WALCHEREN, vil'aer4n, Netherlands, an island in the province of Zeeland, at the mouth of the Scheldt, approximately circular, about 11 miles in diameter. A bridge connects vrith South Beveland and a railway to the main land. It is well wooded and fertile and fruit is abundant. It contains the towns of Flush ing, Middleburg (the capital) and Veere, and has a population of about 40,000. It is protected from the sea by strong dikes. The island is noted for the Walcheren expedition of 1809, one of the most complete failures in British military history. The second Earl of Chatham, eldest son of the great Chatham, was dis patched to the island in command of a force of about 40,000 for the purpose of capturing Antwerp and destroying Napoleon's arsenals on the Scheldt. Instead of pressing forward against Antwerp, he persisted in the siege of Flushing, which was not captured before the greater port had been reinforced and strongly fortified by the French. Chatham returned to England with the bulk of his force, leaving a garrison of 15,000 on the island of Walcheren. The garrison was attacked by fevers and other diseases, and when orders were received from the government to destroy Flushing and return home, only- a small number were fit for duty.
WALCKENAEFt,
Charles Athanase, BARON, French savant and author: b. Paris, 25 Dec. 1771; d. there, 27 April 1852. At 17 he went to study at Glasgow and Oxford; served as director of transportation in the army of the Pyrenees in 1793; became mayor of Paris in 1816 and prefect of the department of Nievre in 1824 and of Aisne in 1826. In 1830 he left the public service, and in 1840 became secretary to the Acadetny of Inscriptions. He was a voluminous writer. His first publication was an (Essai sur l'Histoire de l'Espece Humaine' (1798), and in 1802 he published