Interesting remains of the substruction wall supporting the ancient road are preserved in Itri itself; and there are many remains of ancient buildings near it. The brigand Fra Diavolo, the hero of Auber’s opera, was a native of Itri, and the place was once noted for brigandage.
ITURBIDE (or Yturbide), AUGUSTIN DE (1783–1824), emperor of Mexico from May 1822 to March 1823, was born on the 27th of September 1783, at Valladolid, now Morelia, in
Mexico, where his father, an Old Spaniard from Pampeluna,
had settled with his creole wife. After enjoying a better education
than was then usual in Mexico, Iturbide entered the military
service, and in 1810 held the post of lieutenant in the provincial
regiment of his native city. In that year the insurrection under
Hidalgo broke out, and Iturbide, more from policy, it would seem,
than from principle, served in the royal army. Possessed of
splendid courage and brilliant military talents, which fitted him
especially for guerilla warfare, the young creole did signal service,
and rapidly rose in military rank. In December 1813 Colonel
Iturbide, along with General Llano, dealt a crushing blow to
the revolt by defeating Morelos, the successor of Hidalgo, in the
battle of Valladolid; and the former followed it up by another
decisive victory at Puruaran in January 1814. Next year Don
Augustin was appointed to the command of the army of the north
and to the governorship of the provinces of Valladolid and
Guanajuato, but in 1816 grave charges of extortion and violence
were brought against him, which led to his recall. Although
the general was acquitted, or at least although the inquiry was
dropped, he did not resume his commands, but retired into private
life for four years, which, we are told, he spent in a rigid course
of penance for his former excesses. In 1820 Apodaca, viceroy
of Mexico, received instructions from the Spanish cortes to
proclaim the constitution promulgated in Spain in 1812, but
although obliged at first to submit to an order by which his
power was much curtailed, he secretly cherished the design of
reviving the absolute power for Ferdinand VII. in Mexico.
Under pretext of putting down the lingering remains of revolt,
he levied troops, and, placing Iturbide at their head, instructed
him to proclaim the absolute power of the king. Four years of
reflection, however, had modified the general’s views, and now,
led both by personal ambition and by patriotic regard for his
country, Iturbide resolved to espouse the cause of national
independence. His subsequent proceedings—how he issued the
Plan of Iguala, on the 24th of February 1821, how by the refusal
of the Spanish cortes to ratify the treaty of Cordova, which he
had signed with O’Donoju, he was transformed from a mere
champion of monarchy into a candidate for the crown, and how,
hailed by the soldiers as Emperor Augustin I. on the 18th of
May 1822, he was compelled within ten months, by his arrogant
neglect of constitutional restraints, to tender his abdication to
a congress which he had forcibly dissolved—will be found
detailed under Mexico. Although the congress refused to accept
his abdication on the ground that to do so would be to recognize
the validity of his election, it permitted the ex-emperor to retire
to Leghorn in Italy, while in consideration of his services in 1820
a yearly pension of £5000 was conferred upon him. But Iturbide
resolved to make one more bid for power; and in 1824, passing
from Leghorn to London, he published a Statement, and on the
11th of May set sail for Mexico. The congress immediately issued
an act of outlawry against him, forbidding him to set foot on
Mexican soil on pain of death. Ignorant of this, the ex-emperor
landed in disguise at Soto la Marina on the 14th of July. He was
almost immediately recognized and arrested, and on the 19th of
July 1824 was shot at Padilla, by order of the state of Tamaulipas,
without being permitted an appeal to the general congress.
Don Augustin de Iturbide is described by his contemporaries
as being of handsome figure and ingratiating manner. His
brilliant courage and wonderful success made him the idol of
his soldiers, though towards his prisoners he displayed the most
cold-blooded cruelty, boasting in one of his despatches of having
honoured Good Friday by shooting three hundred excommunicated
wretches. Though described as amiable in his private
life, he seems in his public career to have been ambitious and
unscrupulous, and by his haughty Spanish temper, impatient
of all resistance or control, to have forfeited the opportunity
of founding a secure imperial dynasty. His grandson Augustin
was chosen by the ill-fated emperor Maximilian as his successor.
