Chapter 2

ALife, by his son R. J. Mackintosh, was published in 1836.

MACKLIN, CHARLES(c.1699-1797), Irish actor and playwright, whose real name was McLaughlin, was born in Ireland, and had an adventurous youth before coming to Bristol, where he made his first appearance on the stage as Richmond inRichard III. He was at Lincoln’s Inn Fields about 1725, and by 1733 was at Drury Lane, where the quarrel between the manager and the principal actors resulted in his getting better parts. When the trouble was over and these were taken fromhim, he went to the Haymarket, but he returned in 1734 to Drury Lane and acted there almost continuously until 1748. Then for two seasons he and his wife (d.c.1758), an excellent actress, were in Dublin under Sheridan, then back in London at Covent Garden. He played a great number of characters, principally in comedy, although Shylock was his greatest part, and Iago and the Ghost inHamletwere in his repertory. At the end of 1753 Macklin bade farewell to the stage to open a tavern, near the theatre, where he personally supervised the serving of dinner. He also delivered an evening lecture, followed by a debate, which was soon a hopeless subject of ridicule. The tavern failed, and Macklin returned to the stage, and played for a number of years in London and Dublin. His quick temper got him into constant trouble. In a foolish quarrel over a wig in 1735 he killed a fellow actor in the green-room at Drury Lane, and he was constantly at law over his various contracts and quarrels. The bitterest of these arose on account of his appearing as Macbeth at Covent Garden in 1772. The part was usually played there by William Smith, and the public would not brook a change. A few nights later the audience refused to hear Macklin as Shylock, and shouted their wish, in response to the manager’s question, to have him discharged. This was done in order to quell the riot. His lawsuit, well conducted by himself, against the leaders of the disturbance resulted in an award of £600 and costs, but Macklin magnanimously elected instead that the defendants should take £100 in tickets at three benefits—for himself, his daughter and the management. He returned to Covent Garden, but his appearances thereafter were less frequent, ending in 1789, when as Shylock, at his benefit, he was only able to begin the play, apologize for his wandering memory, and retire. He lived until the 11th of July 1797, and his last years were provided for by a subscription edition of two of his best plays,The Man of the WorldandLove in a Maze. Macklin’s daughter, Mary Macklin (c.1734-1781), was a well-known actress in her day.

See Edward A. Parry,Charles Macklin(1891).

MACK VON LEIBERICH, KARL,Freiherr(1752-1828), Austrian soldier, was born at Nenslingen, in Bavaria, on the 25th of August 1752. In 1770 he joined an Austrian cavalry regiment, in which his uncle, Leiberich, was a squadron commander, becoming an officer seven years later. During the brief war of the Bavarian Succession he was selected for service on the staff of Count Kinsky, under whom, and subsequently under the commander-in-chief Field Marshal Count Lacy, he did excellent work. He was promoted first lieutenant in 1778, and captain on the quartermaster-general’s staff in 1783. Count Lacy, then the foremost soldier of the Austrian army, had the highest opinion of his young assistant. In 1785 Mack married Katherine Gabrieul, and was ennobled under the name of Mack von Leiberich. In the Turkish war he was employed on the headquarter staff, becoming in 1788 major and personal aide-de-camp to the emperor, and in 1789 lieutenant-colonel. He distinguished himself greatly in the storming of Belgrade. Shortly after this, disagreements between Mack and Loudon, now commander-in-chief, led to the former’s demanding a court-martial and leaving the front. He was, however, given a colonelcy (1789) and the order of Maria Theresa, and in 1790 Loudon and Mack, having become reconciled, were again on the field together. During these campaigns Mack received a severe injury to his head, from which he never fully recovered. In 1793 he was made quartermaster-general (chief of staff) to Prince Josias of Saxe-Coburg, commanding in the Netherlands; and he enhanced his reputation by the ensuing campaign. The young Archduke Charles, who won his own first laurels in the action of the 1st of March 1793, wrote after the battle, “Above all we have to thank Colonel Mack for these successes.” Mack distinguished himself again on the field of Neerwinden; and had a leading part in the negotiations between Coburg and Dumouriez. He continued to serve as quartermaster-general, and was now made titular chief (Inhaber) of a cuirassier regiment. He received a wound at Famars, but in 1794 was once more engaged, having at last been made a major-general. But the failure of the allies, due though it was to political and military factors and ideas, over which Mack had no control, was ascribed to him, as their successes of March-April 1793 had been, and he fell into disfavour in consequence. In 1797 he was promoted lieutenant field marshal, and in the following year he accepted, at the personal request of the emperor, the command of the Neapolitan army. But with the unpromising material of his new command he could do nothing against the French revolutionary troops, and before long, being in actual danger of being murdered by his men, he took refuge in the French camp. He was promised a free pass to his own country, but Napoleon ordered that he should be sent to France as a prisoner of war. Two years later he escaped from Paris in disguise. The allegation that he broke his parole is false. He was not employed for some years, but in 1804, when the war party in the Austrian court needed a general to oppose the peace policy of the Archduke Charles, Mack was made quartermaster-general of the army, with instructions to prepare for a war with France. He did all that was possible within the available time to reform the army, and on the opening of the war of 1805 he was made quartermaster-general to the titular commander-in-chief in Germany, the Archduke Ferdinand. He was the real responsible commander of the army which opposed Napoleon in Bavaria, but his position was ill-defined and his authority treated with slight respect by the other general officers. For the events of the Ulm campaign and an estimate of Mack’s responsibility for the disaster, seeNapoleonic Campaigns. After Austerlitz, Mack was tried by a court-martial, sitting from February 1806 to June 1807, and sentenced to be deprived of his rank, his regiment, and the order of Maria Theresa, and to be imprisoned for two years. He was released in 1808, and in 1819, when the ultimate victory of the allies had obliterated the memory of earlier disasters, he was, at the request of Prince Schwarzenberg, reinstated in the army as lieutenant field marshal and a member of the order of Maria Theresa. He died on the 22nd of October 1828 at S. Pölten.

