Irish Brigade conspicuous above the rest. On the front, waiting for the cannon to do its work, were the Maison du Roi, the Gendarmerie and all the light cavalry, under Saxe himself, the duke of Richelieu and count d’Estrées. The left wing of the Allies was still inactive, and troops were brought up from Antoing and Fontenoy to support the final blow. About 2 p.m. it was delivered, and in eight minutes the square was broken. As the infantry retired across the plain in small stubborn groups the French fire still made havoc in their ranks, but all attempts to close with them were repulsed by the terrible volleys, and they regained the broken ground about Vézon, whence they had come. Cumberland himself and all the senior generals remained with the rearguard.
The losses at Fontenoy were, as might be expected, somewhat less than normally heavy when distributed over the whole of both armies, but exceedingly severe in the units really engaged. Eight out of nineteen regiments of British infantry lost over 200 men, two of these more than 300. A tribute to the loyalty and discipline of the British, as compared with the generality of armies in those days, may be found in the fact that the three Guards’ regiments had no “missing” men whatever. The 23rd (Royal Welsh Fusiliers) had 322 casualties. Böschlanger’s Hanoverian regiment suffered even more heavily, and four others of that nation had 200 or more casualties. The total loss was about 7500, that of the French 7200. The French “Royal” regiment lost 30 officers and 645 men; some other regimental casualties have been mentioned above. The Dutch lost a bare 7% of their strength.
Fontenoy was in the 18th century what the attack of the Prussian Guards at St Privat is to-day, a locus classicus for military theorists. But the technical features of the battle are completely overshadowed by its epic interest, and above all it illustrates the permanent and unchangeable military characteristics of the British and French nations.
FONTEVRAULT, or Fontevraud (Lat. Fons Ebraldi), a
town of western France, in the department of Maine-et-Loire,
10 m. S.E. of Saumur by road and 212 m. from the confluence of
the Loire and Vienne. Pop. (1906) 1279. It is situated in the
midst of the forest of Fontevrault. The interest of the place
centres in its abbey, which since 1804 has been utilized and abused
as a central house of detention for convicts. The church (12th
century), of which only the choir and apse are appropriated to
divine service, has a beautiful nave formerly covered by four
cupolas destroyed in 1816. There is a fifth cupola above the
crossing. In a chapel in the south transept are the effigies of
Henry II. of England, of his wife Eleanor of Guienne, of Richard
I. of England and of Isabella of Angoulême, wife of John of
England—Eleanor’s being of oak and the rest of stone. The
cloister, refectory and chapter-house date from the 16th century.
The second court of the abbey contains a remarkable building,
the Tour d’Évrault (12th century), which long went under the
misnomer of chapelle funéraire, but was in reality the old kitchen.
Details and diagrams will be found in Viollet-le-Duc’s Dictionnaire
de l’architecture. There are three stories, the whole being
surmounted by a pyramidal structure.
The Order of Fontevrault was founded about 1100 by Robert of Arbrissel, who was born in the village of Arbrissel or Arbresec, in the diocese of Rennes, and attained great fame as a preacher and ascetic. The establishment was a double monastery, containing a nunnery of 300 nuns and a monastery of 200 monks, separated completely so that no communication was allowed except in the church, where the services were carried on in common; there were, moreover, a hospital for 120 lepers and other sick, and a penitentiary for fallen women, both worked by the nuns. The basis of the life was the Benedictine rule, but the observance of abstinence and silence went beyond it in stringency. The special feature of the institute was that the abbess ruled the monks as well as the nuns. At the beginning the order had a great vogue, and at the time of Robert’s death, 1117, there were several monasteries and 3000 nuns; afterwards the number of monasteries reached 57, all organized on the same plan. The institute never throve out of France; there were attempts to introduce it into Spain and England: in England there were three houses—at Ambresbury (Amesbury in Wiltshire), Nuneaton, and Westwood in Worcestershire. The nuns in England as in France were recruited from the highest families, and the abbess of Fontevrault, who was the superior-general of the whole order, was usually of the royal family of France.
See P. Hélyot, Hist, des ordres religieuses (1718), vi. cc. 12, 13; Max Heimbucher, Orden und Kongregationen (1907), i. 46; the arts. “Fontevrauld” in Wetzer and Welte, Kirchenlexicon (ed. 2), and in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie (ed. 3), supply full references to the literature. The most recent monograph is Édouard, Fontevrault et ses monuments (1875); for the later history see art. by Edmund Bishop in Downside Review (1886). (E. C. B.)
FOOD (like the verb “to feed,” from a Teutonic root, whence
O. Eng. foda; cf. “fodder”; connected with Gr. πατεῖσθαι,
to feed), the general term for what is eaten by man and other
creatures for the sustenance of life. The scientific aspect of
human food is dealt with under Nutrition and Dietetics.
Infancy.—The influence of a normal diet upon the health of man (we exclude here the question of diet in illness, which must depend on the abnormal conditions existing) begins at the earliest stage of his life. No food has as yet been found so suitable for the young of all animals as their mother’s milk. This, however, has not been from want of seeking. Dr Brouzet (Sur l’éducation médicinale des enfants, i. p. 165) had such a bad opinion of human mothers, that he expressed a wish for the state to interfere and prevent them from suckling their children, lest they should communicate immorality and disease! A still more determined pessimist was the famous chemist Van Helmont, who thought life had been reduced to its present shortness by our inborn propensities, and proposed to substitute bread boiled in beer and honey for milk, which latter he calls “brute’s food.” Baron Justus von Liebig, as the result of his chemical researches, introduced a “food for infants,” which in more modern days has been followed by a multiplication of patent foods. A close imitation of human milk may also be made by the addition to fresh cow’s milk of half its bulk of soft water, in each pint of which has been mixed a heaped-up teaspoonful of powdered “sugar of milk” and a pinch of phosphate of lime. These artificial substitutes for the natural nutriment have their value where for any reason it is not available. The wholesomest food, however, for the first six months is certainly mother’s milk alone. A vigorous baby can indeed bear with impunity much rough usage, and often appears none the worse for a certain quantity of farinaceous food; but the majority do not get habituated to it without an exhibition of dislike which indicates rebellion of the bowels. It is only when the teeth are on their way to the front, as shown by dribbling, that the parotid glands secrete an active saliva capable of digesting bread stuffs. Till then anything but milk must be given tentatively, and considered in the light of a means of education for its future mode of nutrition.
The time for weaning should be fixed partly by the child’s age, partly by the growth of the teeth. The first group of teeth nine times out of ten consists of the lower central front teeth, which may appear any time during the sixth and seventh month. The mother may then begin to diminish the number of suckling times; and by a month she can have reduced them to twice a day, so as to be ready when the second group makes its way through the upper front gums to cut off the supply altogether. The third group, the lateral incisors and first grinders, usually after the first anniversary of birth, give notice that solid food can be chewed. But it is prudent to let dairy milk form a considerable portion of the fare till the eye-teeth are cut, which seldom happens till the eighteenth or twentieth month.
Childhood and Youth.—At this stage of life the diet must obviously be the best which is a transition from that of infancy to that of adult age. Growth is not completed, but yet entire surrender of every consideration to the claim of growth is not possible, nor indeed desirable. Moreover, that abundance of adipose tissue, or reserve new growth, which a baby can bear is an impediment to the due education of the muscles of the boy or girl. The supply of nutriment need not be so continuous as before, but at the same time should be more frequent than for
