Jan Tarnowski

TARNOWSKI, JAN [called MAGNus] (1488-1561), Polish general. After a careful education at the palace of Matthew Drzewicki, bishop of Przemysl, he occupied a conspicuous posi tion at court in the reigns of John Albert, Alexander and Sigis mund I. In 1509 Tarnowski distinguished himself in Moldavia, taking part in the victories of Wisniowiec (1512) and Orsza (1514). He then travelled in the Near East, and northern and western Europe. While in Portugal he received from King Eman uel the chief command in the war against the Moors, and was pro moted by Charles V. to a count of the Empire. On the death of Nicholas Firlej in 1526 Tarnowski became grand hetman of the crown, or Polish commander-in-chief, and won his greatest victory at Obertyn (August 22, 1531) over the Moldavians, Turks and Tatars. Tarnowski took the royal side during the "Poultry War" of 1537; and also in 1548 when the szlachta tried to annul by force the marriage of Sigismund Augustus (q.v.) with Barbara Radziwill. In 1553, indeed, he was in opposition to the young king; yet he remained emphatically an aristocrat, intensely op posed to the democratic tendencies of the szlachta, and working for a firm alliance between the king and the magnates. Though

a devout Catholic, he was opposed to the exclusive jurisdiction of the bishops and would have limited the authority of Rome in Poland. Tarnowski invented a new system of tactics to increase the mobility and security of the armed camps within which the Poles had so often to encounter the Tatars. His principles are set forth in his Consilium Rationis Bellicae (best edition, Posen, 1879). As an administrator he did much to populate the vast south-eastern steppes of Poland.

See Stanislaw Orzechowski, Life and Death of Jan Tarnowski (Pol.) (Cracow, 1855).

TARO

(Colocasia esculenta), a coarse herbaceous plant of the arum family (Araceae, q.v.), called also eddo and dasheen, prob ably native to the Pacific islands, where it is extensively cultivated for its large, spherical, underground tubers, which form an impor tant article of food, especially in Hawaii. It is closely allied to or is perhaps a variety of C. antiquorum, native to the East Indies, a stately ornamental plant, with large shield-shaped leaves, various cultivated forms of which are known as elephant's-ear.