In 1691 he was received into the French Academy in spite of the determined efforts of the partisans of the ancients in this quarrel, especially of Racine and Boileau, who on four previous occasions had secured his rejection. He consequently was admitted a member both of the Academy of Inscriptions and of the Academy of Sciences; and in 1697 he became perpetual secretary to the latter body. This office he actually held for the long period of forty-two years; and it was in this official capacity that he wrote the Histoire du renouvellement de l’Académie des Sciences (Paris, 3 vols., 1708, 1717, 1722) containing extracts and analyses of the proceedings, and also the éloges of the members, written with great simplicity and delicacy. Perhaps the best known of his éloges, of which there are sixty-nine in all, is that of his uncle Pierre Corneille. This was first printed in the Nouvelles de la république des lettres (January 1685) and, as Vie de Corneille, was included in all the editions of Fontenelle’s Œuvres. The other important works of Fontenelle are his Élements de la géometrie de l’infini (1727) and his Apologie des tourbillons (1752). Fontenelle forms a link between two very widely different periods of French literature, that of Corneille, Racine and Boileau on the one hand, and that of Voltaire, D’Alembert and Diderot on the other. It is not in virtue of his great age alone that this can be said of him; he actually had much in common with the beaux esprits of the 17th century, as well as with the philosophes of the 18th. But it is to the latter rather than to the former period that he properly belongs.
He has no claim to be regarded as a genius; but, as Sainte-Beuve has said, he well deserves a place “dans la classe des esprits infiniment distingués”—distinguished, however, it ought to be added by intelligence rather than by intellect, and less by the power of saying much than by the power of saying a little well. In personal character he has sometimes been described as having been revoltingly heartless; and it is abundantly plain that he was singularly incapable of feeling strongly the more generous emotions—a misfortune, or a fault, which revealed itself in many ways. “Il faut avoir de l’âme pour avoir du goût.” But the cynical expressions of such a man are not to be taken too literally; and the mere fact that he lived and died in the esteem of many friends suffices to show that the theoretical selfishness which he sometimes professed cannot have been consistently and at all times carried into practice.
There have been several collective editions of Fontenelle’s works, the first being printed in 3 vols. at the Hague in 1728-1729. The best is that of Paris, in 8 vols. 8vo, 1790. Some of his separate works have been very frequently reprinted and also translated. The Pluralité des mondes was translated into modern Greek in 1794. Sainte-Beuve has an interesting essay on Fontenelle, with several useful references, in the Causeries du lundi, vol. iii. See also Villemain, Tableau de la littérature française au XVIIIe siècle; the abbé Trublet, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de la vie et des ouvrages de M. de Fontenelle (1759); A. Laborde-Milaà, Fontenelle (1905), in the “Grands écrivains français” series; and L. Maigron, Fontenelle, l’homme, l’œuvre, l’influence (Paris, 1906).
FONTENOY, a village of Belgium, in the province of Hennegau, about 4 m. S.E. of Tournai, famous as the scene of the battle of Fontenoy, in which on the 11th of May 1745 the French army under Marshal Saxe defeated the Anglo-Allied army under the duke of Cumberland. The object of the French (see also [Austrian Succession, War of the]) was to cover the siege of the then important fortress of Tournai, that of the Allies, who slowly advanced from the east, to relieve it. Informed of the impending attack, Louis XV., with the dauphin, came with all speed to witness the operations, and by his presence to give Saxe, who was in bad health and beset with private enemies, the support necessary to enable him to command effectively. Under Cumberland served the Austrian field-marshal Königsegg, and, at the head of the Dutch contingent, the prince of Waldeck.
The right of the French position (see map) rested on the river at Antoing, which village was fortified and garrisoned, between Antoing and Fontenoy three square redoubts were constructed, and Fontenoy itself was put in a complete state of defence. On the left rear of this line, and separated from Fontenoy by some furlongs of open ground, another redoubt was made at the corner of the wood of Barry and a fifth towards Gavrain. The infantry was arrayed in deployed lines behind the Antoing-Fontenoy redoubts and the low ridge between Fontenoy and the wood; behind them was the cavalry. The approaches to Gavrain were guarded by a mounted volunteer corps called Grassins. At Calonne the marshal had constructed three military bridges against the contingency of a forced retreat. The force of the French was about 60,000 of all arms, not including 22,000 left in the lines before Tournai. Marshal Saxe himself, who was suffering from dropsy to such an extent that he was unable to mount his horse, slept in a wicker chariot in the midst of the troops. At early dawn of the 11th of May, the Anglo-Hanoverian army with the Austrian contingent formed up in front of Vézon, facing towards Fontenoy and the wood, while the Dutch on their left extended the general line to Péronne. The total force was 46,000, against about 52,000 whom Saxe could actually put into the line of battle.
