he was incorporated with other rescued or escaped Spaniards, in a corps equipped by the British government, and was sent to Spain in 1814. He continued in service as a military officer, and was commandant of the second battalion of the regiment “Asturias,” which formed part of the army=collected at Cadiz to be sent to South America in 1819. Service in America was unpopular with the soldiers, and there was much discontent in the country with the government of King Ferdinand VII; A conspiracy was formed among the officers to use the army for the purpose of forcing the king to grant a constitution. They were betrayed by a general who at first professed to sympathize with them, and many were arrested. Riego was apparently not suspected, and he decided to act on his own account. On New Year’s Day 1820 he made his pronunciamiento with his regiment at the village of Cabezas de San Juan. He proclaimed for the constitution drawn up by the Cortes in 1812, which was unworkable, and which the chiefs of the con-He hoped to seize Cadiz, and for a time no popular started on a revolutionary the head of his regiment the best indifferent. His conspiracy did not propose to restore but it was held by a loyal officer, movement took place. Riego now propaganda through Andalusia at The country proved hostile or at following gradually melted away, and he was about to flee to Portugal when Galicia revolted. The rebellion extended rapidly, and the king was compelled to yield. When the liberals were in possession of power they would gladly have kept Riego in a subordinate place. But he came to the capital, where he was soon the most popular spokesman of the extreme parties. There he discredited himself by his vanity, and shocked even the populace of Madrid by appearing drunk at the theatre. He was at last persuaded to accept the military command in Aragon, which he thought below his merits. He began intrigues and agitations. The government was strong enough to put him under arrest at Lérida. When the new Cortes was elected in 1822, he was chosen deputy for his native city Oviedo, and the radicals selected him as president of the chamber on the 17th of February 1823. The unceasing intrigues of the king, the incapacity of the moderate parties and the hysterical excitement of the mob combined to make anarchy worse daily. Riego was the noisiest shouter of all. When the French intervention took place, he helped to carry the king to Cadiz, and he fought a few unsuccessful skirmishes with the invaders. He was at last captured at a farmhouse near Arguillos in the province of Jaen. Unfortunately for him, he fell into the hands of the royalist volunteers, by whom he was carried to the capital. On his way he was repeatedly mobbed and had many narrow escapes from being torn to pieces. He was hanged at Madrid in the Plaza de la Cebada on the 7th of November 1823. At the end he professed abject-repentance for his impiety and disloyalty. The popular revolutionary tune of Spain, the “himno de Riego,” is named after him, and his picture is hung in the Cortes, but he was a poor creature, anda bad example of the light-headed military agitators who have caused Spain much misery.
H. Baumgarten, Geschichte Spaniens (Berlin, 1865–1871).
RIEHM, EDUARD KARL AUGUST (1830–1888), German
Protestant theologian, was born at Diersburg in Baden on the 20th of December 1830. He studied theology and philology at Heidelberg and later at Halle under Hermann Hupfeld, who persuaded him to include Arabic, Syriac and Egyptian. Entering the ministry in 1853, he was made vicariat Durlach soon afterwards, and became a licentiate in the theological faculty at
Heidelberg. In 1854 he was appointed garrison-preacher at Mannheim; and in 1858 he was licensed to lecture at Heidelberg, where in 1861 he was made professor extraordinarius. In 1862 he obtained a similar post at Halle, and in 1866 was promoted to the rank of professor ordinaries. Throughout his life he
followed Hupfeld’s plan in his scientific treatment of the Old Testament—that of reconciling the results of a free criticism with a belief in divine revelations. His practical experience of pastoral work also proved of service to him when he became a professor of theology, for “if there is one quality more striking
than another in the writings of Riehm, it is that of sympathy with orthodox believers” (T. K. Cheyne). In 1865 Riehm was made a member of the commission for the revision of Luther’s translation of the Bible, and became one of the editors of the quarterly review, Theologische Studien und Kritiken. He died
on the 5th of April 1888.
