Ibrahim

A mufti or imam present when Napoleon visited the Great Pyramid in 1798.

BkXIX:Chap14:Sec3 Mentioned.

 

Ibrahim, a Mameluke

A Mameluke.

BkXIX:Chap18:Sec1 Executed after the fall of Jaffa in 1799.

 

Ibrahim Pasha

1789-1848. An Ottoman general, he was the son or adopted son of Mehemet Ali, Viceroy of Egypt, commanding his father’s army. He occupied Syria in 1833, becoming Governor General, until forced to withdraw by the European Powers. His modernizing policies were opposed. He succeeded his infirm father as Viceroy of Egypt in 1848 but died after only 40 days in office.

BkXVIII:Chap4Sec1 Having occupied Syria (Convention of Kutaya, 1833) he had defeated a Turkish army at Nezib in 1839.

BkXXIX:Chap12:Sec1 In 1827-8 he suppressed the first Greek insurrection in the Sultan’s name.

 

Ida, Mount, Crete

One classical Mount Ida is near Troy. There is a second Mount Ida on Crete mentioned here.

BkXIX:Chap14:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Ignace de Loyola, Saint Ignatius de Loyola

1491-1556. A Spanish churchman, he was founder of the Jesuits. Although the Jesuits became a major force in the Counter Reformation, the society was not founded particularly for that purpose. Ignatius’ great interests seem to have been foreign missions and the education of youth. Many schools were opened in Europe during his lifetime, and missions were begun in Japan, India, and Brazil. His concept of the ‘soldier of Christ’ has often been understood too militaristically: he used the image in obvious imitation of St. Paul (Eph. 6.10–17).

BkXX:Chap7:Sec2 His sword, an attribute.

 

Imola, Italy

The town in Emilia-Romagna, in northern central Italy, on the Aemilian Way was a Roman town (Forum Cornelii), which later (11th cent.) became a free commune. The city was subsequently ruled by tyrants (including the Visconti and the Sforza) until it passed to the Papacy in the early 16th cent.

BkXXII:Chap8:Sec1 Pius VII passed through on his way back to Italy in 1814.

 

Inconstant, ship

A French brig of 300 tons and 18 guns, it formed the main ship in the Elban navy.

BkXXIII:Chap1:Sec1 Carried Napoleon from Elba on his return, with 900 or so men.

 

Indus

The Indus is one of the largest rivers in the world. From its source in the Himalayas to its delta near modern Karachi, it is 3190 kilometers long. It passes through Jammu and Kashmir, along the Punjab, and through the southern part of Pakistan that is now known as Sind.

BkXXIV:Chap7:Sec1 Alexander was on the Indus in 326BC.

 

Infernal Machine, The Plot of the Rue Saint Nicaise

The plot of the Rue Saint-Nicaise, also known as the Machine infernale was an assassination attempt on the life of the First Consul, Napoleon Bonaparte, in Paris on 24 December 1800. It followed the conspiration des poignards of 10 October 1800, and was one of many Royalist and Catholic plots. The name of the plot was a reference to a sixteenth-century revolt against Spanish rule in Flanders. In 1585, during the siege of Antwerp by the Spaniards, an Italian engineer in Spanish service had made an explosive device from a barrel bound with iron hoops, filled with gunpowder, flammable materials and bullets, and set off by a sawed-off shotgun triggered from a distance by a string. The Italian engineer called it la macchina infernale. Cadoudal and Limoëlan were both involved in the attempt in 1800.

BkXXIV:Chap10:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Ingolstadt

Ingolstadt, Germany, lies on the Danube and Schutter Rivers, 45 miles north of Munich and 30 miles south of Regensburg.

BkXXXVI:Chap8:Sec1 Chateaubriand there in 1833.

 

Inn, River

The Inn flows through Switzerland, Austria and Germany. It is a tributary of the Danube, with 517 km in length. Its lower reaches form the border between Germany (Bavaria) and Austria (Upper Austria).

BkXX:Chap5:Sec1 Mentioned.

BkXX:Chap10:Sec1 Braunau am Inn, Austria, on the south bank of the Inn, is where Hitler was born.

 

Innocent X, Giovanna Batista Pamphili

1574-1655. Pope from 1644.

BkXXX:Chap2:Sec2 Mentioned.

