CHABOT, GEORGES ANTOINE, known as Chabot de l’Allier (1758-1819), French jurist and statesman, was president of the tribunal of Montluçon when he was elected as a deputy suppléant to the National Convention. A member of the council of the Ancients, then of the Tribunate, he was president of the latter when the peace of Amiens was signed. He had a resolution adopted, tending to give Napoleon Bonaparte the consulship for life; and in 1804 supported the proposal to establish a hereditary monarchy. Napoleon named him inspector-general of the law schools, then judge of the court of cassation. He published various legal works, e.g. Tableau de la législation ancienne sur les successions et de la législation nouvelle établie par le code civil (Paris, 1804), and Questions fransitoires sur le code Napoléon (Paris, 1809).
CHABOT, PHILIPPE DE, Seigneur de Brion, Count of Charny and Buzançais (c. 1492-1543), admiral of France. The Chabot family was one of the oldest and most powerful in Poitou. Philippe was a cadet of the Jarnac branch. He was a companion of Francis I. as a child, and on that king’s accession was loaded with honours and estates. After the battle of Pavia he was made admiral of France and governor of Burgundy (1526), and shared with Anne de Montmorency the direction of affairs. He was at the height of his power in 1535, and commanded the army for the invasion of the states of the duke of Savoy; but in the campaigns of 1536 and 1537 he was eclipsed by Montmorency, and from that moment his influence began to wane. He was accused by his enemies of peculation, and condemned on the 10th of February 1541 to a fine of 1,500,000 livres, to banishment, and to the confiscation of his estates. Through the good offices of Madam d’Étampes, however, he obtained the king’s pardon almost immediately (March 1541), was reinstated in his posts, and regained his estates and even his influence, while Montmorency in his turn was disgraced. But his health was affected by these troubles, and he died soon afterwards on the 1st of June 1543. His tomb in the Louvre, by an unknown sculptor, is a fine example of French Renaissance work. It was his nephew, Guy Chabot, seigneur de Jarnac, who fought the famous duel with François de Vivonne, seigneur de la Châtaigneraie, in 1547, at the beginning of the reign of Henry II.
The main authorities for Chabot’s life are his MS. correspondence in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, and contemporary memoirs. See also E de Barthélemy, “Chabot de Brion,” in the Revue des questions historiques (vol. xx. 1876); Martineau, “L’Amiral Chabot,” in the Positions des thèses de l’École des Chartes (1883).
CHABRIAS (4th century B.C.), a celebrated Athenian general. In 388 B.C. he defeated the Spartans at Aegina and commanded the fleet sent to assist Evagoras, king of Cyprus, against the Persians. In 378, when Athens entered into an alliance with, Thebes against Sparta, he defeated Agesilaus near Thebes. On this occasion he invented a manoeuvre, which consisted in receiving a charge on the left knee, with shields resting on the ground and spears pointed against the enemy. In 376 he gained a decisive victory over the Spartan fleet off Naxos, but, when he might have destroyed the Spartan fleet, remembering the fate of the generals at Arginusae, he delayed to pick up the bodies of his dead. Later, when the Athenians changed sides and joined the Spartans, he repulsed Epaminondas before the walls of Corinth. In 366, together with Callistratus, he was accused of treachery in advising the surrender of Oropus to the Thebans. He was acquitted, and soon after he accepted a command under Tachos, king of Egypt, who had revolted against Persia. But on the outbreak of the Social War (357) he joined Chares in the command of the Athenian fleet. He lost his life in an attack on the island of Chios.
See Cornelius Nepos, Chabrias; Xenophon, Hellenica, v. 1-4; Diod. Sic. xv. 29-34; and C. Rehdantz, Vitae Iphicratis, Chabriae, et Timothei (1845); art. [Delian League], section B, and authorities there quoted.
CHABRIER, ALEXIS EMMANUEL (1841-1894), French composer, was born at Ambert, Puy de Dôme, on the 18th of January 1841. At first he only cultivated music as an amateur, and it was not until 1879 that he threw up an administration appointment in order to devote himself entirely to the art. He had two years previously written an opéra bouffe entitled L’Étoile, which was performed at the Bouffes Parisiens. In 1881 he was appointed chorus-master of the concerts then recently established by Lamoureux. In 1883 he composed the brilliant orchestral rhapsody entitled España, the themes of which he had jotted down when travelling in Spain. His opera Gwendoline was brought out with considerable success at Brussels on the 10th of April 1886, and was given later at the Paris Grand Opéra. The following year 1887, Le Roi malgré lui, an opera of a lighter description, was produced in Paris at the Opéra Comique, its run being interrupted by the terrible fire by which this theatre was destroyed. His last opera, Briseis, was left unfinished, and performed in a fragmentary condition at the Paris Opéra, after the composer’s death in Paris on the 13th of September 1894. Chabrier was also the author of a set of piano pieces entitled Pièces pittoresques, Valses romantiques, for two pianos, a fantasia for horn and piano, &c. His great admiration for Wagner asserted itself in Gwendoline, a work which, in spite of inequalities due to want of experience, is animated by a high artistic ideal, is poetically conceived, and shows considerable harmonic originality, besides a thorough mastery over the treatment of the orchestra. The characteristics of Le Roi malgré lui have been well summed up by M. Joncières when he alludes to “cette verve inépuisable, ces rythmes endiablés, cette exubérance de gaieté et de vigueur, à laquelle venait se joindre la note mélancolique et émue.” Chabrier’s premature death prevented him from giving the full measure of his worth.