14U 



AMHEHST AMIOT. 



rdifices or halls for tlic accommodation of students. 



In 18^8, tin- college was under tin- direction of ;i 

 lent, liv ' professors, one tutor, and two assistant 



teacher-, and liad VI I students. 



AMHKKST, Jeffrey, lord, a distinguished British 

 general officer, was descended from an ancient 



'Kcnti-h family, and born in 1717. He early devoted 



himself to the jirofession of arms, receiving in i cn- 



- commission when only fourteen years of age. 



At the age of twenty-five, lie acted as aid-de-camp 

 to lord Ligonier, in the batdes of Dettingen and 



untenoy, ami afterwards served on the staff of the 

 duke of Cumberland, at those of Laffeldand H:IM en- 

 beck. In 1756, he received the colonelcy of a 

 regiment, and was appointed major-general, and, in 

 the summer of 1758, commanded the expedition 

 against Louisburg, which, together with the whole 

 island of Cape Breton, surrendered to his arms. 



The capture of fort du Quesne, Niagara and 

 Ticonderoga in due time followed; and, in 1760, 

 the whole of Canada being reduced, general Am- 

 herst received, for his share in these exploits, the 

 t hunks of the house of commons, and the order of 

 the Bath. In 1763, he was made governor of 

 Virginia ; in 1770, governor of the isle of Jersey, 

 and, in 1772, lieutenant-general of the ordnance 

 and officiating commander-in-chief of the British 

 forces. Besides these, and several other military 

 honours, he was, in 1776, created a peer by the tide 

 of baron Amherst of Holmesdale, in the county of 

 Kent. On the breaking up of the North adminis- 

 tration, lord Amherst was removed from the com- 

 mandership-in-chief, and the lieutenancy of the 

 ordnance, and, in 1787, received another patent of 

 peerage as baron Amherst of Montreal, with re- 

 mainder to his nephew, William Pitt Amherst ; 

 and, on the staff being re-appointed in 1793, he was 

 once more called upon to act as commander-in- 

 chief. In 1795, he resigned die commaudership-in- 

 chief to die duke of York, and, in 1796, received 

 the rank of field-marshal. He died in 1797, in die 

 eighty-first year of his age. A. was twice married, 

 but left no issue, being succeeded by his nephew as 

 aforesaid. Lord Amherst was regarded as a man 

 of a collected and temperate mind, without bril- 

 liancy or parade ; a strict officer, yet die soldier's 

 friend. He had two brothers, one an admiral of the 

 blue, the odier a lieutenant-general ; it is die son 

 of die latter who has succeeded him. 

 AMIANTHUS ; a kind of flexible asbestos, (q. v.) 

 AMIDSHIPS ; the middle of a ship, eidier widi re- 

 gard to her lenzrth or breaddi. 



AMIENS, in Picardy ; a fortified city in die French 

 department of the Somme, situated on the river 

 Somme ; Ion. 2 I8f E.; lat. 49o 5V N. It contains 

 5980 houses, 41,000 inhabitants, is die residence of 

 a bishop, and has possessed, since the year 1750, a 

 Societe <f Emulation, an academy of arts and sciences, 

 of literature, commerce, and agriculture, a lyceum, 

 a school at St Acheul, under the direction of the 

 .1 esuits, a convent of die order of la Trappe, in die 

 abbey du Gard, many considerable manufactories of 

 woollen cloth, tapestry, damask, and kerseymere (of 

 which 130,000 pieces are sold annually), leather, 

 soap, as well as eighty cotton factories. The pastry 

 of A,, also, often goes across die channel, and is 

 very celebrated. 



