the government of Catherine II., for Peter III. was generally remembered as the determined opponent of Catherine. As a matter of fact Pugachev and his followers were hostile to every form of settled government. The one thought of the destitute thousands who joined the new Peter was to sweep away utterly the intolerably oppressive upper-classes. Pugachev’s story was that he and his principal adherents had escaped from the clutches of Catherine, and were resolved to redress the grievances of the people, give absolute liberty to the Cossacks, and put Catherine herself away in a monastery. He held a sort of mimic court at which one Cossack impersonated Nikita Panin, another Zachary Chernuishev, and so on. The Russian government at first made light of the rising. At the beginning of October 1773 it was simply regarded as a nuisance, and 500 roubles was considered a sufficient reward for the head of the troublesome Cossack. At the end of November 28,000 roubles were promised to whomsoever should bring him in alive or dead. Even then, however, Catherine, in her correspondence with Voltaire, affected to treat “l’affaire du Marquis de Pugachev” as a mere joke, but by the beginning of 1774 the joke had developed into a very serious danger. All the forts on the Volga and Ural were now in the hands of the rebels; the Bashkirs had joined them; and the governor of Moscow reported great restlessness among the population of central Russia. Shortly afterwards Pugachev captured Kazan, reduced most of the churches and monasteries there to ashes, and massacred all who refused to join him. General Peter Panin, the conqueror of Bender, was thereupon sent against the rebels with a large army, but difficulty of transport, lack of discipline, and the gross insubordination of his ill-paid soldiers paralysed all his efforts for months, while the innumerable and ubiquitous bands of Pugachev were victorious in nearly every engagement. Not till August 1774 did General Mikhelson inflict a crushing defeat upon the rebels near Tsaritsyn, when they lost ten thousand in killed and prisoners. Panin’s savage reprisals, after the capture of Penza, completed their discomfiture. Pugachev was delivered up by his own Cossacks on attempting to fly to the Urals (Sept. 14), and was executed at Moscow on the 11th of January 1775.
See N. Dubrovin, Pugachev and his Associates (Rus.; Petersburg, 1884); Catherine II., Political Correspondence (Rus. Fr. Ger.; Petersburg, 1885, &c.); S. I. Gnyedich, Emilian Pugachev (Rus.; Petersburg, 1902). (R. N. B.)
PUGET, PIERRE (1622–1694), French painter, sculptor, architect and engineer, was born at Marseilles on the 31st of
October 1622. At the age of fourteen he carved the ornaments
of the galleys built in the port of his native city, and at sixteen
the decoration and construction of a ship were entrusted to
him. Soon after he went to Italy on foot, and was well
received at Rome by Pietro di Cortona, who employed him on
the ceilings of the Barberini Palace and on those of the Pitti at
Florence. In 1643 he returned to Marseilles, where he painted
portraits and carved the colossal figure-heads of men-of-war.
After a second journey to Italy in 1646 he painted also a great
number of pictures for Aix, Toulon, Cuers and La Ciotat, and
sculptured a large marble group of the Virgin and Child for the
church of Lorgues. His caryatid es for the balcony of the Hôtel de
Ville of Toulon were executed between 1655 and 1657. N. Fouquet
employed Puget to sculpture a Hercules for his chateau in
Vaux. The artist’s desire to paint gradually subsided before
his passion for sculpture, and a serious illness in 1665 brought
Puget a prohibition from the doctors which caused him wholly
to put aside the brush. The fall of Fouquet in 1660 found
Puget at Genoa. Here he executed for Sublet des Noyers
his French Hercules (Louvre), the statues of St Sebastian and
of Alexandre Sauli in the church of Carignano (c. 1664), and
much other work. The Doria family gave him a church to
build; the senate proposed that he should paint their council
chamber. But Colbert bade Puget return to France, and in
1669 he again took up his old work in the dockyards of Toulon.
