BOUVARDIA, a genus of handsome evergreen greenhouse shrubs, belonging to the natural order Rubiaceae, and a native of tropical America. The flowers are in terminal generally many-flowered clusters; the corolla has a large tube and a spreading four-rayed limb. The cultivated forms include a number of hybrids. The plants are best increased by cuttings taken off in April, and placed in a brisk heat in a propagating frame with a close atmosphere. When rooted they should be potted singly into 3-in. pots in fibrous peat and loam, mixed with one-fourth leaf-mould and a good sprinkling of sand, and kept in a temperature of 70° by night and 80° during the day; shade when required; syringe overhead in the afternoon and close the house with sun-heat. The plants should be topped to ensure a bushy habit, and as they grow must be shifted into 6-in. or 7-in. pots. After midsummer move to a cool pit, where they may remain till the middle of September, receiving plenty of air and space. They should then be removed to a house, and some of the plants put at once in a temperature of about 70° at night, with a few degrees higher in the daytime, to bring them into flower. Others are moved into heat to supply flowers in succession through the winter and spring.
BOUVET, FRANÇOIS JOSEPH (1753-1832), French admiral, son of a captain in the service of the French East India Company, was born on the 23rd of April 1753. He went to sea at the age of twelve with his father. Bouvet served in the East Indies in the famous campaign of 1781-83 under the command of Suffren, but only in a subordinate rank. On the outbreak of the French Revolution he very naturally took the anti-royalist side. Murder and exile had removed the great majority of the officers of the monarchy, and the services of a man of Bouvet’s experience were valuable. He was promoted captain and received the command of the “Audacieux” (80) in the first great fleet collected by the republic. In the same year (1793) he was advanced to rear-admiral, and he commanded a division in the fleet which fought the battle of the 1st of June 1794 against Lord Howe. Until the close of 1796 he continued in command of a squadron in the French Channel fleet. In the December of that year he was entrusted with the van division of the fleet which was sent from Brest to attempt to land General Hoche with an expeditionary force in the south of Ireland. The stormy weather which scattered the French as soon as they left Brest gave Bouvet a prominence which he had not been designed to enjoy. Bouvet, who found himself at daybreak on the 17th of December separated with nine sail of the line from the rest of the fleet, opened his secret orders, and found that he was to make his way to Mizen Head. He took a wide course to avoid meeting British cruisers, and on the 19th had the good luck to fall in with a considerable part of the rest of the fleet and some of the transports. On the 21st of December he arrived off Dursey Island at the entry to Bantry Bay. On the 24th he anchored near Bear Island with part of his fleet. The continued storms which blew down Bantry Bay, and the awkwardness of the French crews, made it impossible to land the troops he had with him. On the evening of the 25th the storm increased to such a pitch of violence that the frigate in which Bouvet had hoisted his flag was blown out to sea. The wind moderated by the 29th, but Bouvet, being convinced that none of the ships of his squadron could have remained at the anchorage, steered for Brest, where he arrived on the 1st of January 1797. His fortune had been very much that of his colleagues in this storm-tossed expedition, and on the whole he had shown more energy than most of them. He was wrong, however, in thinking that all his squadron had failed to keep their anchorage in Bantry Bay. The government, displeased by his precipitate return to Brest, dismissed him from command soon afterwards. He was compelled to open a school to support himself. Napoleon restored him to the service, and he commanded the squadron sent to occupy Guadaloupe during the peace of Amiens, but he had no further service, and lived in obscurity till his death on the 21st of July 1832.
Tronde, Batailles navales de la France, vols. ii. and iii., and James, Naval History, vols. i. and ii., give accounts of the 1st of June and the expedition to Ireland. There is a vigorous account of the expedition in Tronde’s English in Ireland, and it is dealt with in Admiral Colomb’s Naval Warfare.
(D. H.)