AMIENS, peace of; concluded March 27, 1802, 

 by Joseph Bonaparte, the marquis Cornwallis, 

 d'Azzara, and von Schimmelpenninck. In 1800, 



Sritain saw herself deprived of all her continental 

 illiances ; die Russian emperor, Paul, was dissatis- 

 fied diat Malta was not restored to the order of 

 which he was grand master, and Pitt had kid an 

 embargo on die ships of Prussia, Denmark, and 



Sweden, because, at (lie instigation of Paul, they 

 determined to re\i\e the armed neutrality of the 

 north. On the other hand, the ports of the continent 

 were closed against the British shins, and this cir- 

 cumstance pave the opposition in parliament a 

 majority against die ministry. At die same time, 

 the minister could not. obtain the con-ent of the 

 king to the emancipation of the catholics. So the. 

 Pitt ministry was di>Mil\ed, and the speaker, 

 Addington, took Pitt's place, as first lord of the 

 treasury. The new ministry, of which lonl Hawker- 

 bury was secretary of foreign affairs, commenced 

 negotiations for peace, and the preliminaries were 

 signed at London, Oct. 1, 1801. A definitive treaty 

 was concluded at A. between Great Britain, France, 

 Spain, and die BaUwian republic, March 27, 18OiJ. 

 Britain retained, of her conquests, the islands of 

 Ceylon and Trinidad; die harbour of the (ape of 

 Good Hope remained open to her ships. France 

 regained her colonies, and the Arowari was made, 

 die boundary of her possessions in Guiana on tin- 

 side towards Brazil. The republic of the Sewn 

 Islands was acknowledged, and .Malta was restored 

 to die order of the same name. Spain and the 

 Batavian republic, also, regained their colonial pos- 

 sessions, with the exception of Ceylon and Trinidad. 

 The French were to evacuate Rome and Maples, 

 together with Elba. The house of Orange was to 

 be indemnified ; die status yuo ante bellum guaran- 

 teed to die Porte; and, on these conditions, the 

 sultan Selim formally acceded to the treaty of A., 

 May 13, 1802. But this peace soon became gener- 

 ally unpopular in Britain; for the first consul 

 fitted out a great expedition against St Domingo, 

 and wished to place French consuls in all the ports 

 of Ireland. On die odier hand, Great Britain de- 

 dined evacuating Egypt and Malta, maintaining 

 diat France had first threatened ; in which assertion 

 diey were confirmed by Sebastiani's inconsiderate 

 report of his mission to Egypt. May 10, 1803, the 

 British court declared die conditions on which, 

 alone, all new differences could be reconciled ; de- 

 manded indemnification for die king of Sardinia, 

 who had been expelled from die continent ; restitu- 

 tion of die island of Lampedosa, and the evacuation 

 of the Batavian and Helvetian republics by die 

 French troops. These conditions die FrencJi re- 

 fused, and the court of St James's declared war, 

 May 18, 1803. 



AMILCAR, or HAMILCAB ; the name of several 

 Carthaginian generals. A. Barcas, the fadier of 

 Hannibal, is the most celebrated of them. The 

 Roman fleet defeated his, near Trapani, 242 B. C., 

 and thus put an end to die first Punic war. A. 

 began the second, landed in Spain, and subdued its 

 most warlike nations ; but, as he was preparing for 

 an expedition against Italy, he was killed in battle, 

 A. U. C. 526, B. C. 228. He left three sons, and 

 is said to have made Hannibal swear an eternal 

 hatred against the Romans. 



AMIOT, rather ; a French Jesuit, born in 1718, 

 at Toulon ; a missionary to Pekin, who lias contri- 

 buted much to our knowledge of China. We owe 

 to him the most elaborate account of the antiquities, 

 the history, the language, and the arts of this king- 

 dom. In 1750, he went to Macao, and, in the 

 following year, by the invitation of die emperor of 

 China, to Pekin, where he remained till his death, 

 in 1794. Uninterrupted study gave him a know- 

 ledge of die Chinese and Tartar languages, by 

 means of which he became acquainted with China 

 through die best sources. Most of his valuable 

 works, which treat of the writing, the art of war, 

 the music, &c., of the Chinese, together with a 

 biography of Confucius, and a grammar, c. of die 



