Carnot
Carnot names 2 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Carnot MARIE FRANÇOIS SADI
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
MARIE FRANÇOIS SADI, President of the French Republic, born in Limoges, Aug. 11, 1837; a grandson of the famous war-minister of the Revolution. He was educated at the Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées, Paris. He was assigned to duty in the engineer corps. During the siege of Paris in 1871 he was made prefect of the Seine-Inférieure and showed great ability. In politics he was an earnest Republican. Elected to the National Assembly in 1871 by the Côted'Or, he soon rose to prominence. In 1876 he was chosen secretary of the Chamber of Deputies; in 1878 Secretary of Public Works. He was Minister of Public Works in 1881-1882 and 1886. In December, 1887, on the resignation of M. Grévy he was chosen President. The policy which he announced in his inaugural message, and which was consistently and successfully carried out during his administration, was one of peace with foreign nations, careful development of the army and navy, and economy in all departments. The support and confidence of the Conservative Republicans fortified him against the Socialists, the Anarchists, and the supporters of Boulanger. An attempt to involve his name in the Panama scandal failed ut terly. While attending an exposition at Lyons, June 24, 1894, he was stabbed by a fanatical Italian Anarchist, and died the next day.
Carnot LAZARE NICOLAS MAR- GUERITE, a French statesman
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
LAZARE NICOLAS MAR- GUERITE, a French statesman, general, and strategist, born in Burgundy, May 13, 1753. In 1791 he was appointed deputy to the constituent assembly. In the following March he was sent to the Army of the North, where he took command and successfully repulsed the enemy. On his return he was made member of the Committee of Public Safety, and directed and organized the French armies with great ability and success. As a member of the Committee Carnot was formally responsible for the decrees of Robespierre, but being incessantly occupied in his department knew really little of the atrocities to which the sanction of his name was lent. In 1797 Carnot, having unsuccessfully opposed Barras, had to escape to Germany, but re-clared the good tidings of great joy; and turned, and was appointed Minister of War by Napoleon (1800). But he remained in principle an inflexible Republican, voted against the consulship for life, and protested against Napoleon's assumption of the imperial dignity. For seven years after this Carnot remained in retirement, publishing several valuable military works. In 1814 Napoleon gave him the chief command at Antwerp, and in 1815 the post of Minister of the Interior. After the Emperor's second fall he retired from France. He died in Magdeburg, Prussia, Aug. 3, 1823.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The biographical facts Collier's set down in 1921 still stand: Lazare Carnot, the Revolution's "Organizer of Victory," died at Magdeburg in 1823, and President Sadi Carnot was stabbed at Lyons on 24 June 1894 by the Italian anarchist Sante Caserio, who was guillotined that August. What is missing is the Carnot most readers would now look up first — Lazare's son Nicolas Leonard Sadi Carnot (1796-1832), whose 1824 Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire founded thermodynamics and gave physics the Carnot cycle and the ceiling on any heat engine's efficiency; the president was his nephew. Historians have also grown less indulgent than Collier's about Lazare's time on the Committee of Public Safety: the claim that he "knew really little of the atrocities to which the sanction of his name was lent" is now treated as a family defence rather than a finding, since he signed the decrees alongside Robespierre.
Written for this edition, 2026.