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ISABELLA OF BAVARIA—ISAEUS

politicians of the capital, and was peremptorily requested to go abroad again. She died on the 10th of April 1904.


ISABELLA, Isabeau, or Elizabeth of Bavaria (1370–1435), wife of Charles VI. of France, was the daughter of Stephen II., duke of Bavaria. She was born in 1370, was married to Charles VI. on the 17th of July 1385, and crowned at Paris on the 22nd of August 1389. After some years of happy married life she fell under the influence of the dissolute court in which she lived, and the king having become insane (August 1392) she consorted chiefly with Louis of Orleans. Frivolous, selfish, avaricious and fond of luxury, she used her influence, during the different periods when she was invested with the regency, not for the public welfare, but mainly in her own personal interest. After the assassination of the duke of Orleans (November 23, 1407) she attached herself sometimes to the Armagnacs, sometimes to the Burgundians, and led a scandalous life. Louis de Bosredon, the captain of her guards, was executed for complicity in her excesses; and Isabella herself was imprisoned at Blois and afterwards at Tours (1417). Having been set free towards the end of that year by John the Fearless, duke of Burgundy, whom she had called to her assistance, she went to Troyes and established her government there, returning afterwards to Paris when that city had capitulated to the Burgundians in July 1418. Once more in power, she now took up arms against her son, the dauphin Charles; and after the murder of John the Fearless she went over to the side of the English, into whose hands she surrendered France by the treaty of Troyes (May 21, 1420), at the same time giving her daughter Catherine in marriage to the king of England, Henry V. After her triumphal entry into Paris with the latter she soon became an object of loathing to the whole French nation. She survived her husband, her son-in-law, and eight out of her twelve children, and she passed the last miserable years of her life in poverty, solitude and ill-health. She died at the end of September 1435, and was interred without funeral honours in the abbey of St Denis, by the side of her husband, Charles VI.

See Vallet de Viriville, Isabeau de Bavière (1859); Marcel Thibault, Isabeau de Bavière, Reine de France, La Jeunesse, 1370–1405 (1903).  (J. V.*) 


ISABELLA OF HAINAUT (1170–1190), queen of France, was the daughter of Baldwin V., count of Hainaut, and Margaret, sister of Philip of Alsace, and was born in 1170 at Lille. She was married to Philip Augustus, and brought to him as her dowry the province of Artois. She was crowned at St Denis on the 29th of May 1180. As Baldwin V. claimed to be a descendant of Charlemagne, the chroniclers of the time saw in this marriage a union of the Carolingian and Capetian dynasties. Though she received extravagant praise from certain annalists, she failed to win the affections of Philip, who, in 1184, waging war against Flanders, was angered at seeing Baldwin support his enemies, and called a council at Sens for the purpose of repudiating her. Robert, the king’s uncle, successfully interposed. She died in childbirth in 1190, and was buried in the church of Notre Dame in Paris. Her son became Louis VIII. of France.

See Cartellieri, “L’Avènement de Phil. Aug.” in Rev. hist. liii. 262 et seq.


ISABEY, JEAN BAPTISTE (1767–1855), French painter, was born at Nancy on the 11th of April 1767. At nineteen, after some lessons from Dumont, miniature painter to Marie Antoinette, he became a pupil of David. Employed at Versailles on portraits of the dukes of Angoulême and Berry, he was given a commission by the queen, which opens the long list of those which he received, up to the date of his death in 1855, from the successive rulers of France. Patronized by Josephine and Napoleon, he arranged the ceremonies of their coronation and prepared drawings for the publication intended as its official commemoration, a work for which he was paid by Louis XVIII., whose portrait (engraved, Debucourt) he executed in 1814. Although Isabey did homage to Napoleon on his return from Elba, he continued to enjoy the favour of the Restoration, and took part in arrangements for the coronation of Charles X. The monarchy of July conferred on him an important post in connexion with the royal collections, and Napoleon III. granted him a pension, and the cross of commander of the Legion of Honour. “Review of Troops by the First Consul” was one of his most important compositions, and “Isabey’s Boat,”—a charming drawing of himself and family—produced at a time when he was much occupied with lithography—had an immense success at the Salon of 1820 (engraved, Landon, Annales, i. 125). His portrait of “Napoleon at Malmaison” is held to be the best ever executed, and even his tiny head of the king of Rome, painted for a breast-pin, is distinguished by a decision and breadth which evidence the hand of a master.

A biography of Isabey was published by M. E. Taigny in 1859, and M. C. Lenormant’s article, written for Michaud’s Biog. univ., is founded on facts furnished by Isabey’s family.


ISABNORMAL (or Isanomalous) LINES, in physical geography, lines upon a map or chart connecting places having an abnormal temperature. Each place has, theoretically, a proper temperature due to its latitude, and modified by its configuration. Its mean temperature for a particular period is decided by observation and called its normal temperature. Isabnormal lines may be used to denote the variations due to warm winds or currents, great altitudes or depressions, or great land masses as compared with sea. Or they may be used to indicate the abnormal result of weather observations made in an area such as the British Isles for a particular period.


ISAEUS (c. 420 B.C.c. 350 B.C.), Attic orator, the chronological limits of whose extant work fall between the years 390 and 353 B.C., is described in the Plutarchic life as a Chalcidian; by Suidas, whom Dionysius follows, as an Athenian. The accounts have been reconciled by supposing that his family sprang from the settlement (κληρουχία) of Athenian citizens among whom the lands of the Chalcidian hippobotae (knights) had been divided about 509 B.C. In 411 B.C. Euboea (except Oreos) revolted from Athens; and it would not have been strange if residents of Athenian origin had then migrated from the hostile island to Attica. Such a connexion with Euboea would explain the non-Athenian name Diagoras which is borne by the father of Isaeus, while the latter is said to have been “an Athenian by descent” (Ἀθηναῖος τὸ γένος). So far as we know, Isaeus took no part in the public affairs of Athens. “I cannot tell,” says Dionysius, “what were the politics of Isaeus—or whether he had any politics at all.” Those words strikingly attest the profound change which was passing over the life of the Greek cities. It would have been scarcely possible, fifty years earlier, that an eminent Athenian with the powers of Isaeus should have failed to leave on record some proof of his interest in the political concerns of Athens or of Greece. But now, with the decline of personal devotion to the state, the life of an active citizen had ceased to have any necessary contact with political affairs. Already we are at the beginning of that transition which is to lead from the old life of Hellenic citizenship to that Hellenism whose children are citizens of the world.

Isaeus (who was born probably about 420 B.C.) is believed to have been an early pupil of Isocrates, and he certainly was a student of Lysias. A passage of Photius has been understood as meaning that personal relations had existed between Isaeus and Plato, but this view appears erroneous.[1] The profession of Isaeus was that of which Antiphon had been the first representative at Athens—that of a λογογράφος, who composed speeches which his clients were to deliver in the law-courts. But, while Antiphon had written such speeches chiefly (as Lysias frequently) for public causes, it was with private causes that Isaeus was almost exclusively concerned. The fact marks the progressive subdivision of labour in his calling, and the extent to which the smaller interests of private life now absorbed the attention of the citizen.

The most interesting recorded event in the career of Isaeus is one which belongs to its middle period—his connexion with Demosthenes. Born in 384 B.C., Demosthenes attained his civic majority in 366. At this time he had already resolved to

  1. See further Jebb’s Attic Orators from Antiphon to Isaeus, (ii. 264).