FRONDE FROST. 



327 



FRONDE ; a French party during the minority of 

 Louis XIV., which opposed the court and cardinal 

 Mazarin, whom the queen-mother had appointed 

 prime minister, after the decease of Louis XIII. 

 (1648.) The despotism of Richelieu seemed to be 

 continued under the administration of this foreigner, 

 in other forms. The taxes were enormous, and, 

 when the parliament refused to register them, se- 

 veral of the members were repeatedly imprisoned. 

 This excited not only the people, but even the 

 princes of the blood and many noblemen, against 

 Mazarin, who had become immensely rich. At the 

 head of the Fronde stood the cardinal de Retz. 

 (q. v.) The violence and selfishness of the other 

 leaders, who brought the Spanish troops into the 

 country, prevented the Fronde from accomplishing 

 any thing for the general welfare. On the con- 

 trary, the result ot the Fronde served only to 

 strengthen the royal power. The Fronde existed 

 from 1648 to 1654. One who censures the govern- 

 ment is still called a Frondeur. See Bachaumont. 



FRONDSBERG, GEORGE of (Frundsberg, Fre- 

 nndsberg, or Fronsperg), lord of Mindelheim, ge- 

 neral of the imperial troops, was born in 1475, and 

 died at Mindelheim, in 1528. He formed his great 

 military talents in the wars of the emperor Maximi- 

 lian I. against the Swiss. In 1504, he already 

 passed for one of the bravest knights in the imperial 

 army. In 1512, he was at the head of the emperor's 

 troops in Italy. He served with equal fame as a 

 general of Maximilian I. and Charles V., and dis- 

 tinguished himself in the battle of Pavia (1525.) He 

 repeatedly led reinforcements to Charles from Ger- 

 many. In 1526, he raised, at his own expense, by 

 pledging his estates, a body of 12,000 men, with 

 which he strengthened the army of Charles of 

 Bourbon, who thus was enabled to march to Rome, 

 and take the city by storm. He afterwards served 

 in the Netherlands, under Philibert of Orange, in 

 the war against France. He was the author of 

 several improvements in the military system. Fronds- 

 berg was a very strong man, and his deeds of per- 

 sonal prowess were celebrated in his time. At the 

 diet of Worms (1521), where Luther appeared to 

 defend himself before Charles V., the calm coun- 

 tenance of the accused, in the midst of enemies, 

 made such an impression on the old general, that 

 tapping him kindly on the shoulder, he said, " My 

 good monk, my good monk, you are about to en- 

 counter what neither I, nor any general, in our 

 hardest battles, have ever encountered. If you are 

 sincere, and sure of your cause, go on in God's 

 name, and fear nothing ; God will not forsake you." 



FRONTIGNAC ; a sweet muscatel wine, which 

 is made at Frontignan, in Lower Languedoc, and is 

 carried to Cette and Montpellier. There are two 

 kinds, the red and white. Epicures use it with some 

 kinds of fish. 



FRONTINUS, SEXTUS JCTLIUS; a Roman of 

 patrician descent, who flourished in the second half 

 of the first century after Christ. He was thrice 

 consul, and commanded with reputation in Britain, 

 under Vespasian. He was appointed by Nerva to 

 superintend the aqueducts, on which he also wrote. 

 Frontinus died about A. D. 106. He also stood 

 high, in the estimation of his contemporaries, as a 

 jurist. His four books De Stratagematibus (Ley- 

 den, 1731 ; Leipsic, 1773 ; and by Wiegemann, 

 Gottingen, 1798), and his work De Aquaductibus 

 Urbis Romas (Padua, 1"22 32 ; and Altona, 1793), 

 are well known. 



FRONTO, MARCUS CORNELIUS; an orator and 

 teacher of eloquence at Rome. He was a native of 

 Crete, and received his education at Cirta, a Roman 

 colony in Numidia. He lived under the emperors 



Marcus Aurelius, and Lucius Verus, both of whom 

 he instructed in oratory, and the former in ethics. 

 To express his gratitude, Marcus Aurelius erected a 

 column in honour of him, and in his Meditations 

 also makes honourable mention of the instructions he 

 received from him. The writings of Fronto have 

 been compared to those of Cicero. Till lately we 

 had none of his works, except some fragments of a 

 grammatical character, which are found in the col- 

 lection of Putsch. All the rest were supposed to 

 have been lost, till, in 1815, Angelo Maio, librarian 

 of the Ambrose library, at Milan, found several of 

 his works, and first published them. These were, a 

 book of letters, in Latin, to the emperor Antoninus 

 Pius ; two books of letters to the emperor Lucius 

 Verus ; letters to his friends ; two books of instruc- 

 tions in eloquence, addressed to Marcus Antoninus ; 

 some fragments of orations ; a long letter of condol- 

 ence to Marcus Aurelius, on the occasion of his 

 defeat in the Parthian war ; two humorous pieces, 

 &c. The first edition of these works, which ap- 

 peared at Milan in 1815, and is by no means satis- 

 factory, was followed by an impression at Frankfort 

 in 1816, and by a critical edition by Niebuhr in 1816, 

 with illustrations by Buttmann and Heindorf. Be- 

 tween Fronto and Cicero, the distance is too great 

 to permit us, like Maio, to call him Romanes elo- 

 quentiee non secundum, sed alterum decus. As little 

 does he deserve the low estimation in which Niebuhr 

 holds him. The most correct view, perhaps, is, 

 that Fronto and Syrnmachus, like Cicero and Pliny, 

 were the principal orators of their times ; the former 

 standing as far below the latter as might be expected 

 from the corrupted taste of the period in which they 

 lived. See Frederic Roth's Observations on the 

 Writings of Fronto and the Period of the Antonines, 

 Nuremberg, 1817. 



FROST, is the name we give to that state of our 

 atmosphere in which water is changed into ice. 

 (See Freezing.) The degree of temperature at 

 which this takes place, is called the freezing point. 

 (See Freezing Point.) The cold air draws from 

 water the portion of caloric which is necessary for 

 its existence in a fluid state. The power of frost is 

 immense ; a freezing liquid will burst the strongest 

 vessels in which it is enclosed. Organic bodies do 

 not suffer so much from it, and many are entirely 

 unhurt by it. Severe frosts are not so injurious to 

 plants, after dry weather, as when they follow im- 

 mediately after rain or a thaw. The cause of this 

 probably is, that in damp weather, even in winter, 

 the tender vessels of plants are filled with sap, 

 which, expanding into ice at the time of the frost, 

 breaks them, and thus injures their whole internal 

 organization. From the same cause, the strongest 

 oaks split in a severe frost ; which is also dangerous, 

 and sometimes fatal to men and animals. It ap- 

 pears wholly to destroy the irritability of the bodily 

 frame, and to rob it of its internal heat. A person 

 feels an irresistible inclination to sleep; he yields, 

 though against his will, and, while lost in insensibi- 

 lity, his limbs begin to stiffen. If a man thus asleep 

 be brought into a warm room, the sudden passage 

 from cold to warmth causes his death ; but if he be 

 rubbed in the snow he may recover. The same is 

 the case with regard to the frozen limbs of men and 

 animals, which can only be saved by being gradually 

 thawed, especially in snow. Frost is also very inju- 

 rious to certain kinds of food. All watery fruits are 

 deprived by frost of their pleasant taste and their 

 nourishing properties, and soon grow rotten after 

 being thawed. Even meat, which appears to be 

 preserved from tainting by the frost, corrupts soon 

 after thawing. Liquids, as beer, for instance, lose 

 their good taste. Violent winds always diminish the 