See Schweigerd,Oesterreichs Helden(Vienna, 1854); Würzbach,Biogr. Lexikon d. Kaiserthums Oesterr.(Vienna, 1867); Ritter von Rittersberg,Biogr. d. ausgezeichneten Feldherren d. oest. Armee(Prague, 1828); Raumer’sHist. Taschenbuch(1873) contains Mack’s vindication. A short critical memoir will be found inStreffleurfor January 1907.

McLANE, LOUIS(1786-1857), American political leader, was born in Smyrna, Delaware, on the 28th of May 1786, son of Allan McLane (1746-1829), a well-known Revolutionary soldier. He was admitted to the bar in 1807. He entered politics as a Democrat, and served in the Federal House of Representatives in 1817-1827 and in the Senate in 1827-1829. He was minister to England in 1829-1831, and secretary of the treasury in Jackson’s cabinet from 1831 (when in his annual report he argued for the United States Bank) until May 1833, when he was transferred to the state department. He retired from the cabinet in June 1834. He was president of the Baltimore & Ohio railway in 1837-1847, minister to England in 1845-1846, and delegate to the Maryland constitutional convention of 1850-1851. He died in Baltimore, Maryland, on the 7th of October 1857.

His son,Robert Milligan McLane(1815-1898), graduated at West Point in 1837, resigned from the army in 1843, and practised law in Baltimore. He was a Democratic representative in Congress in 1847-1851 and again in 1879-1883, governor of Maryland in 1884-1885, U.S. commissioner to China in 1853-1854, and minister to Mexico in 1859-1860 and to France in 1885-1889.

See R. M. McLane’sReminiscences, 1827-1897 (privately printed, 1897).

MACLAREN, CHARLES(1782-1866), Scottish editor, was born at Ormiston, Haddingtonshire, on the 7th of October 1782, the son of a farmer and cattle-dealer. He was almost entirely self-educated, and when a young man became a clerk in Edinburgh. In 1817, with others, he established theScotsmannewspaper in Edinburgh and at first acted as its editor. Offered a post as clerk in the custom house, he resigned his editorialposition, resuming it in 1820, and resigning it again in 1845. In 1820 Maclaren was made editor of the sixth edition of theEncyclopaedia Britannica. From 1864-1866 he was president of the Geological Society of Edinburgh, in which city he died on the 10th of September 1866.

MACLAREN, IAN,the pseudonym ofJohn Watson(1850-1907), Scottish author and divine. The son of John Watson, a civil servant, he was born at Manningtree, Essex, on the 3rd of November 1850, and was educated at Stirling and at Edinburgh University, afterwards studying theology at New College, Edinburgh, and at Tübingen. In 1874 he entered the ministry of the Free Church of Scotland and became assistant minister of Barclay Church, Edinburgh. Subsequently he was minister at Logiealmond in Perthshire and at Glasgow, and in 1880 he became minister of Sefton Park Presbyterian church, Liverpool, from which he retired in 1905. In 1896 he was Lyman Beecher lecturer at Yale University, and in 1900 he was moderator of the synod of the English Presbyterian church. While travelling in America he died at Mount Pleasant, Iowa, on the 6th of May 1907. Ian Maclaren’s first sketches of rural Scottish life,Beside the Bonnie Briar Bush(1894), achieved extraordinary popularity and were followed by other successful books,The Days of Auld Lang Syne(1895),Kate Carnegie and those Ministers(1896) andAfterwards and other Stories(1898). Under his own name Watson published several volumes of sermons, among them beingThe Upper Room(1895);The Mind of the Master(1896) andThe Potter’s Wheel(1897).

