(against Napoleon in 1812-14)

Spain's War of Independence against Napoleon Bonaparte's French occupation was ignited by the popular revolt in Madrid on 2 May 1808 against the French army. The reprisal executions are commemorated in a famous painting by Francisco de Goya. With support from the Duke of Wellington, Spanish resistance continued for over five years in a guerra de guerrillas which gave the world the concept and the term guerrilla warfare. The autocratic Fernando VII was restored to the throne in 1814, and his first act was to abolish the progressive Constitution of Cadiz adopted in 1812.

The Wars of Independence of Spain's Latin American colonies were inspired partly by the ideas of the French encyclopédistes, partly by the example of the American and French Revolutions, and partly by Spain's own resistance to French domination. Argentina achieved independence in 1816. Simón Bolívar of Caracas led a freedom movement that was to sweep South America and earned him the title El Libertador. By 1840 all the mainland Spanish colonies were independent. Others who played a crucial roles in the independence struggles of Spain's colonies during the nineteenth century include Hidalgo, Morelos and Guerrero (Mexico), Sucre and Miranda (Venezuela, Peru), San Martín, Brown and Belgrano (Argentina), O'Higgins, San Martín (Chile), Céspedes and Martí (Cuba).

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X изменил (самому) себе = X was untrue (false) to himself

• ИЗМЕНЯТЬ/ИЗМЕНЯТЬ (САМОМУ) СЕБЕ

[VP; subj: human; usu. this WO]

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⇒ to act against one's nature, habits, or beliefs:

- X изменил (самому) себе≈ X was untrue < false> to himself;

- X went against his convictions < principles>.

     ♦ Для русских историков... Наполеон есть предмет восхищения и восторга... Кутузов же, тот человек, который от начала и до конца своей деятельности в 1812 году... ни разу ни одним действием, ни словом не изменяя себе, являет необычайный в истории пример самоотвержения и сознания в настоящем будущего значения события, - Кутузов представляется им чем-то неопределённым и жалким... (Толстой 7). For Russian historians...Napoleon is the object of adulation and enthusiasm....But Kutuzov, the man who from the beginning to the end of his activity in 1812...was never once by word or deed false to himself, who presents an example rare in history of self-sacrifice and of present insight into the future significance of events - Kutuzov seems to them something indeterminate and pitiful... (7a).

• ИЗМЕНЯТЬ/ИЗМЕНЯТЬ (САМОМУ) СЕБЕ

[VP; subj: human; usu. this WO]

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⇒ to act against one's nature, habits, or beliefs:

- X изменил (самому) себе≈ X was untrue < false> to himself;

- X went against his convictions < principles>.

     ♦ Для русских историков... Наполеон есть предмет восхищения и восторга... Кутузов же, тот человек, который от начала и до конца своей деятельности в 1812 году... ни разу ни одним действием, ни словом не изменяя себе, являет необычайный в истории пример самоотвержения и сознания в настоящем будущего значения события, - Кутузов представляется им чем-то неопределённым и жалким... (Толстой 7). For Russian historians...Napoleon is the object of adulation and enthusiasm....But Kutuzov, the man who from the beginning to the end of his activity in 1812...was never once by word or deed false to himself, who presents an example rare in history of self-sacrifice and of present insight into the future significance of events - Kutuzov seems to them something indeterminate and pitiful... (7a).

• ИЗМЕНЯТЬ/ИЗМЕНЯТЬ (САМОМУ) СЕБЕ

[VP; subj: human; usu. this WO]

=====

⇒ to act against one's nature, habits, or beliefs:

- X изменил (самому) себе≈ X was untrue < false> to himself;

- X went against his convictions < principles>.

     ♦ Для русских историков... Наполеон есть предмет восхищения и восторга... Кутузов же, тот человек, который от начала и до конца своей деятельности в 1812 году... ни разу ни одним действием, ни словом не изменяя себе, являет необычайный в истории пример самоотвержения и сознания в настоящем будущего значения события, - Кутузов представляется им чем-то неопределённым и жалким... (Толстой 7). For Russian historians...Napoleon is the object of adulation and enthusiasm....But Kutuzov, the man who from the beginning to the end of his activity in 1812...was never once by word or deed false to himself, who presents an example rare in history of self-sacrifice and of present insight into the future significance of events - Kutuzov seems to them something indeterminate and pitiful... (7a).

• ИЗМЕНЯТЬ/ИЗМЕНЯТЬ (САМОМУ) СЕБЕ

[VP; subj: human; usu. this WO]

=====

⇒ to act against one's nature, habits, or beliefs:

- X изменил (самому) себе≈ X was untrue < false> to himself;

- X went against his convictions < principles>.

     ♦ Для русских историков... Наполеон есть предмет восхищения и восторга... Кутузов же, тот человек, который от начала и до конца своей деятельности в 1812 году... ни разу ни одним действием, ни словом не изменяя себе, являет необычайный в истории пример самоотвержения и сознания в настоящем будущего значения события, - Кутузов представляется им чем-то неопределённым и жалким... (Толстой 7). For Russian historians...Napoleon is the object of adulation and enthusiasm....But Kutuzov, the man who from the beginning to the end of his activity in 1812...was never once by word or deed false to himself, who presents an example rare in history of self-sacrifice and of present insight into the future significance of events - Kutuzov seems to them something indeterminate and pitiful... (7a).

SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines

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Sadi was the eldest son of Lazare Carnot, who was prominent as one of Napoleon's military and civil advisers. Sadi was born in the Palais du Petit Luxembourg and grew up during the Napoleonic wars. He was tutored by his father until in 1812, at the minimum age of 16, he entered the Ecole Polytechnique to study stress analysis, mechanics, descriptive geometry and chemistry. He organized the students to fight against the allies at Vincennes in 1814. He left the Polytechnique that October and went to the Ecole du Génie at Metz as a student second lieutenant. While there, he wrote several scientific papers, but on the Restoration in 1815 he was regarded with suspicion because of the support his father had given Napoleon. In 1816, on completion of his studies, Sadi became a second lieutenant in the Metz engineering regiment and spent his time in garrison duty, drawing up plans of fortifications. He seized the chance to escape from this dull routine in 1819 through an appointment to the army general staff corps in Paris, where he took leave of absence on half pay and began further courses of study at the Sorbonne, Collège de France, Ecole des Mines and the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers. He was inter-ested in industrial development, political economy, tax reform and the fine arts.

It was not until 1821 that he began to concentrate on the steam-engine, and he soon proposed his early form of the Carnot cycle. He sought to find a general solution to cover all types of steam-engine, and reduced their operation to three basic stages: an isothermal expansion as the steam entered the cylinder; an adiabatic expansion; and an isothermal compression in the condenser. In 1824 he published his Réflexions sur la puissance motrice du feu, which was well received at the time but quickly forgotten. In it he accepted the caloric theory of heat but pointed out the impossibility of perpetual motion. His main contribution to a correct understanding of a heat engine, however, lay in his suggestion that power can be produced only where there exists a temperature difference due "not to an actual consumption of caloric but to its transportation from a warm body to a cold body". He used the analogy of a water-wheel with the water falling around its circumference. He proposed the true Carnot cycle with the addition of a final adiabatic compression in which motive power was con sumed to heat the gas to its original incoming temperature and so closed the cycle. He realized the importance of beginning with the temperature of the fire and not the steam in the boiler. These ideas were not taken up in the study of thermodynartiics until after Sadi's death when B.P.E.Clapeyron discovered his book in 1834.

In 1824 Sadi was recalled to military service as a staff captain, but he resigned in 1828 to devote his time to physics and economics. He continued his work on steam-engines and began to develop a kinetic theory of heat. In 1831 he was investigating the physical properties of gases and vapours, especially the relationship between temperature and pressure. In June 1832 he contracted scarlet fever, which was followed by "brain fever". He made a partial recovery, but that August he fell victim to a cholera epidemic to which he quickly succumbed.

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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Jacquard was apprenticed at the age of 12 to bookbinding, and later to type-founding and cutlery. His parents, who had some connection with weaving, left him a small property upon their death. He made some experiments with pattern weaving, but lost all his inheritance; after marrying, he returned to type-founding and cutlery. In 1790 he formed the idea for his machine, but it was forgotten amidst the excitement of the French Revolution, in which he fought for the Revolutionists at the defence of Lyons. The machine he completed in 1801 combined earlier inventions and was for weaving net. He was sent to Paris to demonstrate it at the National Exposition and received a bronze medal. In 1804 Napoleon granted him a patent, a pension of 1,500 francs and a premium on each machine sold. This enabled him to study and work at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers to perfect his mechanism for pattern weaving. A method of selecting any combination of leashes at each shoot of the weft had to be developed, and Jacquard's mechanism was the outcome of various previous inventions. By taking the cards invented by Falcon in 1728 that were punched with holes like the paper of Bouchon in 1725, to select the needles for each pick, and by placing the apparatus above the loom where Vaucanson had put his mechanism, Jacquard combined the best features of earlier inventions. He was not entirely successful because his invention failed in the way it pressed the card against the needles; later modifications by Breton in 1815 and Skola in 1819 were needed before it functioned reliably. However, the advantage of Jacquard's machine was that each pick could be selected much more quickly than on the earlier draw looms, which meant that John Kay's flying shuttle could be introduced on fine pattern looms because the weaver no longer had to wait for the drawboy to sort out the leashes for the next pick. Robert Kay's drop box could also be used with different coloured wefts. The drawboy could be dispensed with because the foot-pedal operating the Jacquard mechanism could be worked by the weaver. Patterns could be changed quickly by replacing one set of cards with another, but the scope of the pattern was more limited than with the draw loom. Some machines that were brought into use aroused bitter hostility. Jacquard suffered physical violence, barely escaping with his life, and his machines were burnt by weavers at Lyons. However, by 1812 his mechanism began to be generally accepted and had been applied to 11,000 draw-looms in France. In 1819 Jacquard received a gold medal and a Cross of Honour for his invention. His machines reached England c.1816 and still remain the basic way of weaving complicated patterns.

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