 

Invalides

In 1670, Louis XIV founded Les Invalides near what was then the Grenelle Plain. An old soldiers home, it was funded by a five year levy on the salaries of soldiers currently serving in the army at that time. The first stones were laid in 1671, for what was to become a complex providing quarters for 4,000. Construction followed plans drawn up by Libéral Bruant, and was completed in 1676. The Esplanade was laid out by Robert de Cotte. Construction of the dome began in 1706. Designed by Jules Hardouin-Mansart and completed by de Cotte after Mansart died in 1708. Many of the arms used by the mob when it attacked the Bastille on 14 July 1789 were taken from Les Invalides on the morning of that day. Despite resistance by the posted sentries, they were overwhelmed by the mob which finally entered the underground rifle storehouse. Roughly 28,000 arms were taken. The most significant event in the history of Les Invalides however, is unquestionably the return of the body of Napoléon in 1840. After seven years of negotiation with the British government, Louis-Philippe, King of France, obtained permission to repatriate the Emperor's remains from St. Helena. On 8 October 1840 - 19 years after the death of the Emperor - the coffin was exhumed and opened for two minutes before transport to France aboard the frigate La Belle Poule. Those present claim that the body remained in a state of perfect preservation. After arriving at Le Havre, it was brought up the Seine and landed at Paris at Courbevoie. On 15 December 1840 a state funeral was held, and despite a winter snowstorm, the hearse proceeded from the Arc de Triomphe down the Champs-Elysées, across the Place de la Concorde to the Esplanade and finally to the cupola in St Jerome's Chapel until the tomb - designed by Visconti - was completed. On 3 April 1861 Napoléon I came to his final rest in the crypt under the dome.

BkV:Chap8:Sec2 The weapons taken from it in July 1789.

BkVI:Chap2:Sec2 Mentioned. The moat used for the pensioners’ garden plots.

BkXIV:Chap7:Sec1 BkXVIII:Chap5:Sec2 BkXXI:Chap4:Sec4

BkXXXII:Chap3:Sec1 BkXXXV:Chap20:Sec1 Mentioned.

BkXX:Chap2:Sec2 Turenne’s remains transferred there by Napoleon 22nd September 1800.

BkXXII:Chap13:Sec1 Visited by Alexander I in 1814.

BkXXIII:Chap18:Sec1 Its guns fired a salute to the victories on the day prior to Waterloo.

BkXLII:Chap18:Sec1 Chateaubriand’s last residence (1838-1848) at 112 Rue du Bac was due east of, and not far from, the Invalides. He would have been able to see the full moon in this position on several nights during his residence there. However see the note under Chateaubriand.

 

Iphigénie, Iphigenia

The daughter of Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, and Clytaemnestra, she was sacrificed by her father at Aulis, to gain favourable winds for the passage to Troy but snatched away by Artemis to Tauris. She is the heroine of the play of that name by Racine.

BkXIII:Chap9:Sec1 BkXLII:Chap2:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Irenée, Saint

c130-177. Martyred in Lyons.

BkXVII:Chap4:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Iron Mask, Eustace Dauger, The Man in the

d.1703. Buried under the name Marchioly, he was a State prisoner held in a number of prisons, including ultimately the Bastille, during the reign of Louis XIV, his face supposedly covered by a black velvet mask. Immortalised by Dumas in the Vicomte de Bragelonne.

BkXIX:Chap1:Sec1 Napoleon was said (in a tale spread by his supporters in 1801) to be descended from this prisoner who was said to be the real Louis XIV who had been supplanted by a twin brother.

BkXXIV:Chap17:Sec1 Supposedly imprisoned in the Lérin Isles.

 

Iroquois

The Iroquois Indians lived in what is now New York State along the St. Lawrence River. The Iroquois Indians were known as the ‘Five Civilized Tribes’. These tribes included the Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, and Seneca. At their height around 1680 they occupied territory as far south-west as the Mississippi and as far north as Ontario. Siding with the British they were mostly driven north into Canada, though remnants of the Iroquois Nation remained in the United States.

BkVII:Chap2:Sec1 The first Indians Chateaubriand encountered were Iroquois.

BkVII:Chap4:Sec1 BkVII:Chap5:Sec1 He visits a camp of the Onondagas.

BkVII:Chap6:Sec1 Iroquois huts contrasted with settler cabins.

BkVIII:Chap1:Sec1 Their dominance of the Lake Erie region.

BkIX:Chap10:Sec1 Their smoky camp fires.

 

Irus

He is a beggar in the Odyssey.