See Sir W. Robertson Nicoll,Ian Maclaren(1908).

MACLAURIN, COLIN(1698-1746), Scottish mathematician, was the son of a clergyman, and born at Kilmodan, Argyllshire. In 1709 he entered the university of Glasgow, where he exhibited a decided genius for mathematics, more especially for geometry; it is said that before the end of his sixteenth year he had discovered many of the theorems afterwards published in hisGeometria organica. In 1717 he was elected professor of mathematics in Marischal College, Aberdeen, as the result of a competitive examination. Two years later he was admitted F.R.S. and made the acquaintance of Sir Isaac Newton. In 1719 he published hisGeometria organica, sive descriptio linearum curvarum universalis. In it Maclaurin developed several theorems due to Newton, and introduced the method of generating conics which bears his name, and showed that many curves of the third and fourth degrees can be described by the intersection of two movable angles. In 1721 he wrote a supplement to theGeometria organica, which he afterwards published, with extensions, in thePhilosophical Transactionsfor 1735. This paper is principally based on the following general theorem, which is a remarkable extension of Pascal’s hexagram: “If a polygon move so that each of its sides passes through a fixed point, and if all its summits except one describe curves of the degreesm,n,p, &c., respectively, then the free summit moves on a curve of the degree 2mnp... which reduces tomnp... when the fixed points all lie on a right line.” In 1722 Maclaurin travelled as tutor and companion to the eldest son of Lord Polwarth, and after a short stay in Paris resided for some time in Lorraine, where he wrote an essay on the percussion of bodies, which obtained the prize of the French Academy of Sciences for the year 1724. The following year he was elected professor of mathematics in the university of Edinburgh on the urgent recommendation of Newton. After the death of Newton, in 1728, his nephew, John Conduitt, applied to Maclaurin for his assistance in publishing an account of Newton’s life and discoveries. This Maclaurin gladly undertook, but the death of Conduitt put a stop to the project.

In 1740 Maclaurin divided with Leonhard Euler and Daniel Bernoulli the prize offered by the French Academy of Sciences for an essay on tides. HisTreatise on Fluxionswas published at Edinburgh in 1742, in two volumes. In the preface he states that the work was undertaken in consequence of the attack on the method of fluxions made by George Berkeley in 1734. Maclaurin’s object was to found the doctrine of fluxions on geometrical demonstration, and thus to answer all objections to its method as being founded on false reasoning and full of mystery. The most valuable part of the work is that devoted to physical applications, in which he embodied his essay on the tides. In this he showed that a homogeneous fluid mass revolving uniformly round an axis under the action of gravity ought to assume the form of an ellipsoid of revolution. The importance of this investigation in connexion with the theory of the tides, the figure of the earth, and other kindred questions, has always caused it to be regarded as one of the great problems of mathematical physics. Maclaurin was the first to introduce into mechanics, in this discussion, the important conception ofsurfaces of level; namely, surfaces at each of whose points the total force acts in the normal direction. He also gave in hisFluxions, for the first time, the correct theory for distinguishing between maxima and minima in general, and pointed out the importance of the distinction in the theory of the multiple points of curves. In 1745, when the rebels were marching on Edinburgh, Maclaurin took a most prominent part in preparing trenches and barricades for its defence. The anxiety, fatigue and cold to which he was thus exposed, affecting a constitution naturally weak, laid the foundation of the disease to which he afterwards succumbed. As soon as the rebel army got possession of Edinburgh Maclaurin fled to England, to avoid making submission to the Pretender. He accepted the invitation of T. Herring, then archbishop of York, with whom he remained until it was safe to return to Edinburgh. He died of dropsy on the 14th of June 1746, at Edinburgh. Maclaurin was married in 1733 to Anne, daughter of Walter Stewart, solicitor-general for Scotland. His eldest son John, born in 1734, was distinguished as an advocate, and appointed one of the judges of the Scottish court of session, with the title of Lord Dreghorn. He inherited an attachment to scientific discovery, and was one of the founders of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, in 1782.

After Maclaurin’s death his account of Newton’s philosophical discoveries was published by Patrick Murdoch, and also his algebra in 1748. As an appendix to the latter appeared hisDe linearum geometricarum proprietatibus generalibus tractatus, a treatise of remarkable elegance. Of the more immediate successors of Newton in Great Britain Maclaurin is probably the only one who can be placed in competition with the great mathematicians of the continent of Europe at the time.

(B. W.)

