136 



NATCHEZ NATIONAL DOMAINS. 



The Illiine runs along Its southern border, and 

 rrrti\es the Luhn from the duchy. The superficial 

 area is 1759 square miles, with a population of 

 320,470, of whom a little more than one half are 

 Protestants. The court and about one third of the 

 people are Calvinists ; but since 1817, the Lutherans 

 and Calvinists have been united under the title of 

 the Evangelical Christian church. The face of the 

 country is rather uneven ; the soil is fertile. Hoch- 

 heiiii, Rudesheim, Johannisberg, Marcusbrunnen, 

 AMiianshausen, &c., yield the finest Rhenish wines. 

 There are mineral springs at Wiesbaden (the capital), 

 Niederselters, Ems, Schlangenbad, Geilnau, &c. The 

 revenue of the duchy is estimated at 1,810,000 guil- 

 ders; the debt at 5,000,000: the contingent to the 

 jinny of the confederacy is 3028 men. The duke has 

 the thirteenth vote in the diet, with the duke of 

 Brunswick ; and in the plenum he has two votes, 

 and the fourteenth seat. The present duke of Nas- 

 sau, William (born 1792), resides in Wiesbaden, and 

 in the beautiful castle Biberich. The estates, by the 

 constitution of 1815, are composed of two chambers 

 that of the nobles, consisting of the princes of the 

 blood, six hereditary members, and six members 

 elected by the nobility, and that of the deputies of 

 the country, twenty-two in number. The founder of 

 the house of Nassau appears to have been Otho of 

 Laurenburg, brother of Conrad I. (in the tenth cen- 

 tury). His descendants afterwards took the name of 

 Nassau, from a castle of that name. In 1255, two 

 lines were formed, that of Walram, or the elder line, 

 and that of Otho. From the former is descended the 

 present ducal house of Nassau, which received the 

 ducal title from the confederacy of the Rhine, which 

 it helped to establish, in 1806. From the younger 

 line is descended the reigning house of Holland, or 

 of Orange-Nassau. See Netherlands. 



NATCHEZ; once a powerful tribe of Indians, 

 residing on the eastern side of the Mississippi, in the 

 western part of the state of the same name, whose 

 melancholy fate has derived a new interest from the 

 muse of Chateaubriand. According to their own 

 traditions, the Natchez had emigrated from the south, 

 and their manners and opinions resembled, in many 

 points, those of the civilized tribes of that part of the 

 country. Inhabiting a delightful country, under a 

 mild climate, they were a polished people, in com- 

 parison with their savage neighbours. They had 

 Jaws, an established worship, a temple dedicated to 

 the Great Spirit, on the altar of which burned a per- 

 petual fire, and chiefs who derived their origin from 

 the sun. They had treated the French colonists with 

 great kindness, and had been courted by them on 

 account of their power. (See Louisiana.) A quarrel 

 having taken place between a French soldier and an 

 Indian, the latter was shot by the garrison of fort 

 Rosalie (a French post in the territory of the Natchez), 

 and the offenders were left unpunished. The conse- 

 quence was a war, which was, however, terminated 

 by the influence of one of the principal Indian chiefs. 

 Soon afterwards (1723), French troops were secretly 

 introduced into the settlement, and great numbers of 

 the unsuspecting Natchez massacred. To this out- 

 rage was added another, which stung the Indians to 

 madness: the French selected, as a site fora town, a 

 spot (two miles from the present town of Natchez) 

 occupied by a large and ancient Indian village, and 

 ordered the huts of the natives to be removed. The 

 latter formed a plan of vengeance : they attacked 

 the fort by surprise, and put to death the garrison. 

 They also destroyed all the French settlements in 

 that part of the country. A powerful force was sent 

 against them, and, unable to resist it, they retired 

 silently in the night, crossed the Mississippi, and 

 fortified themselves on the Red river, not far from 



Natchitoches. Pursued thither, they attempted to 

 cut their way through the enemy ; the greater phrt 

 of them fell in the attempt ; the males wiio survived 

 were sold, as slaves, in St Domingo ; the women 

 were enslaved at home. Thus perished the tribe of 

 the Natchez. 



NATIONAL ASSEMBLY, and NATIONAL 

 CONVENTION. See France. 



NATIONAL DEBT. See Public Debt. 



NATIONAL DOMAINS (biens national^); the 

 name given to the church lands wfiich, during the 

 French revolution of the last century, were declared 

 the property of the nation, and sold as such. The 

 lands of emigrants, and the crown lands, were also 

 declared national domains. The national domains 

 were created by several decrees of the national as- 

 sembly, occasioned by financial embarrassments. The 

 king sanctioned a decree of the national assembly, of 

 Nov. 2, 1789, declaring the church lands (estimated 

 at above 3,000,000,000 of livres) at the disposal of 

 the nation ; and a decree of Dec. 19, 1789, convert- 

 ing the crown lands, with the exception of nine 

 residences, into national domains. Another law 

 authorized the sale of this public property, to the 

 amount of 400,000,000, and ordered tlie issue of 

 assignats (q. v.) to that amount, which, on Mirabeau's 

 motion (April 17, 1790), were made a circulating 

 medium. Not long before (February 13) , the national 

 domains were increased by the suppression of the 

 monasteries, and, March 18 of the same year, it was 

 decreed that a certain amount should be sold to each 

 municipality an important decree, which attached 

 all the cities and towns to the new order of things. 

 Finally (before Necker's resignation), June 29, all 

 the national domains, except the crown lands (see 

 Domains) and forests, were declared alienable. At 

 the same time, the amount of the assignats was in- 

 creased (Sept. 22, 1790) to 1,200,000,000, and gra- 

 dually rose to nearly 40,000,000,000 of livres (in 

 February, 1796). This policy made most of the 

 purchasers of the national domains zealous supporters 

 of the revolution. But fluctuations in the value of 

 the assignats, and great speculations in them, were 

 the consequences of the great issue, increased by the 

 insecure tenure of the confiscated estates of the emi- 

 grants, which had been added to the national domains 

 by a law of July 27, 1792. In the western ami 

 southern departments, the purchase of these estates 

 was dangerous ; erasures of names from the emigrant 

 lists were made, and those who returned received 

 back such of their property as had not been sold. 

 The original purchasers of national domains were, 

 therefore, desirous to sell them again, and only the 

 third or fourth holder considered his title secure. 

 On the same account, they were divided and sold in 

 parcels. Napoleon's measures, in respect to the 

 national domains created under him, are related in the 

 article Domains. When Louis XVIII. published the 

 constitutional charter, in 1814, he declared (in article 

 9). Toutes les propriety sont inviolalles, sans aucune 

 exception de celles qu'on appelle nationales, la loi lie 

 mettant aucune difference entre elles. The unsold 

 national domains were, however, restored to the 

 emigrants, and, as they claimed the entire restitution 

 of their estates, all the national domains began to be 

 considered insecure, so that at least three millions of 

 proprietors felt their property in danger a circum- 

 stance which had no little influence on the event of 

 March 20, 1815. It was fortunate for France that 

 the chamber of 1816, &c., and the ministry of Louis 

 XVIII., recognised the rights of the holders of the 

 national domains in the spirit of the charter. Since 

 that time, the national domains have been separated 

 from the crown lands, and the sale of the former has 

 been permitted only in special cases, by particular 



