had to go three times up and down according to somewhat elaborate rules (Notes and Queries, IX. iii. 65). The stoneys and crockeries were sold at twenty a penny; the clayeys were cheaper and were not used as stakes; the marbles proper and china alleys, used as taws for shooting, cost a halfpenny and a farthing respectively. In other parts of the country the phraseology of marbles affords some interesting problems for the philologist. We hear of “alleys, barios, poppos and stoneys”; of “marididdles,” home-made marbles of rolled and baked clay; in Scotland of “bools, whinnies, glassies, jauries”; of “Dutch alleys,” and so forth. “Dubs, trebs and fobs,” stand for twos, threes and fours. To be “mucked” is to lose all one’s “mivvies” or marbles. When the taw stayed in the ring it was a “chuck.” “Phobbo slips” was a phrase used to forbid the correction of an error.
The fullest account of the various games of marbles played by English children is to be found in Mrs Gomme’s Traditional Games of England, Scotland and Ireland (London, 1898), under the headings Boss-out, Bridgeboard, Bun-hole, Cob, Ho-go, Holy Bang, Hundreds, Lag, Long-Tawl, Marbles, Nine-Holes, Ring-taw, Three-Holes. Other games are known as Plum-pudding, or Picking the Plums, in which one shoots at marbles in a row; Pyramids, in which the marbles are arranged in a pyramid; Bounce About, Bounce Eye, Conqueror, Die Shot, Fortifications, Handers, Increase Pound, Knock Out, Rising Taw, Spanners, Tip-shears; Strutt’s Sports and Pastimes, ed. J. C. Cox (London, 1902). Much information will also be found in Notes and Queries, passim—especially the 9th series. For marbles in France see Larousse, s.v. Billes. See also Solitaire. (W. E. G. F.)
MARBOT, JEAN BAPTISTE ANTOINE MARCELIN, Baron de (1782–1854), French soldier, son of General Jean Antoine de Marbot (1754–1800), who died in the defence of Genoa under Masséna, was born at La Rivière (Corrèze), on the 18th of August 1782. He joined the republican army as a volunteer in 1799, rose rapidly to commissioned rank, and was aide-de-camp to Marshal Augereau, commanding the VII. corps, in the war against Prussia and Russia in 1806–7. After this he served with great distinction in the Peninsular War under Lannes and Masséna, and showed himself to be a dashing leader of light cavalry in the Russian War of 1812 and the German campaign of the following year. After a slow recovery from the wounds he had received at Leipzig and Hanau, he was promoted general of brigade by Napoleon during the Hundred Days, and took part in, and was wounded at, the battle of Waterloo. He was exiled at the second restoration and only returned to France in 1819, after which, however, his intimacy with the duke of Orleans secured him important military positions. After the July restoration he was made maréchal-de-camp, and in this rank he was present at the siege of Antwerp in 1832. He was promoted lieutenant-general in 1836. From 1835 to 1840 he served in various Algerian expeditions, and in 1845 he was made a member of the Chamber of Peers. Three years later, at the fall of Louis Philippe, he retired into private life. He died at Paris on the 16th of November 1854. Marbot wrote two pamphlets, Remarques critiques sur l’ouvrage de M. le général Roguet, intitulé Considérations sur l’art de la guerre (1820), and La Nécessité d’augmenter les forces militaires de la France (1825), but his fame rests chiefly, if not indeed wholly, on the fascinating Memoirs of his Life and Campaigns which were published in Paris in 1891 (Eng. trans., 1902). To ordinary readers and to students of history alike these give a picture of the Napoleonic age of warfare which for vividness and romantic interest has never been surpassed.
His elder brother, Antoine Adolphe Marcelin de Marbot (1781–1844), was born at La Rivière, on the 22nd of March 1781, entered the army at an early age, obtained commissioned rank in the revolutionary wars and became aide-de-camp to Bernadotte. In 1802 he was arrested on the ground of being concerned in a plot of the Republicans against the Consulate, but he was released, though Napoleon continued to regard him as an opponent of the established régime. After a term of duty with the army in Santo Domingo he participated in the campaigns of 1806–7, and from 1808 to 1811 he was employed in the Peninsular War. In the Russian War of 1812 he was wounded and made prisoner. At the end of two years of captivity he returned to France at the general peace, was aide-de-camp to Marshal Davout during the Hundred Days, and thereafter passed into retirement, from which he did not emerge till 1830. He attained the rank of maréchal-de-camp under Louis Philippe, and died at Bra, near Tulle, on the 2nd of June 1844.