See Statement of some of the principal events in the public life of Augustin de Iturbide, written by himself (Eng. trans., 1824).
ITZA, an American-Indian people of Mayan stock, inhabiting
the country around Lake Peten in northern Guatemala. Chichen-Itza,
among the most wonderful of the ruined cities of Yucatan,
was the capital of the Itzas. Thence, according to their traditions
they removed, on the breaking up of the Mayan kingdom in 1420,
to an island in the lake where another city was built. Cortes
met them in 1525, but they preserved their independence till
1697, when the Spaniards destroyed the city and temples, and a
library of sacred books, written in hieroglyphics on bark fibre.
The Itzas were one of the eighteen semi-independent Maya
states, whose incessant internecine wars at length brought
about the dismemberment of the empire of Xibalba and the
destruction of Mayan civilization.
ITZEHOE, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of
Schleswig-Holstein, on the Stör, a navigable tributary of the
Elbe, 32 m. north-west of Hamburg and 15 m. north of Glückstadt.
Pop. (1900) 15,649. The church of St Lawrence, dating from
the 12th century, and the building in which the Holstein estates
formerly met, are noteworthy. The town has a convent founded
in 1256, a high school, a hospital and other benevolent institutions.
Itzehoe is a busy commercial place. Its sugar refineries
are among the largest in Germany. Ironfounding, shipbuilding
and wool-spinning are also carried on, and the manufactures
include machinery, tobacco, fishing-nets, chicory, soap, cement
and beer. Fishing employs some of the inhabitants, and the
markets for cattle and horses are important. A considerable
trade is carried on in agricultural products and wood, chiefly
with Hamburg and Altona.
Itzehoe is the oldest town in Holstein. Its nucleus was a castle, built in 809 by Egbert, one of Charlemagne’s counts, against the Danes. The community which sprang up around it was diversely called Esseveldoburg, Eselsfleth and Ezeho. In 1201 the town was destroyed, but it was restored in 1224. To the new town the Lübeck rights were granted by Adolphus IV. in 1238, and to the old town in 1303. During the Thirty Years’ War Itzehoe was twice destroyed by the Swedes, in 1644 and 1657, but was rebuilt on each occasion. It passed to Prussia in 1867, with the duchy of Schleswig-Holstein.
IUKA, the county-seat of Tishomingo county, Mississippi,
U.S.A., about 25 m. S.E. of Corinth in the N.E. corner of the
state and 8 m. S. of the Tennessee river. Pop. (1900) 882;
(1910) 1221. It is served by the Southern railway, and has
a considerable trade in cotton and farm products. Its mineral
springs make it a health resort. In the American Civil War,
a Confederate force under General Sterling Price occupied the
town on the 14th of September 1862, driving out a small Union
garrison; and on the 19th of September a partial engagement
took place between Price and a Federal column commanded by
General Rosecrans, in which the Confederate losses were 700
and the Union 790. Price, whose line of retreat was threatened
by superior forces under General Grant, withdrew from Iuka
on the morning of the 20th of September.
IULUS, in Roman legend: (a) the eldest son of Ascanius
and grandson of Aeneas, founder of the Julian gens (gens Iulia),
deprived of his kingdom of Latium by his younger brother
Silvius (Dion. Halic. i. 70); (b) another name for, or epithet
of, Ascanius.
IVAN (John), the name of six grand dukes of Muscovy and tsars of Russia.
Ivan I., called Kalita, or Money-Bag (d. 1341), grand duke of Vladimir, was the first sobiratel, or “gatherer” of the scattered Russian lands, thereby laying the foundations of the future autocracy as a national institution. This he contrived to do by adopting a policy of complete subserviency to the khan of the Golden Horde, who, in return for a liberal and punctual tribute, permitted him to aggrandize himself at the expense of the lesser
