embrace the manufacture of powder, locomotives, machinery, cotton, leather and beer. There is also a considerable trade in live stock, agricultural produce and wine.
Rottweil-Altstadt, which lies about ¾ m. to the south, was a Roman colony. It has an old church and a Cistercian nunnery founded in 1221 and dissolved in 1838. Near the town is Wilhelmshall, with saline springs. In the 13th century Rottweil became a free imperial city and was subsequently the seat of an imperial court of law, the jurisdiction of which extended over Swabia, the Rhineland and Alsace. The functions of this tribunal came to an end in 1784. In 1803 Rottweil passed into the possession of Württemberg.
See Ruckgaber, Geschichte der Stadt Rottweil (3 vols., Rottweil, 1835); and Greiner, Das ältere Recht der Reichsstadt Rottweil (Stuttgart, 1900).
ROTUMAH (Rotuma, Rotuam or Grenville), an island of the
South Pacific Ocean, in 12° 30′ S., 177° E., about 300 m. N. by
W. of Fiji, of which British colony it is a dependency. Its area
is 14 sq. m., and its extreme elevation 800 ft. It is surrounded
by coral reefs, and is richly wooded. Several islets lie round it.
The population is about 2200, the natives being Polynesian,
though their language has been classified as Melanesian. They
are Wesleyans or Roman Catholics. The chief product is
copra. A European commissioner resides. Local laws, subject
to approval by the legislative council of Fiji, are promulgated
by a regulation board, composed of the commissioner,
native chiefs of the seven districts into which the island is
divided, and two native magistrates. Rotumah was discovered
by Captain Edwards of the “Pandora” in 1791, and was
annexed by Great Britain in 1881.
ROUAULT, JOACHIM (d. 1478), French soldier, was a
member of an old family of Poitou. He attached himself to the
dauphin (afterwards Louis XI.) and became his premier squire.
He followed Louis in his expedition against the Swiss in 1444,
distinguished himself in the war against England in 1448, and
received the posts of governor of Blaye and Fronsac and constable
of Bordeaux. After taking an important part in the
battle of Castillon (1453), which resulted in the defeat and
death of John Talbot, 1st earl of Shrewsbury, he fought against
John V., count of Armagnac, in 1455, and in the following year
made a fruitless expedition into Scotland. He took part in
the campaign in Catalonia, and became marshal of France
in 1461, and governor of Paris in 1471. In 1471 and 1472
he defended Amiens and Beauvais against the Burgundians.
Towards the end of his life he was disgraced by Louis XI., and
sentenced to banishment and the confiscation of his property.
(M. P.*)
ROUBAIX, a manufacturing town of northern France, in the
department of Nord, 6 m. N.E. of Lille on the railway to Ghent.
Pop. (1906) 110,055. Roubaix is situated about a mile from
the Belgian frontier on the Roubaix Canal, which connects the
lower Deule with the Scheldt by way of the Marcq and the
Espierre. Tramways connect the town with Lille and with
the neighbouring communes of Tourcoing (pop. 62,694), Croix
(pop. 16,202) and Wattrelos (pop. 14,618), with which it unites
to form one great industrial centre. The chief business of
Roubaix is the woollen manufacture, but cotton, silk and other
materials are also produced. The chief of these are fancy and
figured stuffs for garments, velvet and upholstering fabrics.
Wool-combing and wool-dressing works, spinning-mills, weaving
establishments, dye-houses and printing-works occupy some
50,000 work-people, and four hundred firms act as commission
agents for the sale of raw material and the other requisites
for the industry. Power is supplied chiefly by steam, less
than 5000 out of 28,000 looms being hand-looms. There are
breweries, rubber-works, metal foundries and machinery-works
in the town. Tomato and grape growing under glass for the
winter market is extensively prosecuted. To maintain the high
standard of artistic taste which has made the industry of Roubaix
a success, schools have been multiplied. By the co-operation
of the town and the state the national school of industrial
arts was founded in 1883. This is a small university of art,
commerce and industry, the twenty-two courses of which
include all the branches of knowledge useful in any of those
pursuits. Among the public institutions are the tribunal of
commerce and the chamber of commerce, the exchange, a
board of trade-arbitration and the establishment (bureau de conditionnement) for determining the nature and weight of silk, wool and cotton.