M‘LENNAN, JOHN FERGUSON(1827-1881), Scottish ethnologist, was born at Inverness on the 14th of October 1827. He studied at King’s college, Aberdeen, where he graduated with distinction in 1849, thence proceeding to Cambridge, where he remained till 1855 without taking a degree. He was called to the Scottish bar in 1857, and in 1871 was appointed parliamentary draughtsman for Scotland. In 1865 he publishedPrimitive Marriage, in which, arguing from the prevalence of the symbolical form of capture in the marriage ceremonies of primitive races, he developed an intelligible picture of the growth of the marriage relation and of systems of kinship (seeFamily) according to natural laws. In 1866 he wrote in theFortnightly Review(April and May) an essay on “Kinship in Ancient Greece,” in which he proposed to test by early Greek facts the theory of the history of kinship set forth inPrimitive Marriage; and three years later appeared a series of essays on “Totemism” in the same periodical for 1869-1870 (the germ of which had been contained in the paper just named), which mark the second great step in his systematic study of early society. A reprint ofPrimitive Marriage, with “Kinship in Ancient Greece” and some other essays not previously published, appeared in 1876, under the title ofStudies in Ancient History. The new essays in this volume were mostly critical, but one of them, in which perhaps his guessing talent is seen at its best, “The Divisions of the Irish Family,” is an elaborate discussion of a problem which has long puzzled both Celtic scholars and jurists; and in another, “On the Classificatory System of Relationship,” he propounded a new explanation of a series of facts which, he thought, might throw light upon the early history of society, at the same time putting to the test of those facts the theories he had set forth inPrimitive Marriage. Paperson “The Levirate and Polyandry,” following up the line of his previous investigations (Fortnightly Review, 1877), were the last work he was able to publish. He died of consumption on the 14th of June 1881 at Hayes Common, Kent.

Besides the works already cited, M‘Lennan wrote aLife of Thomas Drummond(1867). The vast materials which he had accumulated on kinship were edited by his widow and A. Platt, under the titleStudies in Ancient History: Second Series(1896).

MACLEOD, HENRY DUNNING(1821-1902), Scottish economist, was born in Edinburgh, and educated at Eton, Edinburgh University, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1843. He travelled in Europe, and in 1849 was called to the English bar. He was employed in Scotland on the work of poor-law reform, and devoted himself to the study of economics. In 1856 he published hisTheory and Practice of Banking, in 1858Elements of Political Economy, and in 1859A Dictionary of Political Economy. In 1873 appeared hisPrinciples of Economist Philosophy, and other books on economics and banking were published later. Between 1868 and 1870 he was employed by the government in digesting and codifying the law of bills of exchange. He died on the 16th of July 1902. Macleod’s principal contribution to the study of economics consists in his work on the theory of credit, to which he was the first to give due prominence.

For a judicious discussion of the value of Macleod’s writings, see an article on “The Revolt against Orthodox Economics” in theQuarterly Reviewfor October 1901 (No. 388).

MACLEOD, NORMAN(1812-1872), Scottish divine, son of Rev. Norman Macleod (1783-1862), and grandson of Rev. Norman Macleod, minister of Morven, Argyllshire, was born at Campbeltown on the 3rd of June 1812. In 1827 he became a student at Glasgow University, and in 1831 went to Edinburgh to study divinity under Dr Thomas Chalmers. On the 18th of March 1838 he became parish minister at Loudoun, Ayrshire. At this time the troubles in the Scottish Church were already gathering to a head (seeFree Church of Scotland). Macleod, although he had no love for lay patronage, and wished the Church to be free to do its proper work, clung firmly to the idea of a national Established Church, and therefore remained in the Establishment when the disruption took place. He was one of those who took a middle course in the non-intrusion controversy, holding that the fitness of those who were presented to parishes should be judged by the presbyteries—the principle of Lord Aberdeen’s Bill. On the secession of 1843 he was offered many different parishes, and having finally settled at Dalkeith, devoted himself to parish work and to questions affecting the Church as a whole. He was largely instrumental in the work of strengthening the Church. In 1847 he became one of the founders of the Evangelical Alliance, and from 1849 edited theChristian Instructor(Edinburgh). In 1851 he was called to the Barony church, Glasgow, in which city the rest of his days were passed. There the more liberal theology rapidly made way among a people who judged it more by its fruits than its arguments, and Macleod won many adherents by his practical schemes for the social improvement of the people. He instituted temperance refreshment rooms, a congregational penny savings bank, and held services specially for the poor. In 1860 Macleod was appointed editor of the new monthly magazineGood Words. Under his control the magazine, which was mainly of a religious character, became widely popular. His own literary work, nearly all of which originally appeared in its pages—sermons, stories, travels, poems—was only a by-product of a busy life. By far his best work was the spontaneous and delightfulReminiscences of a Highland Parish(1867). WhileGood Wordsmade his name known, and helped the cause he had so deeply at heart, his relations with the queen and the royal family strengthened yet further his position in the country. Never since Principal Carstairs had any Scottish clergyman been on such terms with his sovereign. In 1865 he risked an encounter with Scottish Sabbatarian ideas. The presbytery of Glasgow issued a pastoral letter on the subject of Sunday trains and other infringements of the Sabbath. Macleod protested against the grounds on which its strictures were based. For a time, owing partly to a misleading report of his statement, he became “the man in all Scotland most profoundly distrusted.” But four years later the Church accorded him the highest honour in her power by choosing him as moderator of her general assembly. In 1867, along with Dr Archibald Watson, he was sent to India, to inquire into the state of the missions. He undertook the journey in spite of failing health, and seems never to have recovered from its effects. He returned resolved to devote the rest of his days to rousing the Church to her duty in the sphere of foreign missions, but his health was now broken, and his old energy flagged. He died on the 16th of June 1872, and was buried at Campsie. He was one of the greatest of Scottish religious leaders, a man of wide sympathy and high ideals. His Glasgow church was named after him the “Macleod Parish Church,” and the “Macleod Missionary Institute” was erected by the Barony church in Glasgow. Queen Victoria gave two memorial windows to Crathie church as a testimony of her admiration for his work.

