(E. C. Sp.)
GLACIS, in military engineering (see [Fortification and Siegecraft]), an artificial slope of earth in the front of works, so constructed as to keep an assailant under the fire of the defenders to the last possible moment. On the natural ground-level, troops attacking any high work would be sheltered from its fire when close up to it; the ground therefore is raised to form a glacis, which is swept by the fire of the parapet. More generally, the term is used to denote any slope, natural or artificial, which fulfils the above requirements.
GLADBACH, the name of two towns in Germany distinguished as Bergisch-Gladbach and München-Gladbach.
1. Bergisch-Gladbach is in Rhenish Prussia, 8 m. N.E. of Cologne by rail. Pop. (1905) 13,410. It possesses four large paper mills and among its other industries are paste-board, powder, percussion caps, nets and machinery. Ironstone, peat and lime are found in the vicinity. The town has four Roman Catholic churches and one Protestant. The Stundenthalshöhe, a popular resort, is in the neighbourhood, and near Gladbach is Altenberg, with a remarkably fine church, built for the Cistercian abbey at this place.
2. München-Gladbach, also in Rhenish Prussia, 16 m. W.S.W. of Düsseldorf on the main line of railway to Aix-la-Chapelle. Pop. (1885) 44,230; (1905) 60,714. It is one of the chief manufacturing places in Rhenish Prussia, its principal industries being the spinning and weaving of cotton, the manufacture of silks, velvet, ribbon and damasks, and dyeing and bleaching. There are also tanneries, tobacco manufactories, machine works and foundries. The town possesses a fine park and has statues of the emperor William I. and of Prince Bismarck. There are ten Roman Catholic churches here, among them being the beautiful minster, with a Gothic choir dating from 1250, a nave dating from the beginning of the 13th century and a crypt of the 8th century. The town has two hospitals, several schools, and is the headquarters of important insurance societies. Gladbach existed before the time of Charlemagne, and a Benedictine monastery was founded near it in 793. It was thus called München-Gladbach or Monks’ Gladbach, to distinguish it from another town of the same name. The monastery was suppressed in 1802. It became a town in 1336; weaving was introduced here towards the end of the 18th century, and having belonged for a long time to the duchy of Juliers it came into the possession of Prussia in 1815.
See Strauss, Geschichte der Stadt München-Gladbach (1895); and G. Eckertz, Das Verbrüderungs und Todtenbuch der Abtei Gladbach (1881).
GLADDEN, WASHINGTON (1836- ), American Congregational divine, was born in Pottsgrove, Pennsylvania, on the 11th of February 1836. He graduated at Williams College in 1859, preached in churches in Brooklyn, Morrisania (New York City), North Adams, Massachusetts, and Springfield, Massachusetts, and in 1882 became pastor of the First Congregational Church of Columbus, Ohio. He was an editor of the Independent in 1871-1875, and a frequent contributor to it and other periodicals. He consistently and earnestly urged in pulpit and press the need of personal, civil and, particularly, social righteousness, and in 1900-1902 was a member of the city council of Columbus. Among his many publications, which include sermons, occasional addresses, &c., are: Plain Thoughts on the Art of Living (1868); Workingmen and their Employers (1876); The Christian Way (1877); Things New and Old (1884); Applied Christianity (1887); Tools and the Man—Property and Industry under the Christian Law (1893); The Church and the Kingdom (1894), arguing against a confusion and misuse of these two terms; Seven Puzzling Bible Books (1897); How much is Left of the Old Doctrines (1899); Social Salvation (1901); Witnesses of the Light (1903); the William Belden Noble Lectures (Harvard), being addresses on Dante, Michelangelo, Fichte, Hugo, Wagner and Ruskin; The New Idolatry (1905); Christianity and Socialism (1906), and The Church and Modern Life (1908). In 1909 he published his Recollections.