The prosperity of Roubaix had its origin in the first factory franchise granted in 1469 by Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, to Peter, lord of Roubaix, a descendant of the royal house of Brittany. In the 18th century Roubaix suffered from the jealousy of Lille of which it was a dependency, and it was not till the 10th century that its industries acquired real importance. The population, which in 1804 was only 8700, had risen in 1861 to 40,000, in 1866 to 65,000, and in 1876 to 83,000.
ROUBILIAC (more correctly Roubillac), LOUIS FRANÇOIS (1695–1762), French sculptor, was born at Lyons and became a pupil of Balthasar of Dresden and of N. Coustou. It is generally stated that' he settled in London about 1720, but as he took the second grand prize for sculpture in 1730, while still a pupil of Coustou, it is unlikely that he visited England at an earlier date. The date 1744, as given by Dussieux, is incorrect. He was at once patronized by Walpole and soon became the most popular sculptor in England, superseding the success of the Fleming Rysbraeck and even of Scheemakers. He died on the 11th of January 1762, and
was buried in the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields. Roubiliac was largely employed for portrait statues and busts, and especially for sepulchral monuments. His chief works in Westminster Abbey are the monuments of Handel, Admiral Warren, Marshal Wade, Mrs Nightingale and the duke of Argyll, the last of these being the first work which established Roubiliac's fame as a sculptor. The statues of George I., Sir Isaac Newton, and the duke of Somerset at Cambridge, and of George II. erected in Golden Square, London, were also his work. Trinity College, Cambridge, possesses a series of busts of distinguished members of the college by him. Roubiliac possessed skill in portraiture and was technically a master, but lived at a time when his art had sunk to a low ebb. His figures are frequently uneasy, devoid of dignity and
sculpturesque breadth, and his draperies treated in a manner
more suited to painting than sculpture. There are, however,
noteworthy exceptions, his bust of Pope, for example. reaching
a high standard. More often, however, his striving after
dramatic effect detracts from repose of attitude.
His most celebrated work, the Nightingale monument, in Westminster Abbey. a marvel of technical skill, is saved from being ludicrous by its ghastly and even impressive hideousness. On this the dying wife is represented as sinking in the arms of her husband, who in vain strives to ward off a dart which Death is aiming at her. The lower part of the monument, on which the two portrait figures stand, is shaped like a tomb, out of the opening door of which Death, as a half-veiled skeleton, is bursting forth. The celebrated bust of Shakespeare, known as the Davenant bust, in the possession of the Garrick Club, London, must be attributed to Roubiliac. The statue of Shakespeare, a commission from David Garrick, and bequeathed by the actor to the English nation, is in the British Museum, and shows the talent of the sculptor in a flattering light. It is noteworthy that none of his work is recorded in France, the land of his birth and education.
See Le Roy de Sainte-Croix, Vie et ouvrages de L. F. Roubillac, sculpteur lyonnais (1695–1762) (Paris, 1882). (An extremely rare work, of which a copy is in the National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, London.) Allan Cunningham, The Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, vol. 3, pp. 31–67 (London, 1830)—the fount of information of later biographies. Dutton Cook, Art in England (“A Sculptor's Life in the Past Century”) (London, 1869); Austin Dobson, The Magazine of Art, “Little Roubiliac,” vol. 17, pp. 202 and 231 (London, 1894). See also J. T. Smith, Nollekens and his Times (London, 1829 passim). Henry B. Wheatley has also devoted research to the work and life of Roubiliac. (M. H. S.)
ROUCHER, JEAN ANTOINE (1745–1794), French poet,
the son of a tailor of Montpellier, was born on the 22nd of February 1745. By an epithalamium on Louis XVI. and
Marie Antoinette he gained the favour of Turgot, and obtained
