DRAGOMIROV

dragomirov, michael ivanovich (1830-1905), russian general and military writer, was born on the 8th of november 1830. he entered the guard infantry in 1849, becoming 2nd lieutenant in 1852 and lieutenant in 1854. in the latter year he was selected to study at the nicholas academy (staff college), and here he distinguished himself so much that he received a gold medal, an honour which, it is stated, was paid to a student of the academy only twice in the 19th century. in 1856 he was promoted staff-captain and in 1858 full captain, being sent in the latter year to study the military methods in vogue in other countries. he visited france, england and belgium, and wrote voluminous reports on the instructional and manoeuvre camps of these countries at chalons, aldershot and beverloo. in 1859 he was attached to the headquarters of the king of sardinia during the campaign of magenta and solferino, and immediately upon his return to russia he was sent to the nicholas academy as professor of tactics. dragomirov played a leading part in the reorganization of the educational system of the army, and acted also as instructor to several princes of the imperial family. this post he held until 1863, when, as a lieutenant-colonel, he took part in the suppression of the polish insurrection of 1863-64, returning to st petersburg in the latter year as colonel and chief of staff to one of the guard divisions. during the austro-prussian war of 1866, dragomirov was attached to the headquarters of the ii. prussian army. he was present at the battles on the upper elbe and at koniggratz, and his comments on the operations which he witnessed are of the greatest value to the student of tactics and of the war of 1866. in 1868 he was made a major-general, and in the following year became chief of the staff in the kiev military circumscription. in 1873 he was appointed to command the 14th division, and in this command he distinguished himself very greatly in the russo-turkish war of 1877-78. the 14th division led the way at the crossing of the danube at zimnitza, dragomirov being in charge of the delicate and difficult operation of crossing and landing under fire, and fulfilling his mission with complete success. later, after the reverses before plevna, he, with the cesarevich and generals todleben and milutine, strenuously opposed the suggestion of the grand-duke nicholas that the russian army should retreat into rumania, and the demoralization of the greater part of the army was not permitted to spread to dragomirov's division, which retained its discipline unimpaired and gave a splendid example to the rest. he was wounded at the shipka pass, and, though promoted lieutenant-general soon after this, was not able to see further active service. he was also made adjutant-general to the tsar and chief of the 53rd volhynia regiment of his old division. for eleven years thereafter general dragomirov was chief of the nicholas academy, and it was during this period that he collated and introduced into the russian army all the best military literature of europe, and in many other ways was active in improving the moral and technical efficiency of the russian officer-corps, especially of the staff officer. in 1889 dragomirov became commander-in-chief of the kiev military district, and governor-general of kiev, podolsk and volhynia, retaining this post until 1903. he was promoted to the rank of general of infantry in 1891. his advanced age and failing health prevented his employment at the front during the russo-japanese war of 1904-5, but his advice was continually solicited by the general headquarters at st petersburg, and while he disagreed with general kuropatkin in many important questions of strategy and military policy, they both recommended a repetition of the strategy of 1812, even though the total abandonment of port arthur was involved therein. general dragomirov died at konotop on the 28th of october 1905. in addition to the orders which he already possessed, he received in 1901 the order of st andrew. his larger military works were mostly translated into french, and his occasional papers, extending over a period of nearly fifty years, appeared chiefly in the _voienni svornik_ and the _razoiedschik_; his later articles in the last-named paper were, like the general orders he issued to his own troops, attentively studied throughout the russian army. his critique of tolstoy's _war and peace_ attracted even wider attention. dragomirov was, in formal tactics, the head of the "orthodox" school. his conservatism was not, however, the result of habit and early training, but of deliberate reasoning and choice. his model was, as he admitted in the war of 1866, the british infantry of the peninsular war, but he sought to reach the ideal, not through the methods of repression against which the "advanced" tacticians revolted, but by means of thorough efficiency in the individual soldier and in the smaller units. he inculcated the "offensive at all costs," and the combination of crushing short-range fire and the bayonet charge. he carried out the ideas of suvarov to the fullest extent, and many thought that he pressed them to a theoretical extreme unattainable in practice. his critics, however, did not always realize that dragomirov depended, for the efficiency his unit required, on the capacity of the leader, and that an essential part of the self-sacrificing discipline he exacted from his officers was the power of assuming responsibility. the details of his brilliant achievement of zimnitza suffice to