BkXL:Chap5:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Irving, Washington

1783-1859. An American short-story writer and historian, he lived in Europe from 1815 to 1832 where he wrote The Sketch Book (1819-1820) which contains his best tales: Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. He also wrote a biography of Washington (1855-1859).

BkVIII:Chap5:Sec3 His stay in Europe.

 

Isabelle (Isabeau, Isabella) of Bavaria

c1370-1435. She was the widow of Charles VI of France and Regent of the Kingdom until 1422, who signed the Treaty of Troyes in 1420, whereby her daughter Catherine de Valois married Henry V of England. The English title to the French throne was subsequently overturned, but she remains a villainess of French history.

BkXXXVIII:Chap6:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Isabelle de Hainaut

1170-1190. Queen consort of France, Isabelle was born in Lille, the daughter of Baldwin V, Count of Hainaut and Countess Margaret I of Flanders. She married King Philip II of France and brought as her dowry the county of Artois. Isabella was crowned consort of France at Saint Denis on May 28, 1180. As Baldwin V claimed to be a descendant of Charlemagne, the chroniclers of the time saw in this marriage a union of the Carolingian and Capetian dynasties. She died in childbirth.

BkXX:Chap10:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Isabey, Jean-Baptiste

1767-1855. French portrait painter and miniaturist, he was a pupil of J. L. David and was greatly influenced by Fragonard. His portraits are graceful and strongly individualized. Isabey prospered under all the changing regimes, portraying in turn Marie Antoinette, Mirabeau, David, Napoleon (Versailles), Josephine (National Gallery, London), and Louis Philippe. He was one of the first painters to make lithographs.

BkXXIV:Chap10:Sec1 Mentioned as a painter of Napoleon.

 

Isaiah

The book of Isaiah in the Bible was written probably between 735 and 701BC by a man of high rank. He warned the Hebrews of the impending Assyrian invasion, and called them to true worship.

BkIV:Chap2:Sec2 An echo here of Isaiah 66:12-13.

BkVI:Chap5:Sec1 Chateaubriand refers to Isaiah 24:20 ‘The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard’

BkXV:Chap2:Sec1 Lucile refers to Isaiah 22:17-18 quoted from the Vulgate.

BkXIX:Chap16:Sec2 A reference to Isaiah 56:10

BkXXIV:Chap5:Sec1 As a prophet of disaster.

 

Ischia, Italy

A volcanic island at the northern end of the Bay of Naples, Virgil called it Inarime, the Romans usually called it Aenaria, or Oenaria, the name that Chateaubriand uses here.

BkXXIX:Chap1:Sec3 Mentioned.

 

Ismen

The magician charged with defending Jerusalem against the Crusaders in Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered (XVIII).

BkIII:Chap9:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Isnard, Maximin

1758-1825. French revolutionary, was a dealer in perfumery at Draguignan when he was elected deputy for the départment of the Var to the Legislative Assembly, where he joined the Girondists. Attacking the court, and the Austrian committee in the Tuileries, he demanded the disbandment of the king's bodyguard, and reproached Louis XVI for disloyalty to the constitution. After August 10, 1792 he was sent to the army of the North to justify the insurrection. Re-elected to the Convention, he voted for the death of Louis XVI and was a member of the Committee of General Defence when it was organized on January 4, 1793. The committee, consisting of 25 members, proved unwieldy, and on April 4, Isnard presented, on behalf of the Girondist majority, the report recommending a smaller committee of nine, which two days later was established as the Committee of Public Safety. On October 3 1793, his arrest was decreed along with that of several other Girondist deputies who had left the Convention and were fomenting civil war in the departments. He escaped, and on March 8, 1795 was recalled to the Convention, where he supported all the measures of reaction. He was elected deputy for the Var to the Council of Five Hundred, where he played a very insignificant role. In 1797 he retired to Draguignan. In 1800 he published a pamphlet De l'immortalité de l'âme, in which he praised Catholicism; in 1804 Réflexions relatives au sénatus-consulte du 28 floréal an XII, which is an enthusiastic apology for the Empire. Upon the restoration he professed such royalist sentiments that he was not troubled, in spite of the law of 1816 proscribing regicide ex-members of the Convention.

BkIX:Chap3:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Isoard, Joachim-Xavier, Cardinal

1766-1839. A Cardinal from 1827, Archbishop of Auch, he was made a Duke in 1829.

