GORTON, Samuel, New England enthusi ast and first settler of Warwick, R. I.: b. Gor ton, England, about 1600; d. Rhode Island, November or December 1677. He did business in London as a clothier until 1636, when he embarked for New England and settled at Bos ton. Religious disputes induced him to remove to Plymouth, where we first hear of him as a preacher. He soon exhibited such peculiar views that he was banished from the colony on a charge of heresy. With a few followers he then went to Aquetneck or Rhode Island, which had recently been settled by exiles from Mas sachusetts Bay; but falling again into trouble, was publicly whipped for calling the magis trates ejust asses* and for other contemptuous acts and was forced to seek an asylum with Roger Williams in Providence about 1641. Here he became involved in the disputes of the colo nists on certain questions of boundary. Gorton was then summoned to Boston but refused to recognize the jurisdiction thus assumed and about the same time removed to Shawomet, on the west side of Narragansett Bay, where he purchased land from the Sachem Miantonomo. But in June 1643 two inferi©r sachems con tested his claims to the land and applied to the General Court at Boston for assistance. A body of 40 soldiers were consequently marched to Shawomet and Gorton and 10 of his disciples were carried to Boston and condemned to hard labor, a sentence commuted to banishment in 1644. Gorton then went to England, where he obtained from the Earl of Warwick an order for the land he claimed. Returning to Rhode Island in 1648 he founded the town of War wick, thenceforth his home and where he oc casionally preached. He wrote several contro versial works, the best known of which is 'Simplicitie's Defense Against Seven-Headed Policy' (1646). See Janes, 'Samuel Gorton' (1896).
GoRZ, or GORIZIA, capital of the Austrian province or crown-land Gorz and Gradisca, near the head of the Adriatic, 23 miles north-northwest of Trieste (34 miles by rail). The province, which was once part of ancient Illyria, later of the duchy of Friuli, and a separate duchy from the 1 1th century, came into Austrian possession in 1500. Con taming a large Italian population, the terri tory has always been regarded (by the Italians) as part of that °Italia Irredente which it was hoped to reunite with the mother country. The area is about 1,130 square miles and the popu lation about 250,000. The town of Gorz lies
in a fertile plain on the left bank of the Isonzo River, on the Trieste-Nabresina-Comoms line of the Austrian Southern Railway and had a population of nearly 33,000 (mainly Italians) before the war. It possesses a fine 14th cen tury cathedral, is the seat of an archbishop, and has important industries in manufacturing silks, cotton, leather goods, pottery, etc. Charles X of France died here in 1836 after losing his throne. On 8 April 1915, eight months after the outbreak of the European War, the Italian government formulated cer tain demands upon Austria-Hungary, insisting inter alia on the cession of the Trentino and the creation of a new eastern frontier, to include G8rz and Gradisca. The rejection of the pro posed terms led Italy to declare war on Austria 23 May 1915. General Cadorna, the Italian commander-in-chief, directed his initial opera tions toward the points of a great triangle formed by Trent, Tarvis and G8rz, by which movements he proposed to keep the Austrians employed and prevent any flanking strategy while meantime striking with his main army at the Isonzo on the road to Trieste, to an ad vance on which the isolation and capture of Gorz was a necessary prelude. After nearly 15 months of severe fighting on one of the most difficult and complex of all the European battle-grounds, the Italians succeeded in cap turing Gorz, no longer the pleasant city among orchards which had once made it a fashionable health resort — the Austrian Nice — but a dusty, shell-scarred landscape. The immense geographical obstacles which the Italians sur mounted made the event a great achievement. The fall of Gorz (Gorizia) created great en thusiasm among the Allies and especially in Italy, which declared war also on Germany 18 days later (28 Aug. 1916), although for over a year the Italians had already been fighting against German officers, soldiers and sailors. As before in Galicia during 1915, the German war command was called on to reconquer lost Austrian territory. On 24 Oct. 1917 a powerful Austro-German offensive opened against the Italian front; in four days Gorz was recaptured and by the end of the year the enemy was in possession of nearly the whole of the eastern salient of Italian territory adjoining Austria.
See ITALY AND THE WAR; WAR, EUROPEAN ITALIAN CAMPAIGNS.