give a clear idea of dragomirov's personality and of the way in which his methods of training conduced to success. dragon (fr. _dragon_, through lat. _draco_, from the greek; connected with [greek: derkomai], "see," and interpreted as "sharp-sighted"; o.h. ger. _tracho_, _dracho_, m.h.g. _trache_, mod. ger. _drachen_; a.s. _draca_, hence the equivalent english form "drake," "fire-drake," cf. low ger. and swed. _drake_, dan. _drage_), a fabulous monster, usually conceived as a huge winged fire-breathing lizard or snake. in greece the word [greek: drakon] was used originally of any large serpent, and the dragon of mythology, whatever shape it may have assumed, remains essentially a snake. for the part it has played in the myths and cults of various peoples and ages see the article serpent-worship. here it may be said, in general, that in the east, where snakes are large and deadly (chaldea, assyria, phoenicia, to a less degree in egypt), the serpent or dragon was symbolic of the principle of evil. thus apophis, in the egyptian religion, was the great serpent of the world of darkness vanquished by ra, while in chaldaea the goddess ti[=a]mat, the female principle of primeval chaos, took the form of a dragon. thus, too, in the hebrew sacred books the serpent or dragon is the source of death and sin, a conception which was adopted in the new testament and so passed into christian mythology. in greece and rome, on the other hand, while the oriental idea of the serpent as an evil power found an entrance and gave birth to a plentiful brood of terrors (the serpents of the gorgons, hydra, chimaera and the like), the _dracontes_ were also at times conceived as beneficent powers, sharp-eyed dwellers in the inner parts of the earth, wise to discover its secrets and utter them in oracles, or powerful to invoke as guardian genii. such were the sacred snakes in the temples of aesculapius and the _sacri dracontes_ in that of the bona dea at rome; or, as guardians, the python at delphi and the dragon of the hesperides. in general, however, the evil reputation of dragons was the stronger, and in europe it outlived the other. christianity, of course, confused the benevolent and malevolent serpent-deities of the ancient cults in a common condemnation. the very "wisdom of the serpent" made him suspect; the devil, said st augustine, "leo et draco est; leo propter impetum, draco propter insidias." the dragon myths of the pagan east took new shapes in the legends of the victories of st michael and st george; and the kindly snakes of the "good goddess" lived on in the _immanissimus draco_ whose baneful activity in a cave of the capitol was cut short by the intervention of the saintly pope silvester i. (duchesne, _liber pontificalis_, i. 109 seq.). in this respect indeed christian mythology found itself in harmony with that of the pagan north. the similarity of the northern and oriental snake myths seems to point to some common origin in an antiquity too remote to be explored. whatever be the origin of the northern dragon, the myths, when they first become articulate for us, show him to be in all essentials the same as that of the south and east. he is a power of evil, guardian of hoards, the greedy withholder of good things from men; and the slaying of a dragon is the crowning achievement of heroes--of siegmund, of beowulf, of sigurd, of arthur, of tristram--even of lancelot, the beau ideal of medieval chivalry. nor were these dragons anything but very real terrors, even in the imaginations of the learned, until comparatively modern times. as the waste places were cleared, indeed, they withdrew farther from the haunts of men, and in europe their last lurking-places were the inaccessible heights of the alps, where they lingered till jacques balmain set the fashion which has finally relegated them to the realm of myth. in the works of the older naturalists, even in the great _historia animalium_ of so critical a spirit as conrad gesner (d. 1564), they still figure as part of the fauna known to science. [illustration: dragon lizard (_draco taeniopterus_).] as to their form, this varied from the beginning. the chaldaean dragon ti[=a]mat had four legs, a scaly body, and wings. the egyptian apophis was a monstrous snake, as were also, originally at least, the greek _dracontes_. the dragon of the apocalypse (rev. xii. 3), "the old serpent," is many-headed, like the greek hydra. the dragon slain by beowulf is a snake (worm), for it "buckles like a bow "; but that done to death by sigurd, though its motions are heavy and snake-like, has legs, for he wounds it "behind the shoulder." on the other hand, the dragon seen by king arthur in his dreams is, according to malory, winged and active, for it "swoughs" down from the sky. the belief in dragons and the conceptions of their shape were undoubtedly often determined, in europe as in china, by the discovery of the remains of the gigantic extinct saurians. the qualities of dragons being protective and terror-inspiring, and their effigies highly decorative, it is natural that they should have been early used as warlike emblems. thus, in homer (_iliad_ xi. 36 seq.), agamemnon has on his shield, besides the gorgon's head, a blue three-headed snake ([greek: drakon]), just as ages afterwards the norse warriors painted dragons on their shields and carved dragons' heads on the prows of their ships. from the conquered dacians, too, the romans in trajan's time borrowed the dragon ensign which became the standard of the cohort as the eagle was that of the legion; whence, by