele, a celebrated Swedish chemist, of what he 

 termed dephlogisticated marine acid, about the year 1774; 

 this substance was afterwards called oxymuriatic acid, but 

 is now known by the name of chlorine gas. The property 

 which this gas and its solution in water possess of destroy- 

 ing vegetable colours, suggested to Berthollet the idea 

 that it might be advantageously employed in bleaching, 

 and might essentially shorten the process. In the year 

 1785 he read a paper before the Academy of Sciences at 

 Paris, which was published in the ' Journal de Physique' 

 of the same year. In this paper he mentions that he had 

 tried this gas in bleaching cloths, and with a perfectly suc- 

 cessful result: in the following year he published another 

 paper on the subject, and showed the experiment to Mr. 

 Watt, who first introduced this method of bleaching prac- 

 tically into England. About the same time Mr, Thomas 