BOUVIER, JOHN (1787-1851), American jurist, was born in Codogno, France, in 1787. In 1802 his family, who were Quakers (his mother was a member of the well-known Benezet family), emigrated to America and settled in Philadelphia, and after varied experiences as proprietor of a book shop and as a country editor he was admitted to the bar in 1818, having become a citizen of the United States in 1812. He attained high standing in his profession, was recorder of Philadelphia in 1836, and from 1838 until his death was an associate justice of the court of criminal sessions in that city. He is best known for his able legal writings. His Law Dictionary Adapted to the Constitution and Laws of the United States of America and of the Several States of the American Union (1839, revised and brought up to date by Francis Rawle, under the title of Bouvier’s Law Dictionary, 2 vols., 1897) has always been a standard. He published also an edition of Bacon’s Abridgement of the Law (10 vols., 1842-1846), and a compendium of American law entitled The Institutes of American Law (4 vols., 1851; new ed. 2 vols., 1876).
BOUVINES, a village on the French-Belgian frontier between Lille and Tournay, the scene of one of the greatest battles of the middle ages, fought on the 27th of July 1214, between the forces of Philip Augustus, king of France, and those of the coalition formed against him, of which the principal members were the emperor and King John of England. The plan of campaign seems to have been designed by King John, who was the soul of the alliance; his general idea was to draw the French king to the southward against himself, while the emperor Otto IV., the princes of the Netherlands and the main army of the allies should at the right moment march upon Paris from the north. John’s part in the general strategy was perfectly executed; the allies in the north moved slowly. While John, after two inroads, turned back to his Guienne possessions on the 3rd of July, it was not until three weeks later that the emperor concentrated his forces at Valenciennes, and in the interval Philip Augustus had countermarched northward and concentrated an army at Péronne. Philip now took the offensive himself, and in manoeuvring to get a good cavalry ground upon which to fight he offered battle (July 27), on the plain east of Bouvines and the river Marque— the same plain on which in 1794 the brilliant cavalry action of Willems was fought. The imperial army accepted the challenge and drew up facing south-westward towards Bouvines, the heavy cavalry on the wings, the infantry in one great mass in the centre, supported by the cavalry corps under the emperor himself. The total force is estimated at 6500 heavy cavalry and 40,000 foot. The French army (about 7000 cavalry and 30,000 infantry) took ground exactly opposite to the enemy and in a similar formation, cavalry on the wings, infantry, including the milice des communes, in the centre, Philip with the cavalry reserve and the Oriflamme in rear of the foot. The battle opened with a confused cavalry fight on the French right, in which individual feats of knightly gallantry were more noticeable than any attempt at combined action. The fighting was more serious between the two centres; the infantry of the Low Countries, who were at this time almost the best in existence, drove in the French; Philip led the cavalry reserve of nobles and knights to retrieve the day, and after a long and doubtful fight, in which he himself was unhorsed and narrowly escaped death, began to drive back the Flemings. In the meanwhile the French feudatories on the left wing had thoroughly defeated the imperialists opposed to them, and William Longsword, earl of Salisbury, the leader of this corps, was unhorsed and taken prisoner by the warlike bishop of Beauvais. Victory declared itself also on the other wing, where the French at last routed the Flemish cavalry and captured Count Ferdinand of Flanders, one of the leaders of the coalition. In the centre the battle was now between the two mounted reserves led respectively by the king and the emperor in person. Here too the imperial forces suffered defeat, Otto himself being saved only by the devotion of a handful of Saxon knights. The day was already decided in favour of the French when their wings began to close inwards to cut off the retreat of the imperial centre. The battle closed with the celebrated stand of Reginald of Boulogne, a revolted vassal of King Philip, who formed a ring of seven hundred Brabançon pikemen, and not only defied every attack of the French cavalry, but himself made repeated charges or sorties with his small force of knights. Eventually, and long after the imperial army had begun its retreat, the gallant schiltron was ridden down and annihilated by a charge of three thousand men-at-arms. Reginald was taken prisoner in the mêlée; and the prisoners also included two other counts, Ferdinand and William Longsword, twenty-five barons and over a hundred knights. The killed amounted to about 170 knights of the defeated party, and many thousands of foot on either side, of whom no accurate account can be given.
See Oman, History of the Art of War, vii. pp. 457-480; also Köhler, Kriegsgeschichte, &c., i. 140, and Delpech, Tactique au XIII siècle, 127.