SeeMemoir of Norman Macleod, by his brother, Donald Macleod (1876).

MACLISE, DANIEL(1806-1870), Irish painter, was born at Cork, the son of a Highland soldier. His education was of the plainest kind, but he was eager for culture, fond of reading, and anxious to become an artist. His father, however, placed him, in 1820, in Newenham’s Bank, where he remained for two years, and then left to study in the Cork school of art. In 1825 it happened that Sir Walter Scott was travelling in Ireland, and young Maclise, having seen him in a bookseller’s shop, made a surreptitious sketch of the great man, which he afterwards lithographed. It was exceedingly popular, and the artist became celebrated enough to receive many commissions for portraits, which he executed, in pencil, with very careful treatment of detail and accessory. Various influential friends perceived the genius and promise of the lad, and were anxious to furnish him with the means of studying in the metropolis; but with rare independence he refused all aid, and by careful economy saved a sufficient sum to enable him to leave for London. There he made a lucky hit by a sketch of the younger Kean, which, like his portrait of Scott, was lithographed and published. He entered the Academy schools in 1828, and carried off the highest prizes open to the students. In 1829 he exhibited for the first time in the Royal Academy. Gradually he began to confine himself more exclusively to subject and historical pictures, varied occasionally by portraits of Campbell, Miss Landon, Dickens, and other of his literary friends. In 1833 he exhibited two pictures which greatly increased his reputation, and in 1835 the “Chivalric Vow of the Ladies and the Peacock” procured his election as associate of the Academy, of which he became full member in 1840. The years that followed were occupied with a long series of figure pictures, deriving their subjects from history and tradition and from the works of Shakespeare, Goldsmith and Le Sage. He also designed illustrations for several of Dickens’s Christmas books and other works. Between the years 1830 and 1836 he contributed toFraser’s Magazine, under the pseudonym of Alfred Croquis, a remarkable series of portraits of the literary and other celebrities of the time—character studies, etched or lithographed in outline, and touched more or less with the emphasis of the caricaturist, which were afterwards published as theMaclise Portrait Gallery(1871). In 1858 Maclise commenced one of the two great monumental works of his life, the “Meeting of Wellington and Blücher,” on the walls of Westminster Palace. It was begun in fresco, a process which proved unmanageable. The artist wished to resign the task; but, encouraged by Prince Albert, he studied in Berlin the new method of “water-glass” painting, and carried out the subject and its companion, the “Death of Nelson,” in that medium, completing the latter painting in 1864. The intense application which he gave to these great historic works, and various circumstances connected with the commission, had a serious effect on the artist’s health. He began to shun the company in which he formerly delighted; his old buoyancy ofspirits was gone; and when, in 1865, the presidentship of the Academy was offered to him he declined the honour. He died of acute pneumonia on the 25th of April 1870. His works are distinguished by powerful intellectual and imaginative qualities, but most of them are marred by harsh and dull colouring, by metallic hardness of surface and texture, and by frequent touches of the theatrical in the action and attitudes of the figures. His fame rests most securely on his two greatest works at Westminster.

A memoir of Maclise, by his friend W. J. O’Driscoll, was published in 1871.

