The duke of Cumberland placed himself at the head of the front line and gave the signal to advance. Slowly and in parade order, drums beating and colours flying, the mass advanced, straight up the gentle slope, which was swept everywhere by the flanking artillery of the defence. Then, when the first line reached the low crest on the ends of which stood the French artillery, the fire, hitherto convergent, became a full enfilade from both sides, and at the same moment the enemy’s horse and foot became visible beyond. A brief pause ensued, and the front gradually contracted as regiments shouldered inwards to avoid the fire. Then the French advanced, and the Guards Brigade and the Gardes Françaises met face to face. Captain Lord Charles Hay (d. 1760), lieutenant of the First (Grenadier) Guards, suddenly ran in front of the line, took off his hat to the enemy and drank to them from a pocket flask, shouting a taunt, “We hope you will stand till we come up to you, and not swim the river as you did at Dettingen,” then, turning to his own men, he called for three cheers. The astonished French officers returned the salute and gave a ragged counter-cheer. Whether or not the French, as legend states, were asked and refused to fire first, the whole British line fired one tremendous series of volleys by companies. 50 officers and 760 men of the three foremost French regiments fell at once, and at so appalling a loss the remnant broke and fled. Three hundred paces farther on stood the second line of the French, and slowly the mass advanced, firing regular volleys. It was now well inside the French position, and no longer felt the enfilade fire that swept the crest it had passed over. By now, as the rear lines closed up, the assailants were practically in square and repelled various partial attacks coming from all sides. The Régiment du Roi lost 33 officers and 345 men at the hands of the Second (Coldstream) Guards. But these counter-attacks gained a few precious minutes for the French. It was the crisis of the battle. The king, though the court meditated flight, stood steady with the dauphin at his side,—Fontenoy was the one great day of Louis XV.’s life,—and Saxe, ill as he was, mounted his horse to collect his cavalry for a charge. The British and Hanoverians were now at a standstill. More and heavier counter-strokes were repulsed, but no progress was made; their cavalry was unable to get to the front, and Saxe was by now thinking of victory. Captain Isnard of the Touraine regiment suggested artillery to batter the face of the square, preparatory to a final charge. General Löwendahl galloped up to Saxe, crying, “This is a great day for the king; they will never escape!” The nearest guns were planted in front of the assailants, and used with effect. The infantry, led by Löwendahl, fastened itself on the sides of the square, the regiments of Normandy and Vaisseaux and the Irish Brigade conspicuous above the rest. On the front, waiting for the cannon to do its work, were the Maison du Roi, the Gendarmerie and all the light cavalry, under Saxe himself, the duke of Richelieu and count d’Estrées. The left wing of the Allies was still inactive, and troops were brought up from Antoing and Fontenoy to support the final blow. About 2 P.M. it was delivered, and in eight minutes the square was broken. As the infantry retired across the plain in small stubborn groups the French fire still made havoc in their ranks, but all attempts to close with them were repulsed by the terrible volleys, and they regained the broken ground about Vézon, whence they had come. Cumberland himself and all the senior generals remained with the rearguard.
The losses at Fontenoy were, as might be expected, somewhat less than normally heavy when distributed over the whole of both armies, but exceedingly severe in the units really engaged. Eight out of nineteen regiments of British infantry lost over 200 men, two of these more than 300. A tribute to the loyalty and discipline of the British, as compared with the generality of armies in those days, may be found in the fact that the three Guards’ regiments had no “missing” men whatever. The 23rd (Royal Welsh Fusiliers) had 322 casualties. Böschlanger’s Hanoverian regiment suffered even more heavily, and four others of that nation had 200 or more casualties. The total loss was about 7500, that of the French 7200. The French “Royal” regiment lost 30 officers and 645 men; some other regimental casualties have been mentioned above. The Dutch lost a bare 7% of their strength.
Fontenoy was in the 18th century what the attack of the Prussian Guards at St Privat is to-day, a locus classicus for military theorists. But the technical features of the battle are completely overshadowed by its epic interest, and above all it illustrates the permanent and unchangeable military characteristics of the British and French nations.
FONTEVRAULT, or Fontevraud (Lat. Fons Ebraldi), a town of western France, in the department of Maine-et-Loire, 10 m. S.E. of Saumur by road and 2½ m. from the confluence of the Loire and Vienne. Pop. (1906) 1279. It is situated in the midst of the forest of Fontevrault. The interest of the place centres in its abbey, which since 1804 has been utilized and abused as a central house of detention for convicts. The church (12th century), of which only the choir and apse are appropriated to divine service, has a beautiful nave formerly covered by four cupolas destroyed in 1816. There is a fifth cupola above the crossing. In a chapel in the south transept are the effigies of Henry II. of England, of his wife Eleanor of Guienne, of Richard I. of England and of Isabella of Angoulême, wife of John of England—Eleanor’s being of oak and the rest of stone. The cloister, refectory and chapter-house date from the 16th century. The second court of the abbey contains a remarkable building, the Tour d’Évrault (12th century), which long went under the misnomer of chapelle funéraire, but was in reality the old kitchen. Details and diagrams will be found in Viollet-le-Duc’s Dictionnaire de l’architecture. There are three stories, the whole being surmounted by a pyramidal structure.
The Order of Fontevrault was founded about 1100 by Robert of Arbrissel, who was born in the village of Arbrissel or Arbresec, in the diocese of Rennes, and attained great fame as a preacher and ascetic. The establishment was a double monastery, containing a nunnery of 300 nuns and a monastery of 200 monks, separated completely so that no communication was allowed except in the church, where the services were carried on in common; there were, moreover, a hospital for 120 lepers and other sick, and a penitentiary for fallen women, both worked by the nuns. The basis of the life was the Benedictine rule, but the observance of abstinence and silence went beyond it in stringency. The special feature of the institute was that the abbess ruled the monks as well as the nuns. At the beginning the order had a great vogue, and at the time of Robert’s death, 1117, there were several monasteries and 3000 nuns; afterwards the number of monasteries reached 57, all organized on the same plan. The institute never throve out of France; there were attempts to introduce it into Spain and England: in England there were three houses—at Ambresbury (Amesbury in Wiltshire), Nuneaton, and Westwood in Worcestershire. The nuns in England as in France were recruited from the highest families, and the abbess of Fontevrault, who was the superior-general of the whole order, was usually of the royal family of France.
See P. Hélyot, Hist, des ordres religieuses (1718), vi. cc. 12, 13; Max Heimbucher, Orden und Kongregationen (1907), i. 46; the arts. “Fontevrauld” in Wetzer and Welte, Kirchenlexicon (ed. 2), and in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie (ed. 3), supply full references to the literature. The most recent monograph is Édouard, Fontevrault et ses monuments (1875); for the later history see art. by Edmund Bishop in Downside Review (1886).
(E. C. B.)
FOOD (like the verb “to feed,” from a Teutonic root, whence O. Eng. foda; cf. “fodder”; connected with Gr. πατεῖσθαι, to feed), the general term for what is eaten by man and other creatures for the sustenance of life. The scientific aspect of human food is dealt with under [Nutrition] and [Dietetics].