His works include: Die Gesetzgebung Mosis im Lande Moab (1854), in which the Deuteronomic law book is assigned to the second half of the reign of Manasseh; Der Lehrbegriff des Hebräerbriefs (1858–59, 2nd ed. 1867); Hermann Hupfeld, Lebens-und Charakterbild eines deutschen Professors (1867); Die Messianische Weissagung (1875, 2nd ed. 1883; Eng. trans. 1890); Religion und Wissenschaft (1881); and the well-known Handwörterbuch des biblischen Altertums (2 vols., 1884; 2nd. ed. revised by F. Baethgen, 1892–94). After his death were published the Einleitung in das Alte Testament (1889, ed. by A. Brandt), in which the date of the Deuteronomic law book is placed earlier than in his book on the legislation of Moses—shortly before or at the beginning of the reign of Hezekiah; and his Alttestamentliche Theologie (1889, ed. by Pahncke). See Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie, and T. K. Cheyne, Founders of Old Testament Criticism.
RIEL, LOUIS (1844–1885), Canadian agitator, son of Louis Riel and Julie de Lagemaundière, was born at St Boniface, on the 23rd of October 1844, according to his own account, though
others place his birth in 1847. Though known as a half-breed,
or Métis, and though with both Indian and Irish ancestors, his
blood was mainly French. From July 1866 he worked for two
years at various occupations in Minnesota, returning in July 1868
to St Vital, near St Boniface. In 1869 the transfer of the
territorial rights of the Hudson’s Bay Company to the dominion
of Canada gave great uneasiness to the Métis, and in October
1869 a party led by Riel turned back at the American frontier the newly appointed Canadian governor; in November they
captured Fort Garry (Winnipeg), the headquarters of the
Company, and called a convention which passed a bill of rights. In December provisional government was set up, of which on the 29th of December Riel was made president, and which defeated two attacks made on it by the English-speaking settlers of the vicinity. So far the Métis had been within their rights, but “Riel was flighty, vain and mystical, and his judicial murder on the 4th of March 1870 of Thomas Scott, an Orangeman from Ontario, roused against him the-whole of English speaking Canada. An expedition was equipped and sent out under Colonel Garnet, later Lord, Wolseley, which captured Fort Garry on the 24th of August 1870, Riel Adecamping. (See Strathcona, Lord.) He was not arrested, and on the 4th of August 1871 urged his countrymen to-combine with the Canadians against a threatened attack from American Fenians, for which good service he was publicly thanked by the lieutenant governor. In 1872 for religious reasons he changed his name to Louis David Riel. In October 1873 he became member of the Dominion parliament for Provencher, came to Ottawa and took the oath, but did not sit. On the 16th of April 1874 he was expelled the House, but in September was again elected for Provencher, on the 10th of February 1875 he was outlawed, and the seat thereby again vacated. In 1877–78 he was for over a year a patient in the Beauport asylum for the insane, but from 1879 to 1884 he lived quietly in Montana, where in 1881 he married Marguerite Bellimeure. In 1884 in response to a deputation from the Métis, who had moved west to the forks of the Saskatchewan river, he returned to Canada to win redress for their wrongs. His own rashness and the ineptitude of Canadian politicians and officials brought on a rising, which was crushed after some hard fighting, and on the 5th of May 1885 Riel surrendered. He was imprisoned at Regina, was tried and on the 1st of August found guilty of treason, and on, the 16th of November was hanged at Regina, meeting his fate with courage. His death was the signal for a fierce outburst of racialism in Quebec and Ontario, which nearly overthrew the Conservative government of the Dominion.
See J. S. Willison, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, vol. i.; George Bryce, History of the Hudson’s Bay Company (1900); and the Canadian daily press for 1885.
RIEMANN, GEORG FRIEDRICH BERNHARD (1826–1866),
German mathematician, was born on the 17th of September
