Savannah. A city and port of Georgia, U. S., on the right bank of the Savannah River, 18 miles from its mouth. The city is surrounded by marshes and islands, and was defended by Fort Pulaski and Fort Jackson. Savannah was founded in 1733, by the English general Oglethorpe. In 1776 a British fleet, attempting to take the town, was repulsed after a severe action; but it was taken in 1778, and held in 1779 against the combined French and American forces. In the war of Secession, after many unsuccessful attacks by sea, it was taken by Gen. Sherman in February, 1865.
Saverne (anc. Taberna). A town of France, in the department of Bas-Rhin, on the Zorn, 19 miles northwest of Strasburg. It is a very ancient place, and was formerly fortified. It suffered very much during the Thirty Years’ War; and its fortifications were destroyed in 1696.
Savigliano. A fortified town of Northern Italy, in Piedmont, 28 miles south from Turin. The French defeated the Austrians here in 1799.
Savona. A maritime city of Northern Italy, in the province of Genoa, and 25 miles southwest from the city of that name. It is a very ancient city, and in the time of the Romans was called Sava; was destroyed by Rotharis (639), rebuilt by Ludovic the Pious (981), and was afterwards laid waste by the Saracens.
Savoy. Formerly a province in Northern Italy, east of Piedmont. It became a Roman province about 118 B.C. The Alemanni seized it in 395, and the Franks in 490. It shared the revolutions of Switzerland till about 1048. The French subdued Savoy in 1792, and made it a department of France under the name of Mont Blanc in 1800; it was restored to the king of Sardinia in 1814; but was once more annexed to France in 1860.
Sawunt Warree. A native state of India, in the Presidency of Bombay. The first treaty between Sawunt Warree and the British took place in 1730, and had for its object to suppress the piracies of the Angria family in the island of Kolabah. But the chieftains of Sawunt Warree, being themselves addicted to piracy, drew upon them the hostility of the British in 1765. A series of wars, treaties, and negotiations ensued, which ended in the subjugation of the state in 1819 by a British force. The sea-coast was then ceded to the British, and the native government restored. Rebellions were raised against the chiefs in 1828, 1832, and 1838. The most important event that has since occurred, was the dangerous rebellion which began in the autumn of 1844, and was put down after some months of hard fighting by Lieut.-Col. Outram in the beginning of the following year.
Sawyer Projectile. See [Projectile].
Saxons. A German people whose name is usually derived from an old German word, sahs, “a knife,” and are first mentioned by Ptolemy, who makes them inhabit a district south of the Cimbrian Peninsula. They are mentioned as brave and skillful sailors who often joined the Chauci in piratical expeditions against the coast of Gaul. In the 3d century they appear in England under Carausius, a Belgic admiral in the Roman service, who made himself “Augustus” in Britain by their help. They had firmly rooted themselves, at the beginning of the 5th century, in the present Normandy, and they fought against Attila in the Catalaunian Plain, 451. They also obtained a footing at the mouth of the Loire; but all the Saxons who settled in France disappeared before the Franks, or were probably incorporated with their more powerful kinsmen of Southern Germany. Along with the Franks, they destroyed the kingdom of the Thuringians in 531, and obtained possession of the land between the Harz and the Unstrut; but this district was in turn forced to acknowledge the Frankish sovereignty. From 719, wars between the Saxons and the Franks became constant; but the latter, after 772, were generally successful, in spite of the vigorous resistance offered by Wittekind, and in 804, the Saxons were finally subjugated by the arms of Charlemagne.
Saxony, Kingdom of. The second in importance and population of the minor German states, and a state of the new German empire. The earliest inhabitants of Upper Saxony, since the Christian era, were the Hermunduri; in the beginning of the 6th century their settlements were taken possession of by the Sorbs, a Slavic race. The Carlovingian rulers, dissatisfied with the ingress of those non-German tribes, erected “marks” to bar their progress; and Duke Otho the Illustrious of Saxony, and his celebrated son, Henry the Fowler, warred against them, the latter—subduing the Heveller, the Daleminzer, and the Miltzer—founded in their country the marks of Brandenburg Misnia (Meissen), and Lusatia (Lausitz), and planted colonies of Germans among the Sorbs. In 1090 the mark was bestowed on the house of Wettin, and was confirmed as a hereditary possession to that family in 1127. Frederick the Warlike (1381-1428) succeeded in uniting the severed portions of Saxony, to which were added various districts in Franconia, and in 1423 the electorate of Saxony. The Saxon elector was now one of the most powerful princes of Germany, but unfortunately the fatal practice of subdividing the father’s territories among his sons still continued; and during the reign of the elector, Frederick the Mild (1428-1464), a civil war broke out and was carried on for years. By a separate treaty of peace (1635), John George I. obtained Upper and Lower Lusatia, acquisitions confirmed by the treaty of Westphalia (1648). The reign of Frederick Augustus I. (1694-1733) well-nigh ruined the hitherto prosperous electorate. Frederick Augustus had been chosen king of Poland; and his attempt, in company with the czar and the king of Denmark, to dismember Sweden, brought down upon him and his two states the vengeance of the northern “fire-king.” Poland was utterly devastated, and Saxony exhausted in money and troops; the king was forced to sell many important portions of territory; Frederick Augustus II. (1733-1763), also king of Poland, took part in the war of the Austrian Succession against Maria Theresa, but finding the treaty of Berlin (1742) not so satisfactory for himself as he expected, he joined the empress in 1745. The country was atrociously ravaged during the Seven Years’ War, and a long time elapsed before it recovered its previous peaceful and prosperous state. In the conflict of 1866 the king of Saxony took the side of Austria, and his army fought in the battle of Königgratz, July 3. The Prussians entered Saxony June 18. Peace between Prussia and Saxony was signed October 21 (subjecting the Saxon army to Prussia), and the king returned to Dresden November 3. In 1870-71 the Saxon soldiers fought under the leadership of the crown-prince, afterward King Albert, as true allies by the side of the Prussians, and the interior development of the country has not only kept pace with, but in some respects even advanced beyond, that of the rest of Northern Germany.
Scabbard. Is the sheath for a sword or bayonet, at once to render the weapon harmless and to protect it from damp. It was usually made of black leather, tipped, mouthed, and ringed with metal, but is now generally made of bronzed steel. The cavalry wear scabbards of polished steel. These better sustain the friction against the horses’ accoutrements, but are objectionable from their noisiness, and the consequent impossibility of surprising an enemy. The sword-scabbard is suspended to the belt by two rings; the bayonet-scabbard hooks into a frog in connection with the waist-belt.