BkXXX:Chap4:Sec1 He enters the Conclave of 1829.

 

Isotta Nogarola

1417-1461/8. Isotta Nogorola was a learned female humanist, mainly active 1436-1438. Because of her education and eloquence her chastity was attacked and she was forced to live in seclusion in Verona. She wrote to Ludovico Foscarini a Venetian nobleman and humanist, between 1451 and 1453. In letters they debated whether Adam or Eve was more sinful.

BkXL:Chap5:Sec1 Her dialogue in Latin on Adam and Eve’s respective responsibility for original sin, which was frequently copied.

 

Istria, Duc de, see Bessières

 

Ithaca

The Greek island in the Ionian Sea was the home of Odysseus according to Homer.  It is an independent municipality of the prefecture of Kefalonia, and lies off its north east coast.

BkXXXVI:Chap11:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Ithome, Mount

A mountain of the south-western Peloponnese, north of Messene,
it served as a refuge to Helots in the rebellion against Sparta of 464BC. When, about a century later, Epaminondas, the Theban general, after his victory over Sparta at Leuctra (371) freed the Messenian Helots from Sparta’s dominion, it is at the foot of Mount Ithome that they built their capital city, Messene.

BkXVIII:Chap6:Sec1 Referred to in Les Martyrs, Book XIII.

 

Itinéraire de Paris à Jerusalem

A travel book by Chateaubriand, published in February 1811, documenting his Voyage to the East in 1806.

BkVII:Chap7:Sec1 BkXVIII:Chap1:Sec1 BkXIX:Chap14:Sec3

BkXXXIX:Chap21:Sec1 BkXXXIX:Chap21:Sec1 BkXL:Chap2:Sec4

Chateaubriand quotes from the work.

BkXII:Chap4:Sec2 BkXVIII:Chap3Sec4 BkXVIII:Chap8:Sec2

BkXXXV:Chap11:Sec1 BkXXXVIII:Chap7:Sec1 BkXXXIX:Chap20:Sec1

Mentioned.

BkXVIII:Chap8:Sec1 Its publication.

BkXXVIII:Chap9:Sec1 The Note on Greece was published as a 48 page pamphlet by Le Normant in July 1825, then in a 120 page second edition in December, finally as a hundred and thirty page prelude to his Itinerary in 1826.

 

Ivan

He is Emperor of Russia in Voltaire’s Candide.

 

Ivan the Great, Ivan III

1440-1505. Grand duke of Moscow (1462–1505), he was the creator of the consolidated Muscovite (Russian) state. He subjugated (1478) Great Novgorod, asserted his sway over Vyatka, Tver, Yaroslavl, Rostov-Suzdal, and other territories, and checked the eastward expansion of Lithuania, from which he gained some former Russian lands.

BkXXI:Chap4:Sec4 BkXXI:Chap7:Sec1 His bell-tower rises above the Kremlin and was surmounted by a seven-metre cross. The tower survived Napoleon’s instructions for the Kremlin to be destroyed.

 

Ives, Reverend John Clement

1744-1812. Vicar of Bungay, he was a missionary in America, before marrying. He was named to the neighbouring parish of St Margaret at Ilketshall, at the start of 1794.

BkX:Chap9:Sec1 A Hellenist and mathematician. Chateaubriand visited frequently.

BkX:Chap9:Sec2 Assumed Chateaubriand might marry his daughter, Charlotte.

 

Ives, née Sarah Williams, Mrs

Died 1822. Wife of John Clement Ives.

BkX:Chap9:Sec1 Mentioned.

BkX:Chap9:Sec2 BkX:Chap11:Sec1 BkXI:Chap1:Sec1 Assumed Chateaubriand might marry her daughter, Charlotte.

 

Ives, Charlotte, see Sutton, Lady

 

Ivry

The Battle of Ivry was fought on March 14, 1590 during the French Wars of Religion. The battle was a decisive victory for Henry of Navarre, the future Henry IV of France, leading Huguenot forces against the Catholic League led by the Duc de Mayenne. Henry’s forces were victorious and he went on to lay siege to Paris. The battle occurred on the plain of Épieds near Ivry (later renamed Ivry-la-Bataille), Normandy, located on the Eure River and about thirty miles west of Paris, on the boundary between the Île-de-France and Beauce regions.

BkIX:Chap9:Sec1 BkXXXIII:Chap1:Sec1 BkXXXIX:Chap8:Sec1

Mentioned.