MACLURE, WILLIAM(1763-1840), American geologist, was born at Ayr in Scotland in 1763. After a brief visit to New York in 1782 he began active life as a partner in a London firm of American merchants. In 1796 business affairs took him to Virginia, U.S.A., which he thereafter made his home. In 1803 he visited France as one of the commissioners appointed to settle the claims of American citizens on the French government; and during the few years then spent in Europe he applied himself with enthusiasm to the study of geology. On his return home in 1807 he commenced the self-imposed task of making a geological survey of the United States. Almost every state in the Union was traversed and mapped by him, the Alleghany Mountains being crossed and recrossed some fifty times. The results of his unaided labours were submitted to the American Philosophical Society in a memoir entitledObservations on the Geology of the United States explanatory of a Geological Map, and published in the Society’sTransactions(vol. iv. 1809, p. 91) together with the first geological map of that country. This antedates William Smith’s geological map of England by six years. In 1817 Maclure brought before the same society a revised edition of his map, and his great geological memoir was issued separately, with some additional matter, under the titleObservations on the Geology of the United States of America. Subsequent survey has corroborated the general accuracy of Maclure’s observations. In 1819 he visited Spain, and attempted, unsuccessfully, to establish an agricultural college near the city of Alicante. Returning to America in 1824, he settled for some years at New Harmony, Indiana, and sought to develop his scheme of the agricultural college. Failing health ultimately constrained him to relinquish the attempt, and to seek (in 1827) a more congenial climate in Mexico. There, at San Angel, he died on the 23rd of March 1840.

See S. G. Morton, “Memoir of William Maclure,”Amer. Journ. Sci., vol. xlvii. (1844), p. 1.

MacMAHON, MARIE EDMÉ PATRICE MAURICE DE,duke of Magenta (1808-1893), French marshal and president of the French republic, was born on the 13th of July 1808 at the château of Sully, near Autun. He was descended from an Irish family which went into exile with James II. Educated at the military school of St Cyr, in 1827 he entered the army, and soon saw active service in the first French campaign in Algeria, where his ability and bravery became conspicuous. Being recalled to France, he gained renewed distinction in the expedition to Antwerp in 1832. He became captain in 1833, and in that year returned to Algeria. He led daring cavalry raids across plains infested with Bedouin, and especially distinguished himself at the siege of Constantine in 1837. From then until 1855 he was almost constantly in Algeria, and rose to the rank of general of division. During the Crimean War MacMahon was given the command of a division, and in September 1855 he successfully conducted the assault upon the Malakoff works, which led to the fall of Sebastopol. After his return to France honours were showered upon him, and he was made a senator. Desiring a more active life, however, and declining the highest command in France, he was once more sent out, at his own request, to Algeria, where he completely defeated the Kabyles. After his return to France he voted as a senator against the unconstitutional law for general safety, which was brought forward in consequence of Orsini’s abortive attempt on the emperor’s life. MacMahon greatly distinguished himself in the Italian campaign of 1859. Partly by good luck and partly by his boldness and sagacity in pushing forward without orders at a critical moment at the battle of Magenta, he enabled the French to secure the victory. For his brilliant services MacMahon received his marshal’s baton and was created duke of Magenta. In 1861 he represented France at the coronation of William I. of Prussia, and in 1864 he was nominated governor-general of Algeria. MacMahon’s action in this capacity formed the least successful episode of his career. Although he did institute some reforms in the colonies, complaints were so numerous that twice in the early part of 1870 he sent in his resignation to the emperor. When the ill-fated Ollivier cabinet was formed the emperor abandoned his Algerian schemes and MacMahon was recalled.

War being declared between France and Prussia in July 1870, MacMahon was appointed to the command of the Alsace army detachment (seeFranco-German War). On the 6th of August MacMahon fought the battle of Wörth (q.v.). His courage was always conspicuous on the field, but the two-to-one numerical superiority of the Germans triumphed. MacMahon was compelled to fall back upon Saverne, and thence to Toul. Though he suffered further losses in the course of his retreat, his movements were so ably conducted that the emperor confided to him the supreme command of the new levies which he was mustering at Châlons, and he was directed to effect a junction with Bazaine. This operation he undertook against his will. He had an army of 120,000 men, with 324 guns; but large numbers of the troops were disorganized and demoralized. Early on the 1st of September the decisive battle of Sedan began. MacMahon was dangerously wounded in the thigh, whereupon General Ducrot, and soon afterwards General de Wimpffen, took command. MacMahon shared the captivity of his comrades, and resided at Wiesbaden until the conclusion of peace.

