of
Loire-Inferieure; marshy on the W., wooded on the N., and with an open
fertile tract in the middle and S.; it is famous as the seat of a
stubborn resistance to the Revolution, and for the bloody violence with
which it was suppressed.

VENDEMIAIRE (vintage month), the first month of the French
Revolution year, from 22nd September to 21st October.

VENDETTA, the practice which existed in Corsica and Sicily on the
part of individuals of exacting vengeance for the murder of a relative on
the murderer or one of his relations.

VENDOME, LOUISE JOSEPH, DUC DE, French general, born at Paris,
great-grandson of Henry IV.; served in the wars of Louis XIV., and gained
several victories; was defeated by Marlborough and Prince Eugene at
Oudenarde in 1708, but by his victory at Villaviciosa contributed to the
restoration of Philip V. to the Spanish throne in 1711; was a man of
gross sensuality, and has been pilloried by Saint Simon for the
execration of all mankind (1654-1712).

VENEZUELA (2,323), a federal republic in South America, founded in
1830, over three times as large as Spain, consisting of nine States and
several territories; composed of mountain and valley, and in great part
of llanos, within the basin of the Orinoco; between the Caribbean Sea,
Colombo, Brazil, and British Guiana, and containing a population of
Indian, Spanish, and Negro descent; on the llanos large herds of horses
and cattle are reared; the agricultural products are sugar, coffee,
cotton, tobacco, &c.; the forests yield mahogany, ebony, and dye-wood,
while the mines yield iron, copper, &c., and there are extensive
gold-fields, considered the richest in the world; the boundary line
between the British colony and Venezuela was for long matter of keen
dispute, but by the intervention of the United States at the request of
the latter a treaty between the contending parties was concluded,
referring the matter to a court of arbitration, which met at Paris in
1895, and settled it in 1899, in vindication, happily, of the British
claim, the Schomburgk line being now declared to be the true line, and
the gold-fields ours.

VENGEUR, LE, a war-vessel of the French fabled to have gone down
rather than surrender to the English in a battle off Ushant on 1st June
1794, the crew shouting "Vive la Republique," when it was really a cry
for help.

VENICE, a city of Italy, in a province of the same name, at the head
of the Adriatic, in a shallow lagoon d