The arsenal which he had there undertaken to construct under
the orders of the duke of Beaufort was destroyed by fire, and
Puget, disheartened, took leave of Toulon. In 1685 he went
back to Marseilles, where he continued the long series of works
of sculpture on which he had been employed by Colbert. His
statue of Milo (Louvre) had been complete din 1682, Perseus
and Andromeda (Louvre) in 1684; and Alexander and Diogenes
(bas-relief, Louvre) in 168 5, but, in spite of the personal
favour which he enjoyed, Puget, on coming to Paris in 1688 to
push forward the execution of an equestrian statue of Louis XIV.,
found court intrigues too much for him. He was forced to
abandon his project and retire to Marseilles, where he remained
till his death on the 2nd of December 1694. His last work,
a bas-relief of the Plague of Milan, which remained unfinished,
was placed in the council chamber of the town hall of his
native city.
In spite of Puget’s visits to Paris and Rome his work never lost its local character: his Hercules is fresh from the galleys of Toulon; his saints and virgins are men and women who speak Provencal. His best work, the St Sebastian at Genoa, though a little heavy in parts, shows admirable energy and life, as well as great skill in contrasting the decorative accessories with the simple surface of the nude. There is in the museum of Aix in Provence the bust of a long-haired young man in pseudo classical costume which is believed to be a portrait of Louis XIV. made by Puget at the time of the king’s visit in 1660.
See Léon Lagrange, Pierre Puget (Paris, 1868, with a catalogue of works); Charles Ginoux, Annales de la vie de P. Puget (Paris, 1894); Philippe Auquier, Pierre Puget . . . biographies critique (Paris, 1903).
PUGILISM (from Lat. pugil, boxer, Gr. πύξ, with clenched fist), the practice or sport of fighting with the fists. The first mention of such fighting in literature is found in the 23rd book of the Iliad, and shows that in Homer’s time the art was already highly developed. The occasion was the games at the funeral of Patroclus, the champions engaged being Epeus, the builder of the wooden horse, and Euryalus. Each combatant seems to have been naked except for a belt, and to have worn the cestus.
The fight ends with the defeat of Euryalus. According to
Virgil (Aeneid, v.) similar games took place within the walls of Troy at the funeral of Hector, the principal boxers being Dares, the winner, and the gigantic Butex, a pupil of Amycus, Paris, the Trojan champion, abstaining from the contests. Further on we find the account of the games on the occasion of the funeral of Anchises, in the course of which Dares, the Trojan, receiving no answer to his challenge from the Sicilians, who stood aghast at his mighty proportions, claims the prize; but, just as it is about to be awarded him, Entellus, an aged but huge and sinewy Sicilian, arises and casts into the arena as a
sign of his acceptance of the combat the massive cesti, all stained with blood and brains, which he has inherited from King Eryx,
his master in the art of boxing. The Trojans are now appalled
in their turn, and Dares, aghast at the fearful implements, refused
the battle, which, however, is at length begun after Aeneas
has furnished the heroes with equally matched cesti. For
some time the young and lusty Dares circles about his gigantic but old and stiff opponent, upon whom he rains a torrent of blows which are avoided by the clever guarding and dodging of the Sicilian hero. At last Entellus, having got his opponent into a favourable position, raises his tremendous right hand on high and aims a terrible blow at the Trojan’s head; but the wary Dares deftly steps aside, and Entellus, missing his adversary altogether, falls headlong by the impetus of his own blow, with a crash like that of a falling pine. Shouts of mingled exultation and dismay break from the multitude, and the friends of the aged Sicilian rush forward to raise their fallen champion and bear him from the arena; but, greatly to the astonishment of all, Entellus motions them away and returns to the fight more keenly than before. The old man’s blood is stirred, and he attacks his youthful enemy with such furious and headlong rushes, buffeting him grievously with both hands, that Aeneas puts an end to the battle, though barely in time to save the discomfited Trojan from being beaten into insensibility.
Although fist-fighting was supposed by the Greeks of the classic period to have been a feature of the mythological games at Olympia, it was not actually introduced into the historical
