GUICHEN, LUC URBAIN DE BOUËXIC, Comte de (1712-1790), French admiral, entered the navy in 1730 as “garde de la Marine,” the first rank in the corps of royal officers. His promotion was not rapid. It was not till 1748 that he became “lieutenant de vaisseau,” which was, however, a somewhat higher rank than the lieutenant in the British navy, since it carried with it the right to command a frigate. He was “capitaine de vaisseau,” or post captain, in 1756. But his reputation must have been good, for he was made chevalier de Saint Louis in 1748. In 1775 he was appointed to the frigate “Terpsichore,” attached to the training squadron, in which the duc de Chartres, afterwards notorious as the duc d’Orléans and as Philippe Égalité, was entered as volunteer. In the next year he was promoted chef d’escadre, or rear-admiral. When France had become the ally of the Americans in the War of Independence, he hoisted his flag in the Channel fleet, and was present at the battle of Ushant on the 27th of July 1779. In March of the following year he was sent to the West Indies with a strong squadron and was there opposed to Sir George Rodney. In the first meeting between them on the 17th of April to leeward of Martinique, Guichen escaped disaster only through the clumsy manner in which Sir George’s orders were executed by his captains. Seeing that he had to deal with a formidable opponent, Guichen acted with extreme caution, and by keeping the weather gauge afforded the British admiral no chance of bringing him to close action. When the hurricane months approached (July to September) he left the West Indies, and his squadron, being in a bad state from want of repairs, returned home, reaching Brest in September. Throughout all this campaign Guichen had shown himself very skilful in handling a fleet, and if he had not gained any marked success, he had prevented the British admiral from doing any harm to the French islands in the Antilles. In December 1781 the comte de Guichen was chosen to command the force which was entrusted with the duty of carrying stores and reinforcements to the West Indies. On the 12th Admiral Kempenfelt, who had been sent out by the British Government with an unduly weak force to intercept him, sighted the French admiral in the Bay of Biscay through a temporary clearance in a fog, at a moment when Guichen’s warships were to leeward of the convoy, and attacked the transports at once. The French admiral could not prevent his enemy from capturing twenty of the transports, and driving the others into a panic-stricken flight. They returned to port, and the mission entrusted to Guichen was entirely defeated. He therefore returned to port also. He had no opportunity to gain any counterbalancing success during the short remainder of the war, but he was present at the final relief of Gibraltar by Lord Howe. His death occurred on the 13th of January 1790. The comte de Guichen was, by the testimony of his contemporaries, a most accomplished and high-minded gentleman. It is probable that he had more scientific knowledge than any of his English contemporaries and opponents. But as a commander in war he was notable chiefly for his skill in directing the orderly movements of a fleet, and seems to have been satisfied with formal operations, which were possibly elegant but could lead to no substantial result. He had none of the combative instincts of his countryman Suffren, or of the average British admiral.
See vicomte de Noailles, Marins et soldats français en Amérique (1903); and E. Chevalier, Histoire de la marine française pendant la guerre de l’indépendence américaine (1877).
(D. H.)
GUIDE (in Mid. Eng. gyde, from the Fr. guide; the earlier French form was guie, English “guy,” the d was due to the Italian form guida; the ultimate origin is probably Teutonic, the word being connected with the base seen in O. Eng. witan, to know), an agency for directing or showing the way, specifically a person who leads or directs a stranger over unknown or unmapped country, or conducts travellers and tourists through a town, or over buildings of interest. In European wars up to the time of the French Revolution, the absence of large scale detailed maps made local guides almost essential to the direction of military operations, and in the 18th century the general tendency to the stricter organization of military resources led in various countries to the special training of guide officers (called Feldjäger, and considered as general staff officers in the Prussian army), whose chief duty it was to find, and if necessary establish, routes across country for those parts of the army that had to move parallel to the main road and as nearly as possible at deploying interval from each other, for in those days armies were rarely spread out so far as to have the use of two or more made roads. But the necessity for such precautions died away when adequate surveys (in which guide officers were, at any rate in Prussia, freely employed) were carried out, and, as a definite term of military organization to-day, “guide” possesses no more essential peculiarity than fusilier, grenadier or rifleman. The genesis of the modern “Guide” regiments is perhaps to be found in a short-lived Corps of Guides formed by Napoleon in Italy in 1796, which appears to have been a personal escort or body guard composed of men who knew the country. In the Belgian army of to-day the Guide regiments correspond almost to the Guard cavalry of other nations; in the Swiss army the squadrons of “Guides” act as divisional cavalry, and in this role doubtless are called upon on occasion to lead columns. The “Queen’s own Corps of Guides” of the Indian army consists of infantry companies and cavalry squadrons. In drill, a “guide” is an officer or non-commissioned officer told off to regulate the direction and pace of movements, the remainder of the unit maintaining their alignment and distances by him.
A particular class of guides are those employed in mountaineering; these are not merely to show the way but stand in the position of professional climbers with an expert knowledge of rock and snowcraft, which they impart to the amateur, at the same time assuring the safety of the climbing party in dangerous expeditions. This professional class of guides arose in the middle of the 19th century when Alpine climbing became recognized as a sport (see [Mountaineering]). It is thus natural to find that the Alpine guides have been requisitioned for mountaineering expeditions all over the world. In climbing in Switzerland, the central committee of the Swiss Alpine Club issues a guides’ tariff which fixes the charges for guides and porters; there are three sections, for the Valais and Vaudois Alps, for the Bernese Oberland, and for central and eastern Switzerland. The names of many of the great guides have become historical. In Chamonix a statue has been raised to Jacques Balmat, who was the first to climb Mont Blanc in 1786. Of the more famous guides since the beginning of Alpine climbing may be mentioned Auguste Balmat, Michel Cros, Maquignay, J. A. Carrel, who went with E. Whymper to the Andes, the brothers Lauener, Christian Almer and Jakob and Melchior Anderegg.
“Guide” is also applied to a book, in the sense of an elementary primer on some subject, or of one giving full information for travellers of a country, district or town. In mechanical usage, the term “guide” is of wide application, being used of anything which steadies or directs the motion of an object, as of the “leading” screw of a screw-cutting lathe, of a loose pulley used to steady a driving-belt, or of the bars or rods in a steam-engine which keep the sliding blocks moving in a straight line. The doublet “guy” is thus used of a rope which steadies a sail when it is being raised or lowered, or of a rope, chain or stay supporting a funnel, mast, derrick, &c.