History.—Guadeloupe was discovered by Columbus in 1493, and received its name in honour of the monastery of S. Maria de Guadalupe at Estremadura in Spain. In 1635 l’Olive and Duplessis took possession of it in the name of the French Company of the Islands of America, and l’Olive exterminated the Caribs with great cruelty. Four chartered companies were ruined in their attempts to colonize the island, and in 1674 it passed into the possession of the French crown and long remained a dependency of Martinique. After unsuccessful attempts in 1666, 1691 and 1703, the British captured the island in 1759, and held it for four years. Guadeloupe was finally separated from Martinique in 1775, but it remained under the governor of the French Windward Islands. In 1782 Rodney defeated the French fleet near the island, and the British again obtained possession in April 1794, but in the following summer they were driven out by Victor Hugues with the assistance of the slaves whom he had liberated for the purpose. In 1802 Bonaparte, then first consul, sent an expedition to the island in order to re-establish slavery, but, after a heroic defence, many of the negroes preferred suicide to submission. During the Hundred Days in 1810, the British once more occupied the island, but, in spite of its cession to Sweden by the treaty of 1813 and a French invasion in 1814, they did not withdraw till 1816. Between 1816 and 1825 the code of laws peculiar to the island was introduced. Municipal institutions were established in 1837; and slavery was finally abolished in 1848.
GUADET, MARGUERITE ÉLIE (1758-1794), French Revolutionist, was born at St Émilion near Bordeaux on the 20th of July 1758. When the Revolution broke out he had already gained a reputation as a brilliant advocate at Bordeaux. In 1790 he was made administrator of the Gironde and in 1791 president of the criminal tribunal. In this year he was elected to the Legislative Assembly as one of the brilliant group of deputies known subsequently as Girondins or Girondists. As a supporter of the constitution of 1791 he joined the Jacobin club, and here and in the Assembly became an eloquent advocate of all the measures directed against real or supposed traitors to the constitution. He bitterly attacked the ministers of Louis XVI., and was largely instrumental in forcing the king to accept the Girondist ministry of the 15th of March 1792. He was an ardent advocate of the policy of forcing Louis XVI. into harmony with the Revolution; moved (May 3) for the dismissal of the king’s non-juring confessor, for the banishment of all non-juring priests (May 16), for the disbandment of the royal guard (May 30), and the formation in Paris of a camp of fédérés (June 4). He remained a royalist, however, and with Gensonné and Vergniaud even addressed a letter to the king soliciting a private interview. Whatever negotiations may have resulted, however, were cut short by the insurrection of the 10th of August. Guadet, who presided over the Assembly during part of this fateful day, put himself into vigorous opposition to the insurrectionary Commune of Paris, and it was on his motion that on the 30th of August the Assembly voted its dissolution—a decision reversed on the following day. In September Guadet was returned by a large majority as deputy to the Convention. At the trial of Louis XVI. he voted for an appeal to the people and for the death sentence, but with a respite pending appeal. In March 1793 he had several conferences with Danton, who was anxious to bring about a rapprochement between the Girondists and the Mountain during the war in La Vendée, but he unconditionally refused to join hands with the man whom he held responsible for the massacres of September. Involved in the fall of the Girondists, and his arrest being decreed on the 2nd of June 1793, he fled to Caen, and afterwards hid in his father’s house at St Émilion. He was discovered and taken to Bordeaux, where, after his identity had been established, he was guillotined on the 17th of June 1794.
See J. Guadet, Les Girondins (Paris, 1889); and F. A. Aulard, Les Orateurs de la législative et de la convention (Paris, 2nd ed., 1906).
GUADIANA (anc. Anas, Moorish Wadi Ana), a river of Spain and Portugal. The Guadiana was long believed to rise in the lowland known as the Campo de Montiel, where a chain of small lakes, the Lagunas de Ruidera (partly in Ciudad Real, partly in Albacete), are linked together by the Guadiana Alto or Upper Guadiana. This stream flows north-westward from the last lake and vanishes underground within 3 m. of the river Zancara or Giguela. About 22 m. S.W. of the point of disappearance, the Guadiana Alto was believed to re-emerge in the form of several large springs, which form numerous lakes near the Zancara and are known as the “eyes of the Guadiana” (los ojos de Guadiana). The stream which connects them with the Zancara is called the Guadiana Bajo or Lower Guadiana. It is now known that the Guadiana Alto has no such course, but flows underground to the Zancara itself, which is the true “Upper Guadiana.” The Zancara rises near the source of the Júcar, in the east of the tableland of La Mancha; thence it flows westward, assuming the name of Guadiana near Ciudad Real, and reaching the Portuguese frontier 6 m. S.W. of Badajoz. In piercing the Sierra Morena it forms a series of foaming rapids, and only begins to be navigable at Mertola, 42 m. from its mouth. From the neighbourhood of Badajoz it forms the boundary between Spain and Portugal as far as a point near Monsaraz, where it receives the small river Priega Muñoz on the left, and passes into Portuguese territory, with a southerly direction. At Pomarão it again becomes a frontier stream and forms a broad estuary 25 m. long. It enters the Gulf of Cadiz between the Portuguese town of Villa Real de Santo Antonio and the Spanish Ayamonte, after a total course of 510 m. Its mouth is divided by sandbanks into many channels. The Guadiana drains an area of 31,940 sq. m. Its principal tributaries are the Zujar, Jabalón, Matachel and Ardila from the left; the Bullaque, Ruecas, Botoa, Degebe and Cobres from the right.
The Guadiana Menor (or Guadianamenor, i.e. “Lesser Guadiana”) rises in the Sierra Nevada, receives two large tributaries, the Fardes from the right and Barbata from the left, and enters the Guadalquivir near Ubeda, after a course of 95 m.
GUADIX, a city of southern Spain, in the province of Granada; on the left bank of the river Guadix, a subtributary of the Guadiana Menor, and on the Madrid-Valdepeñas-Almería railway. Pop. (1900) 12,652. Guadix occupies part of an elevated plateau among the northern foothills of the Sierra Nevada. It is surrounded by ancient walls, and was formerly dominated by a Moorish castle, now in ruins. It is an episcopal see of great antiquity, but its cathedral, built in the 18th century on the site of a mosque, possesses little architectural merit. The city was once famous for its cutlery; but its modern manufactures (chiefly earthenware, hempen goods, and hats) are inconsiderable. It has some trade in wool, cotton, flax, corn and liqueurs. The warm mineral springs of Graena, much frequented during the summer, are 6 m. W. Guadix el Viejo, 5 m. N.W., was the Roman Acci, and, according to tradition, the seat of the first Iberian bishopric, in the 2nd century. After 711 it rose to some importance as a Moorish fortress and trading station, and was renamed Wad Ash, “Water of Life.” It was surrendered without a siege to the Spaniards, under Ferdinand and Isabella, in 1489.