a long descent, the modern dragoon. under the later east roman emperors the purple dragon ensign became the ceremonial standard of the emperors, under the name of the [greek: drakonteion]. the imperial fashion spread; or similar causes elsewhere produced similar results. in england before the conquest the dragon was chief among the royal ensigns in war. its origin, according to the legend preserved in the _flores historiarum_, was as follows. uther pendragon, father of king arthur, had a vision of a flaming dragon in the sky, which his seers interpreted as meaning that he should come to the kingdom. when this happened, after the death of his brother aurelius, "he ordered two golden dragons to be fashioned, like to those he had seen in the circle of the star, one of which he dedicated in the cathedral of winchester, the other he kept by him to be carried into battle." from uther dragonhead, as the english called him, the anglo-saxon kings borrowed the ensign, their custom being, according to the _flores_, to stand in battle _inter draconem et standardum_. the dragon ensign, which was borne before richard i. in 1191 when on crusade "to the terror of the heathen beyond the sea," was that of the dukes of normandy; but even after the loss of normandy the dragon was the battle standard of english kings (_signum regium quod draconem vocant_), and was displayed, e.g. by henry iii. in 1245 when he went to war against the welsh. not till the 20th century, under king edward vii., was the dragon officially restored as proper only to the british race of uther pendragon, by its incorporation in the armorial bearings of the prince of wales. as a matter of fact, however, the dragon ensign was common to nearly all nations, the reason for its popularity being naively stated in the romance of _athis_ (quoted by du cange), "ce souloient romains porter, ce nous fait moult a redouter:" "this the romans used to carry, this makes us very much to be feared." thus the dragon and wyvern (i.e. a two-legged snake, m.e. _wivere_, viper) took their place as heraldic symbols (see heraldry). as an ecclesiastical symbol it has remained consistent to the present day. wherever it is represented it means the principle of evil, the devil and his works. in the middle ages the chief of these works was heresy, and the dragon of the medieval church legends and mystery plays was usually heresy. thus the knightly order of the vanquished dragon, instituted by the emperor sigismund in 1418, celebrated the victory of orthodoxy over john huss. hell, too, is represented in medieval art as a dragon with gaping jaws belching fire. of the dragons carried in effigy in religious processions some have become famous, e.g. the gargouille (gargoyle) at rouen, the graully at metz, and the tarasque at tarascon. their popularity tended to disguise their evil significance and to restore to them something of the beneficent qualities of the ancient _dracontes_ as local tutelary genii. in the east, at the present day, the dragon is the national symbol of china and the badge of the imperial family, and as such it plays a large part in chinese art. chinese and japanese dragons, though regarded as powers of the air, are wingless. they are among the deified forces of nature of the taoist religion, and the shrines of the dragon-kings, who dwell partly in water and partly on land, are set along the banks of rivers. the constellation draco (_anguis_, _serpens_) was probably so called from its fanciful likeness to a snake. numerous myths, in various countries, are however connected with it. the general character of these may be illustrated by the greek story which explains the constellation as being the dragon of the hesperides slain by heracles and translated by hera or zeus to the heavens. see c. v. daremberg and e. saglio, _dictionnaire des antiquites grecques et romaines_ (paris, 1886, &c.), s.v. "draco"; pauly-wissowa, _realencyclopadie_, s.v. "drakon"; du cange, _glossarium_, s.v. "draco"; _la grande encyclopedie_ s.v. "dragon"; j. b. panthot, _histoire des dragons et des escarboucles_ (lyons, 1691). see also the articles egypt: _religion_, and babylonian and assyrian religion. (w. a. p.) in zoology the name "dragon" is now applied to a highly interesting, but very harmless, group of small flying lizards forming the genus _draco_, belonging to the _agamidae_, a family of saurian reptiles. about 20 species of "flying dragons" inhabit the various indo-malayan countries; one, _d. dussumieri_, occurs in madras. they are small creatures, measuring about 10 in. long, including the tail, which in some cases is more than half of the entire length. the head is small, and the throat is provided with three pouches which are spread out when they lie on the trunks of trees. they are, however, chiefly remarkable for the wing-like cutaneous processes with which their sides are provided, and which are extended and supported by greatly elongated ribs. these form a sort of parachute by which the animals are enabled to glide from branch to branch of the trees on which they live, but, being altogether independent of the fore limbs, they cannot be regarded as true wings, nor do they enable the lizard to fly, but merely to make extensive leaps. but they have the habit of opening and folding these prettily coloured organs, when resting upon a branch, which gives them the appearance of butterflies. when not in use they are folded by the side after the manner of a fan, and the dragon can then walk or run with considerable agility. its food consists of insects.