In March 1871 MacMahon was appointed by Thiers commander-in-chief of the army of Versailles; and in that capacity he suppressed the Communist insurrection, and successfully conducted the second siege of Paris. In the following December he was invited to become a candidate for Paris in the elections to the National Assembly, but declined nomination. On the resignation of Thiers as president of the Republic, on the 24th of May 1873, MacMahon was elected to the vacant office by an almost unanimous vote, being supported by 390 members out of 392. The duc de Broglie was empowered to form a Conservative administration, but the president also took an early opportunity of showing that he intended to uphold the sovereignty of the National Assembly. On the 5th of November 1873 General Changarnier presented a motion in the Assembly to confirm MacMahon’s powers for a period of ten years, and to provide for a commission of thirty to draw up a form of constitutional law. The president consented, but in a message to the Assembly he declared in favour of a confirmation of his own powers for seven years, and expressed his determination to use all his influence in the maintenance of Conservative principles. After prolonged debates the Septennate was adopted on the 19th of November by 378 votes to 310. There was nocoup d’étatin favour of “Henri V.,” as had been expected, and the president resolved to abide by “existing institutions.” One of his earliest acts was to receive the finding of the court-martial upon his old comrade in arms, Marshal Bazaine, whose death sentence he commuted to one of twenty years’ imprisonment in a fortress. Though MacMahon’s life as president of the Republic was of the simplest possible character, his term of office was marked by many brilliant displays, while his wife was a leader in all works of charity and benevolence.

The president was very popular in the rural districts of France, through which he made a successful tour shortly after the declaration of the Septennate. But in Paris and other large cities his policy soon caused great dissatisfaction, the Republican party especially being alienated by press prosecutions and the attempted suppression of Republican ideas. Matters were at a comparative deadlock in the National Assembly, until the accession of some Orleanists to the Moderate Republican partyin 1875 made it possible to pass various constitutional laws. In May 1877, however, the constitutional crisis became once more acute. A peremptory letter of censure from MacMahon to Jules Simon caused the latter to resign with his colleagues. The duc de Broglie formed a ministry, but Gambetta carried a resolution in the Chamber of Deputies in favour of parliamentary government. The president declined to yield, and being supported by the Senate, he dissolved the Chamber, by decree, on the 25th of June. The prosecution of Gambetta followed for a speech at Lille, in which he had said “the marshal must, if the elections be against him,se soumettre ou se démettre.” In a manifesto respecting the elections, the president referred to his successful government and observed, “I cannot obey the injunctions of the demagogy; I can neither become the instrument of Radicalism nor abandon the post in which the constitution has placed me.” His confidence in the result of the elections was misplaced. Notwithstanding the great pressure put upon the constituencies by the government, the elections in October resulted in the return of 335 Republicans and only 198 anti-Republicans, the latter including 30 MacMahonists, 89 Bonapartists, 41 Legitimists, and 38 Orleanists. The president endeavoured to ignore the significance of the elections, and continued his reactionary policy. As a last resort he called to power an extra-parliamentary cabinet under General Rochebouet, but the Republican majority refused to vote supplies, and after a brief interval the president was compelled to yield, and to accept a new Republican ministry under Dufaure. The prolonged crisis terminated on the 14th of December 1877, and no further constitutional difficulties arose in 1878. But as the senatorial elections, held early in 1879, gave the Republicans an effective working majority in the Upper Chamber, they now called for the removal of the most conspicuous anti-Republicans among the generals and officials. The president refused to supersede them, and declined to sanction the law brought in with this object. Perceiving further resistance to be useless, however, MacMahon resigned the presidency on the 30th of January 1879, and Jules Grévy was elected as his successor.

MacMahon now retired into private life. Relieved from the cares of state, his simple and unostentatious mode of existence enabled him to pass many years of dignified repose. He died at Paris on the 17th of October 1893, in his eighty-sixth year. A fine, tall, soldierly man, of a thoroughly Irish type, in private life MacMahon was universally esteemed as generous and honourable; as a soldier he was brave and able, without decided military genius; as a politician he was patriotic and well-intentioned, but devoid of any real capacity for statecraft.

(G. B. S.)

McMASTER, JOHN BACH(1852- ), American historian, was born in Brooklyn, New York, on the 29th of June 1852. He graduated from the college of the City of New York in 1872, worked as a civil engineer in 1873-1877, was instructor in civil engineering at Princeton University in 1877-1883, and in 1883 became professor of American history in the university of Pennsylvania. He is best known for hisHistory of the People of the United States from the Revolution to the Civil War(1883 sqq.), a valuable supplement to the more purely political writings of Schouler, Von Holst and Henry Adams.

