other than plain fighting. The personal character of Tourville must be held to account largely for the timidity of the principles he established. Tourville's personal valour was of the finest quality, but like many other brave men, he was nervous under the weight of responsibility. It is no less clear that anxiety to avoid risking a disaster to his reputation was of more weight with him than the wish to win a signal success. He belonged to the type of men in whose minds the evil which may happen is always more visible than the good. In 1690 he had an opportunity which might well have tempted the most cautious, and he missed it out of sheer care to keep his fleet safe against all conceivable chances, aided perhaps by a pedantic taste for formal, orderly movement. He was opposed in the channel by the allies, who had only fifty-six ships, while his own force, though it included some vessels of no serious value, was from seventy to eighty sail strong. He was feebly attacked by Admiral Arthur Herbert, the newly created earl of Torrington, off Beachy Head on the 10th of July. The Dutch ships in the van were surrounded. The allies had to retreat in disorder, and Tourville followed in " line of battle " which limited his speed to that of his slowest ship. So his enemy escaped with comparatively little loss. In the following year he performed his famous " off shore cruise," in the Bay of Biscay. He moved to and fro in fine order avoiding being brought to battle, but also failing to inflict any harm on his opponent. In the mean- time the cause of King James II. was ruined in Ireland. In 1692 the Mediterranean fleet having failed to join him, he was faced by a vastly superior force of the allies. The French king had prepared a military force to invade England, and Tourville was expected to prepare the way. Having at least a clear indication that he was expected to act with vigour, if not piecise orders to fight against any odds, he made a resolute attack on the centre of the allies on the 29th of May off Cape Barfleur, and drew off before he was surrounded. This action which with the pursuit of the following days made up what is called the battle of La Hogue, from the Bay where some of the fugitive French ships were destroyed, or Barfleur, proved his readiness to face danger. But his inability to take and act on a painful decision was no less proved in the retreat. He hesitated to sacrifice his crippled flagship, and thereby detained his whole fleet. The result was that the " Soleil Royale " herself and fifteen other ships were cut off and destroyed at La Hogue. In 1693 he was again at sea with a great fleet, and had a chance to inflict extreme injury on the allies by the capture of the Smyrna convoy which included their whole Mediterranean trade for the year. He did it a great deal of harm outside the Straits of Gibraltar, but again he kept his fleet in battle order, and a large part of the convoy escaped. King Louis XIV. who had a strong personal regard for him, continued to treat him with favour. Tourville was made Marshal of France in 1693, but the growing exhaustion of the French treasury no longer allowed the maintenance of great fleets at sea. Tourville remained generally at Toulon, and had no more fighting. He died in Paris in 1701. His only son, a colonel in the army, was killed at Denain in 1712.
The English account of the battles of Beachy Head and La Hogue will be found in Ledyard's Naval History. Troude's Batailles navales de la France gives the French version of these and the other actions in which Tourville was concerned. Tourville is frequently mentioned in the Life of Duguesne by M. Jal.
TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE (or Louverture), PIERRE-DOMINIQUE (c. 1746-1803), one of the liberators of Haiti,
claimed to be descended from an African chief, his father, a slave in Haiti, being the chief's second son. He was at first surnamed Breda, but this was afterwards changed to L'Ouverture in token of
the results of his valour in causing a gap in the ranks of the
enemy. From childhood he manifested unusual abilities
and succeeded, by making the utmost use of every
opportunity, in obtaining a remarkably good education. He
obtained the special confidence of his master, and was made
superintendent of the other negroes on the plantation. After
the insurrection of 1791 he joined the insurgents, and, having
acquired some knowledge of surgery and medicine, acted as
physician to the forces. His rapid rise in influence aroused,
however, the jealousy of Jean Francois, who caused his arrest
on the ground of his partiality to the whites. He was liberated
by the rival insurgent chief Baisson, and a partisan war ensued,
but after the death of Baisson he placed himself under the orders
of Jean Francois. Subsequently he joined the Spaniards,
but, when the French government ratified the act declaring
the freedom of the slaves, he came to the aid of the French.
In 1796 he was named commander-in-chief of the armies of
St Domingo, but, having raised and disciplined a powerful
army of blacks, he made himself master of the whole country,
renounced the authority of France, and announced himself
" the Buonaparte of St Domingo." He was taken prisoner by
treachery on the part of France, and died in the prison of Joux,
near Besançon, on the 27th of April 1803.
See Toussaint 1'Ouverture's own Mémoires, with a life by Saint Remy; (Paris, 1850); Gragnon-Laconte, Toussaint Louverture (Paris, 1887); Scholcher, Vie de Toussaint Louverture (Paris, 1889); and J. R. Beard, Life of Toussaint Louverture (1853).
TOW, the term given in textile manufacture to the short
fibres formed during the processes of scotching and hackling,
and also to the yarns which are made from these fibres. A
special machine termed a carding engine or a tow card is used
to form these fibres into a sliver, this sliver then passes to the
drawing frames, and thereafter follows the same process as line
yarns in flax spinning.
TOWANDA, a borough and the county-seat of Bradford county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., on the west bank of the Susquehanna river, about 50 m. N.W. of Wilkes-Barré. Pop. (1890), 4169; (1900), 4663 (322 foreign-born), (1910) 4281. Towanda is served by the Lehigh Valley and the Susquehanna & New York railways. It is situated about 730 ft. above the sea, and
is surrounded by high hills. Towanda contains the museum of the Bradford County Historical Society. The borough is
in a farming, dairying and stock-raising region, and has various
manufactures. The first settlement was made by William Means
in 1786, the village was laid out in 1812, became the county seat
in the same year, was variously known for some years
as Meansville, Overton, Williamson, Monmouth and Towanda,
and in 1828 was incorporated as the borough of Towanda. Its name is an Indian word said to mean “ where we bury the dead.”
TOWCESTER, a market town in the southern parliamentary
division of Northamptonshire, England, 8 m. S.S.W. of Northampton,
on the East & West Junction and the Northampton
& Banbury Junction railways. Pop. (1901), 2371. It is
pleasantly situated on the small river Tove, a left-bank affluent of
the Ouse. The church of St Lawrence is a good Early English,
Decorated and Perpendicular building, with a fine western
Perpendicular tower. There are a considerable agricultural
trade and a manufacture of boots and shoes.
Here was a Roman town or village situated on Watling Street. The site has yielded a considerable number of relics. In the 10th century a fortress was maintained here against the invading Danes. The site of both this and the Roman station is marked by an artificial mound known as Burg Hill, not far from the church, above the river. Towcester, with the whole of this district, witnessed a large part of the operations during the Civil War of the 17th century.
TOWEL, a cloth used for the purpose of drying the hands, face or body after bathing or washing. These cloths are made of different materials, known as “ towellings,” the two principal kinds are “ huckaback,” a slightly roughened material for chamber towels for face and hands, and Turkish towelling, with a much rougher surface, for bath towels; finer towellings are made of linen or damask. The term has a particular ecclesiastical usage as applied to a linen altar cloth for to a rich cloth of embroidered silk, velvet, &c., covering the altar at all “ such periods when Mass is not being celebrated.”
The Mid. Eng. towaille comes through the O. Fr. touaille from the Low Lat. toacula, represented in other Romanic languages by Sp. toalla, Ital. tovaglia; this is to be referred to the Teutonic verb meaning “ to wash," O. H. G. twahan, M. H. G. dwahen, O. Eng. þweán, and cf. Ger. Zwehle, provincial Eng. dwile, a dish-cloth.
