a strong town and castle in the Tyrol, belonging to the house of Austria. It stands on the river Sarca, near the northern extremity of the lake of Garda. Pop. 2200. Long. 10. 48. E. Lat. 45. 52. N.

ARCOLE, a village of Austrian Italy, on the Alpone, 15 miles E.S.E. of Verona, with 1600 inhabitants. At this place Buonaparte gained a victory over the Austrians on 17th November 1796. See FRANCE, and NAPOLEON.

ARÇON, J. C. E. Le Michaud D', a French engineer and military writer of eminence, and memorable as the inventor of the floating batteries employed against Gibraltar, was born at Pontarlier in the year 1733. He was originally destined for the church; but, instead of employing himself in the studies suited to that profession, he became wholly engrossed with plans of fortifications, and was at length admitted, with the consent of his parents, into the corps of engineers. He distinguished himself at several sieges during the seven years' war; and had acquired so much reputation by his professional services and by his writings, that he was especially employed to assist in the last grand effort made by France and Spain for the reduction of Gibraltar in 1782. It was about this period that he projected the famous floating batteries; an invention which inspired the combined armies with the greatest hopes of success, and at first occasioned no small alarm in the British garrison. Of the ultimate fate of these expensive and formidable engines all British readers must be sufficiently informed. Not one of the whole ten escaped destruction from the bombs and red-hot balls poured upon them from the garrison. M. d'Arcon, however, published a memoir to show that his batteries were wilfully exposed to destruction through the envy and jealousy which the contrivance had excited among the Spaniards; and this statement, whatever may have been its real value, seems to have obtained the general concurrence of his countrymen.

M. d'Arcon appeared in the capacity of a general in the first years of the Revolution; and, in particular, was employed in the invasion of Holland, where, in 1793, he besieged and took several fortified places. He soon afterwards withdrew or was driven from public life, and remained in retirement till 1799, when he was made a member of the Conservative Senate by Buonaparte. He died the following year, aged sixty-seven.