MACMILLAN,the name of a family of English publishers. The founders of the firm were two Scotsmen, Daniel Macmillan (1813-1857) and his younger brother Alexander (1818-1896). Daniel was a native of the Isle of Arran, and Alexander was born in Irvine on the 3rd of October 1818. Daniel was for some time assistant to the bookseller Johnson at Cambridge, but entered the employ of Messrs Seeley in London in 1837; in 1843 he began business in Aldersgate Street, and in the same year the two brothers purchased the business of Newby in Cambridge. They did not confine themselves to bookselling, but published educational works as early as 1844. In 1845 they became the proprietors of the more important business of Stevenson, in Cambridge, the firm being styled Macmillan, Barclay & Macmillan. In 1850 Barclay retired and the firm resumed the name of Macmillan & Co. Daniel Macmillan died at Cambridge on the 27th of June 1857. In that year an impetus was given to the business by the publication of Kingsley’sTwo Years Ago. A branch office was opened in 1858 in Henrietta Street, London, which led to a great extension of trade. These premises were surrendered for larger ones in Bedford Street, and in 1897 the buildings in St Martin’s Street were opened. Alexander Macmillan died in January 1896. By his great energy and literary associations, and with the aid of his partners, there had been built up in little over half a century one of the most important publishing houses in the world. Besides the issue of many important series of educational and scientific works, they published the works of Kingsley, Huxley, Maurice, Tennyson, Lightfoot, Westcott, J. R. Green, Lord Roberts, Lewis Carroll, and of many other well-known authors. In 1898 they took over the old-established publishing house of R. Bentley & Son, and with it the works of Mrs Henry Wood, Miss Rhoda Broughton,The Ingoldsby Legends, and alsoTemple Barand theArgosy. In 1893 the firm was converted into a limited liability company, its chairman being Frederick Macmillan (b. 1851), who was knighted in 1909. The American firm of the Macmillan Company, of which he was also a director, is a separate business.

See Thomas Hughes,Memoir of Daniel Macmillan(1882);A Bibliographical Catalogue of Macmillan & Co’s Publications from 1843 to 1889(1891), with portraits of the brothers Daniel and Alexander after Lowes Dickinson and Hubert Herkomer; also articles inLe Livre(September 1886),Publishers’ Circular(January 14, 1893), theBookman(May 1901), &c.

MACMONNIES, FREDERICK WILLIAM(1863- ) American sculptor and painter, was born at Brooklyn, New York, on the 20th of September 1863. His mother was a niece of Benjamin West. At the age of sixteen MacMonnies was received as an apprentice in the studio of Augustus St Gaudens, the sculptor, where he remained for five years. In 1884 he went to Paris and thence to Munich, where he painted for some months. Returning to Paris next year he became the most prominent pupil of Falguière. His “Diana” brought him a mention at the Salon of 1889. Three life-sized figures of angels for the church of St Paul, New York, were followed by his “Nathan Hale,” in the City Hall Park, New York, and a portrait of James S. T. Stranahan, for Brooklyn. This last brought him a “second medal” in the Salon of 1891, the first time an American sculptor had been so honoured. In 1893 he was chosen to design and carry out the Columbian Fountain for the Chicago World’s Fair, which placed him instantly in the front rank. His largest work is a decoration for the Memorial Arch to Soldiers and Sailors, in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, consisting of three enormous groups in bronze. In Prospect Park, Brooklyn, MacMonnies has also a large “Horse Tamer,” a work of much distinction. A “Winged Victory” at the U.S. military academy at West Point, New York, is of importance; and his “Bacchante,” an extraordinary combination of realism and imagination, rejected by the Boston Public Library, is now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. He also became well known as a painter, mainly of portraits. In 1888 he married Mary Fairchild, a figure painter of distinction, but in 1909 they were divorced and she married Will H. Low.

MACNAGHTEN, SIR WILLIAM HAY,Bart.(1793-1841), Anglo-Indian diplomatist, was the second son of Sir Francis Macnaghten, Bart., judge of the supreme courts of Madras and Calcutta. He was born in August 1793, and educated at Charterhouse. He went out to Madras as a cadet in 1809, but was appointed in 1816 to the Bengal Civil Service. He early displayed a great talent for languages, and also published several treatises on Hindu and Mahommedan law. His political career began in 1830 as secretary to Lord William Bentinck; and in 1837 he became one of the most trusted advisers of the governor-general, Lord Auckland, with whose policy of supporting Shah Shuja against Dost Mahommed, the reigning amir of Kabul, Macnaghten was closely identified. As political agent at Kabul he came into conflict with the military authorities and subsequently with his subordinate Sir Alexander Burnes. Macnaghten attempted to placate the Afghan chiefs with heavy subsidies, but when the drain on the Indian exchequer became too great,and the allowances were reduced, this policy led to an outbreak. Burnes was murdered on the 2nd of November 1841; and owing to the incapacity of the aged General Elphinstone the British army in Kabul degenerated into a leaderless mob. Macnaghten tried to save the situation by negotiating with the Afghan chiefs and, independently of them, with Dost Mahommed’s son, Akbar Khan, by whom he was assassinated on the 23rd of December 1841; the disastrous retreat from Kabul and the massacre of the British army in the Kurd Kabul pass followed. These events threw doubt on Macnaghten’s capacity for dealing with the problems of Indian diplomacy, though his fearlessness and integrity were unquestioned. He had been created a baronet in 1840, and four months before his death was nominated to the governorship of Bombay.

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