MARBURG, a town of Austria, in Styria, 41 m. S. of Graz by rail. Pop. (1900), 24,501. It is very picturesquely situated on the left bank of the river Drave, on a plain called the Pettauer-Feld, at the base of the well-wooded Bachergebirge. To the north of the town the train passes through the Leitersberg tunnel (725 yds. long), opened in 1846, while the Drave, which has here a width of 200 yds., is spanned by a magnificent iron bridge, built in 1845. The principal buildings are the cathedral, dating from the 16th century, the tower of which, erected in 1623, is 136 ft. high, and the old castle. Its situation in the midst of a fertile vine and fruit-growing district, connected by the navigable Drave with Hungary, and by railway with Vienna, Trieste, Tirol and Carinthia, makes it the centre of a considerable traffic in wine and grain. Its industrial products are leather, boots and shoes, iron and tin wares, liqueurs and sparkling wine, and it also contains the extensive workshops of the South Austrian railway. Marburg is the seat of the bishop of Lavant, and is the native town of the famous Austrian admiral, Baron Wilhelm of Tegetthoff (1827–1871). Near Marburg is the village of Mariarast, the church of which is a popular place of pilgrimage.
MARBURG, an ancient university town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau, situated on the slope of a hill on the right bank of the Lahn, 60 m. by rail N. of Frankfort-on-Main, on the main line to Cassel. Pop. (1905), 20,137. On the opposite bank of the river, here spanned by two bridges, lie the suburb of Weidenhausen and the railway station of the Prussian state railway. The hill on which the town lies is crowned by the extensive old Schloss, a fine Gothic building, the most noteworthy parts of which are the Rittersaal, dating from 1277–1312, and the beautiful little chapel. This Schloss was formerly the residence of the landgraves of Hesse, served afterwards as a prison, and is now the repository of the historically interesting and valuable archives of Hesse. The chief architectural ornament of Marburg is, however, the Elisabethenkirche, a veritable gem of the purest Early Gothic style, erected by the grand master of the Teutonic Order in 1235–1283, to contain the tomb of St Elizabeth of Hungary. The remains of the saint were deposited in a rich silver-gilt sarcophagus, which may still be seen, and were afterwards visited by myriads of pilgrims, until the Protestant zeal of Landgrave Philip the Generous caused him to remove the body to some unknown spot in the church. The church also contains the tombs of numerous Hessian landgraves and knights of the Teutonic Order. The Lutheran church is another good Gothic edifice, dating mainly from the 15th century. The town-hall, built in 1512, and several fine houses in the Renaissance style, also deserve mention. The university of Marburg, founded by Philip the Magnanimous in 1527, was the first university established without papal privileges, and speedily acquired a great reputation throughout Protestant Europe. It has a library of 140,000 volumes, is admirably equipped with medical and other institutes, which form some of the finest modern buildings in the town, and was attended, in 1905, by 1576 students. Marburg also possesses a gymnasium, a “Realschule,” an agricultural school, a society of naturalists, a hospital, and an extensive lunatic asylum. It is the seat of a district court, and of superintendents of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches. Marburg pottery is renowned; and leather, iron wares and surgical instruments are also manufactured there. The environs are very picturesque.
Marburg is first historically mentioned in a document of the beginning of the 13th century, and received its municipal charter from the landgrave Louis of Thuringia in 1227. On his death it became the residence of his wife, Elizabeth of Hungary, who built a hospital there, and died in 1231, at the age of twenty-four, worn out with works of religion and charity. She was canonized in 1235 at the instance of the Teutonic Knights, who had settled in Marburg in 1233 and were zealous in promoting her cult. By 1247 Marburg had already become the second town of Hesse, and in the 15th and 16th centuries it alternated with Cassel as
