820 



VILLE VILLERS. 



(Nov. 16). Louis was now very desirous of peace, 

 and Villara and Eugene entered upon negotiations 

 at Rastadt, which were conducted with the great- 

 est secrecy, and terminated, March 6, 1714, in a 

 peace between Austria and France. (See Rastadt.) 

 On the death of Louis, marshal Villars was made 

 member of the regency (1715), and minister of state, 

 and was also admitted into the French academy. 

 A new war between France and Austria, on the 

 subject of the election to the Polish throne, broke 

 out in 1733, and Villars was sent into Italy at the 

 head of an army, with the title of marechal general. 

 Here, in conjunction with the king of Sardinia, he 

 reduced Milan within three months, and died soon 

 after, at Turin, when on the point of setting out 

 on his return to France, June 17, 1734, at the age 

 of eighty-two years. He was the last great French 

 general of that period. Of the Memoires published 

 under his name, only the first part is from his pen. 



VILLE (Latin villa), a French word, originally 

 meaning a country house, appears in many French 

 geographical names, as Hauteville, Neuvitte, &c. 

 Villaine, Villette, Vilotte, Stc., are diminutives of 

 rill?. As there is a great want of names for towns 

 in the United States of America, and as ville readily 

 admits of composition with other words, it has be- 

 come common, particularly in the west and south, 

 to make a name for a new settlement, by adding 

 ville to some other word, as Jacksonville, PayettC' 

 ville. 



VILLEGAS, ESTEVAN MANUEL DE, a celebrat- 

 ed Anacreontic poet of Spain, was born at Naxera, 

 in Old Castile, in 1595. He studied in Madrid and 

 Salamanca, and not only translated Anacreon and 

 Horace into Spanish verse, but continued to pro- 

 duce original poems in their spirit. In the twenty- 

 third year of his age, he published a collection of 

 his poems, dedicated to king Philip III., under the 

 title of Eroticas (Naxera, 1617). He also trans- 

 lated Boethius in prose and verse (Madrid, 1665), 

 and died in 1699, having devoted his last years 

 chiefly to philology. Villegas ranks among the 

 best lyric poets of Spain. His versification is char- 

 acterized by a charming ease ; and one can only 

 learn to estimate the beauty of the Spanish lan- 

 guage from his poems. His Eroticas contains his 

 translations from Anacreon and Horace, with forty- 

 four cantilenas, elegies, idyls, sonnets, &c. Ville- 

 gas, according to his own account, laboured his 

 poems with the greatest care, having revised his 

 cantilenas twenty times, and copied them fourteen 

 times. 



VILLEGGIATURA (Italian). See Villa. 



VILLEHARDOUIN, GEOFFEOY DE, an ancient 

 French chronicler, born in 1167, was marshal of 

 Champagne, an office held by his father and descen- 

 dants. He acted a considerable part in the fourth 

 crusade of 1 198, which led to the capture of Con- 

 stantinople by the French and Venetians, in 1204. 

 Of this expedition, he wrote, or dictated, a narra- 

 tive, which is extant, in the rude idiom of his age 

 and country. It is interesting from its simplicity 

 and apparent fidelity, and is much referred to by 

 Gibbon in his account of the events which it de- 

 scribes. The best edition is that of Du Cange 

 (folio, 1657). 



VILLENAGE, VILLEINS, OR SERFS. In 

 every age and country, until comparatively recent 

 times, -personal servitude seems to have been the 

 lot of a large portion of mankind. The free citi- 

 zens of Greece and Rome were absolute masters of 

 the life and property of large numbers of their fel- 



low-beings ; and the Germans, in their primitive 

 settlements, were accustomed to the notion of 

 slavery, incurred not only by captivity in war, but 

 by crimes and by debt. (See Slavery.) When they 

 invaded the Roman empire, they found the same 

 condition established in its provinces; and thus 

 servitude, under various modifications, ber.nn. 

 common in modern Europe. There is much dilli- 

 culty in ascertaining its varieties and stages. Vil- 

 leins were not, properly speaking, slaves : the mere 

 attachment to the soil, which was their character- 

 istic distinction, might, indeed, be joined to so 

 many privileges, that freedom might be more de- 

 scriptive of their state than servitude. Thus we 

 find the mere slaves (servi) among the Anglo- 

 Saxons, known by the names of tfteow, esne, and 

 thrall, distinguished in Domesday-book, from the 

 villeins. One source of villenage was indeed slav- 

 ery, the proprietors of large landed estates being 

 accustomed to grant land to their slaves, on con- 

 dition of their performing certain services. At a 

 later period, free peasants became the villeins of 

 powerful lords, or of the church, for the sake of 

 protection. The villein was not only precluded 

 from selling the land upon which he dwelt, but his 

 person was bound, and the lord might reclaim him 

 if he attempted to stray. The villeins in England 

 were incapable of property, and destitute of redress, 

 except against the most outrageous injuries. The 

 lord could seize whatever they acquired, and could 

 convey them, separately from the land, to a stranger. 

 Their tenure bound them to what were called 

 cittein services, ignoble in their nature and indeter- 

 minate in their degree (see Tenure) the felling of 

 timber, the carrying of manure, the repairing of 

 roads, for their lords, who seem to have possessed 

 an equally unbounded right over their labour and 

 its fruits. This description of persons might, with 

 more strict propriety, be called .er/s, some of the 

 villeins of France and Germany being bound only 

 to fixed payments and duties towards their lord. 

 The children of the villein could not, without per- 

 mission of the lord, change the employment to 

 which they were born : they could not marry with- 

 out his consent, for which they were expected to 

 pay. The children followed the mother's condi- 

 tion, except in England, where they followed the 

 father's. Manumission was practised, as it ever is, 

 where there is slavery, and, as society advanced in 

 Europe, became frequent. It also became usual 

 to allow the villeins to hold property, though this 

 was rather by indulgence than as a matter of right. 

 Some instances of predial servitude occur in Eng- 

 land as late as the reign of Elizabeth ; but there 

 were no villeins remaining at the time of the aboli- 

 tion of villenage, in 1661. It was not entirely 

 abolished in France until the revolution, though 

 the villeins in the royal domains were emancipated 

 in the fourteenth century. The greater part of the 

 servile classes in some countries of Germany had 

 acquired their liberty before the end of the thirteenth 

 century; but, in other parts, villenage survived till 

 the nineteenth century, and is not yet entirely ex- 

 tinct. It has been recently abolished in Livonia, 

 but still exists in its most servile form in other 

 parts of Russia. 



VILLERS, CHARLES FRANCOIS DOMINIQUE DE, 

 a French writer, was a native of Belchen, in Lor- 

 raine, where he was born in 1764. In the earlier 

 part of his life, he served in the French army as a 

 lieutenant of artillery, but, on the breaking out of 

 the revolution, emigrated, and joined the royalist 