The plan of attack arranged by Cumberland, Königsegg and Waldeck on the 10th grew out of circumstances. A preliminary skirmish had cleared the broken ground immediately about Vézon and revealed a part of the defender’s dispositions. It was resolved that the Dutch should attack the front Antoing-Fontenoy, while Cumberland should deliver a flank attack against Fontenoy and all in rear of it, by way of the open ground between Fontenoy and the wood. A great cavalry attack round the wood was projected but had to be given up, as in the late evening of the 10th the Allies’ light cavalry drew fire from its southern edge. Cumberland then ordered his cavalry commander to form a screen facing Fontenoy, so as to cover the formation of the infantry. On the morning of the 11th another and most important modification had to be made. The advance was beginning when the redoubt at the corner of the wood became visible. Cumberland hastily told off Brigadier James Ingoldsby (major and brevet-colonel 1st Guards), with four regiments and an artillery detachment, to storm this redoubt which, crossing its fire with that of Fontenoy, seemed absolutely to inhibit the development of the flank attack. At 6 A.M. the brigade moved off, but it was irresolutely handled and halted time after time; and after waiting as long as possible, the British and Hanoverian cavalry under Sir James Campbell rode forward and extended in the plain, becoming at once the target for a furious cannonade which killed their leader and drove them back. Thereupon Sir John (Lord) Ligonier, whose deployment the squadrons were to have covered, let them pass to the rear, and, hearing the guns of the Dutch towards Antoing, pushed the British infantry forward through the lanes, each unit on reaching open ground covering the exit and deployment of the one in rear, all under the French cannonade. This went on for two hours, and save that it showed the magnificent discipline of the British and Hanoverian regiments, was a bad prelude to the real attack. Cumberland’s own exertions brought a few small guns to the front of the Guards’ Brigade, and one of the first shots from these killed Antoine Louis, duc de Gramont, colonel of the Gardes Françaises, and another Henri du Baraillon du Brocard, Saxe’s artillery commander.
It was now 9 A.M., and while the guns from the wood redoubt battered the upright ranks of the Allies, Ingoldsby’s brigade was huddled together, motionless, on the right. Cumberland himself galloped thither, and under his reproaches Ingoldsby lost the last remnants of self-possession. To Sir John Ligonier’s aide-de-camp, who delivered soon afterwards a bitterly formal order to advance, Ingoldsby sullenly replied that the duke’s orders were for him to advance in line with Ligonier’s main body. By now, too, the Dutch advance against Antoing-Fontenoy had collapsed.
But on the right the cannonade and the blunders together had roused a stern and almost blind anger in the leaders and the men they led. Ingoldsby was wounded, and his successor, the Hanoverian general Zastrow, gave up the right attack and brought his battalions into the main body. A second halfhearted attack on Fontenoy itself, delivered by some Dutch troops, was almost made successful by the valour of two of these battalions (one of them being the then newly raised Highland regiment, the Black Watch) which came thither of their own accord. Meantime the young duke and the old Austrian field-marshal had agreed to take all risks and to storm through between Fontenoy and the wood redoubt, and had launched the great attack, one of the most celebrated in the history of war. The English infantry was in two lines. The Hanoverians on their left, owing to want of space, were compelled to file into third line behind the redcoats, and on their outer flanks were the battalions that had been with Ingoldsby. A few guns, man-drawn, accompanied the assaulting mass, and the cavalry followed. The column may have numbered 14,000 infantry. All the infantry battalions closed on their centre, the normal three ranks becoming six. If the proper distances between lines were preserved, the mass must have formed an oblong about 500 yds × 600 yds (excluding the cavalry).