706 



HUDSON'S CHOICE HOCUS rocus. 



while they can afford protection to the subject. He 

 siys expressly, " Okligatio civium erga sum yui siim- 

 mam habet potestatem, tandem nee diutius permanere 

 intt'lligitur, f/inun manet potentia civcs protegendt.'' 

 The philosophy of Hobbes, so depreciated among 

 his contemporaries, has been more or less adopted by 

 Locke, Hartley, Hume, and Priestley. His writings 

 are distinguished for acuteness, but contain many 

 paradoxes. Of his several opponents, \ve only men- 

 tion, among the moderns, Feuerbach, who wrote, in 

 opposition to his system, his Ant i- Hobbes (Eriangen, 

 1793). Hobbes was honest, kind, moderate, com- 

 municative, and of unrelaxing application. 



HOBSON'S CHOICE; a proverbial expression, 

 denoting without an alternative. It is said to have 

 had its origin in the practice of Hobson, a carrier at 

 Cambridge, who let horses to the students, and oblig- 

 ed his customers to take the horses in rotation, that 

 they might be worked equally. 



HOCHE, LAZARUS, general in the French revolu- 

 tionary war, was born 1764, at Montreuil, near Ver- 

 sailles, where his father was the keeper of the king's 

 hounds ; became, when fourteen years old, a groom 

 in the king's stables. He took service in the regi- 

 ment of French guards when sixteen years old. In 

 the daytime, he mounted guard for others, or did 

 their work, in order to gain something to buy books, 

 which he read during the night. At the beginning 

 of the revolution, he immediately joined the party of 

 the people ; became a member of the municipal 

 guard of Paris ; distinguished himself by zeal and in- 

 telligence ; became, in 1792, lieutenant ; and studied 

 military science with great diligence. During the 

 siege of Thionville, he gave proofs of intrepidity and 

 great military acquirements, and became aid-de-camp 

 of general Leveneur, with whom, after the battle of 

 Neerwinden and the defection of Dumouriez, he re- 

 turned to Paris. His plan of operations met the ap- 

 probation of the committee of public safety, and he 

 was sent, as adjutant-general, to defend Dunkirk. 

 Hoclie inspired all by his addresses and his example, 

 repulsed every attack of the British, and soon 

 obtained the rank of general of brigade and division. 

 He was not yet twenty-four years old, when he receiv- 

 ed the command of the army of the Moselle. The 

 army was raw and, inexperienced, but his military 

 spirit immediately gave animation to the whole. 

 His plan was to drive the enemy from Alsace ; but 

 he had the most experienced troops of all Europe, 

 under the duke of Brunswick, opposed to him. In 

 vain did he assault, for three days, the lines of Kaiser- 

 slauteni ; he was obliged to make a retrograde 

 movement. He then directed his efforts against the 

 Austrians on the Lower Rhine ; crossed the Vosges, 

 in spite of the bad weather and roads; defeated gene- 

 ral Wurmser at Weissemburg, December 26 ; deliver- 

 ed Landau; took Germersheim, Spire, Worms, 

 &c. ; and drove the Austrians out of Alsace. His 

 frankness displeased the deputy St Just, by whose 

 means he was deprived of his command, and sent as 

 a prisoner to Paris. The revolution of the ninth 

 Thermidor saved him from the guillotine. In 1795, 

 he was employed against the royalists in the west, in 

 which capacity he displayed great ability, both as a 

 general and as a statesman, exerting himself to pacify 

 and not to destroy ; and his efforts were crowned 

 with unexpected success. The new committee of 

 public safety intrusted him with the command of the 

 armies which occupied all the country from the Somme 

 to the Loire, and he now expected, by vigorous 

 measures, to secure the public tranquillity ; but the 

 partial treaties concluded by the commissioners of 

 the convention with the insurgents frustrated his 

 plan?. When hostilities were renewed, and the emi- 

 grants landed at Quiberon (June, 1795), he collected 



his scattered troops, and marched against them with 

 great promptness and decision. He determined 

 upon the assault of fort Penthievre against the views 

 of the council of war. The fort was taken ; the 

 royalists were driven into the sea and forced to sur- 

 render. He then wrote to the committee of public 

 safety, to request that all the prisoners except the 

 leaders might be spared ; but the committee ordered 

 them all to be executed. Hoche, indignant at this, 

 put the command of Morbihan into the hands of gene- 

 ral Lemoine, and marched, with his remaining troops, 

 against St Malo. When the directory took the reins 

 of government, Hoche received the command of the 

 armies of the west, with plenary powers, for the sub- 

 jection of Vendee. He laboured principally to crush 

 Charette, the ablest and most zealous of the Vendean 

 chiefs. Hoche took possession of all the military 

 points of the Vendee; inspired the people of tho 

 country with confidence by the severe discipline 

 which he kept in his army ; flattered the priests ; 

 weakened and divided the royalists, and defeated them 

 every where. Charette and Stofflet fell into his 

 hands ; quiet was restored in the Vendee; and Hoche 

 marched towards Anjou and Brittany. Here he was 

 equally skilful and fortunate, and succeeded in estab- 

 lishing tranquillity. July 16, 1796, the directory 

 declared that Hoche and his army had deserved well 

 of their country. Hoche now conceived the plan of 

 exciting civil war in England, as England had so 

 long maintained the civil war in France, and separat- 

 ing Ireland from Great Britain. After having over- 

 come all the obstacles which were in the way of such 

 an expedition, he set sail, December 15, from Brest; 

 but a storm dispersed the fleet ; he found himself alone 

 on the coast of the enemy ; and the plan failed. 

 After his return, he received the command of the 

 army of the Sambre and Meuse. He opened the 

 campaign of 1797, by a bold passage over the Rhine, 

 in the face of the enemy. In four days, he had 

 marched with his army thirty-five leagues, had been 

 victorious in three battles and five skirmishes, and 

 taken Wetzlar ; there the news of the armistice, con- 

 cluded in Italy, stopped him in the path of victory. 

 After having declared himself ready to lend his sup- 

 port to the directory, in the internal struggle in 

 France, he suddenly died, September 15, 1797, in 

 Wetzlar, it was supposed at the time, of poison, but 

 this has never been proved. Hoche was born for a 

 soldier, proud and ambitious like Caesar, but often, 

 also, great and magnanimous like him. 



HOCHHEIM; a considerable village and bailiwic 

 of Nassau, sixteen miles from Frankfort on the 

 Maine. The famous Hochheimer or Hock wine, 

 which surpasses the other Rhenish vines in spirit 

 and softness, is made here. The English name Hock 

 is a corruption of Hochheimer, and is often applied to 

 all Rhenish wines. 



HOCHKIRCH, or HOHKIRCH ; a village in 

 Upper Lusatia, not far from Bautzen (q. v.), ren- 

 dered remarkable by the battle of October 14, 1758, 

 in the seven years' war, in which Frederic the Great 

 was surprised by marshal Daun, and defeated. 



HOCHSTADT. See Blenheim. 



HOCK. See Hochheim. 



HOCKHOCKING ; a river of Ohio, which ris 

 in Fairfield county, and runs into the Ohio at Troy, 

 twenty-five miles below Marietta. Near its source, 

 seven miles N. E. of Lancaster, there is a romantic 

 cascade ; the water falls over a stratum of rock up- 

 wards of forty feet in perpendicular height. Twenty- 

 five miles below, there is another perpendicular fall of 

 seven feet. Except the interruption at the lower 

 falls and other places by mill dams, this river is 

 navigable for large boats seventy miles. 



HOCUS POCUS ; a cant term, of uncertain ety- 



