OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bratianu, Ion C.

See also Ion C. Brătianu on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​BRATIANU (or Bratiano), ION C. (1821–1891), Rumanian statesman, was born at Pitesci in Walachia on the 2nd of June 1821. He entered the Walachian army in 1838, and visited Paris in 1841 for purposes of study. Returning to Walachia, he took part, with his friend C. A. Rosetti and other prominent politicians, in the Rumanian rebellion of 1848, and acted as prefect of police in the provisional government formed in that year. The restoration of Russian and Turkish authority shortly afterwards drove him into exile. He took refuge in Paris, and endeavoured to influence French opinion in favour of the proposed union and autonomy of the Danubian principalities. In 1854, however, he was sentenced to a fine of £120 and three months’ imprisonment for sedition, and later confined in a lunatic asylum; but in 1856 he returned home with his brother, Dimitrie Bratianu, afterwards one of his foremost political opponents. During the reign of Prince Cuza (1859–1866), Bratianu figured prominently as one of the Liberal leaders. He assisted in 1866 in the deposition of Cuza and the election of Prince Charles of Hohenzollern, under whom he held several ministerial appointments during the next four years. He was arrested for complicity in the revolution of 1870, but soon released. In 1876, aided by C. A. Rosetti, he formed a Liberal cabinet, which remained in power until 1888. For an account of his work in connexion with the Russo-Turkish War of 1877, the Berlin congress, the establishment of the Rumanian kingdom, the revision of the constitution, and other reforms, see Rumania. After 1883 Bratianu acted as sole leader of the Liberals, owing to a quarrel with C. A. Rosetti, his friend and political ally for nearly forty years. His long tenure of office, without parallel in Rumanian history, rendered Bratianu extremely unpopular, and at its close his impeachment appeared inevitable. But any proceedings taken against the minister would have involved charges against the king, who was largely responsible for his policy; and the impeachment was averted by a vote of parliament in February 1890. Bratianu died on the 16th of May 1891. Besides being the leading statesman of Rumania during the critical years 1876–1888, he attained some eminence as a writer. His French political pamphlets, Mémoire sur l’empire d’Autriche dans la question d’Orient (1855), Réflexions sur la situation (1856), Mémoire sur la situation de la Moldavie depuis le traité de Paris (1857), and La Question religieuse en Roumanie (1866), were all published in Paris.
For his other writings and speeches see Din Scrierile şi cuvîntarile lui I. C. Bratianu, 1821–1891 (Bucharest, 1903, &c.), edited with a biographical introduction by D. A. Sturza. A brief anonymous biography, Ion C. Bratianu, appeared at Bucharest in 1893.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Brass (river)

See also Brass River on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​BRASS, a river, town and district of southern Nigeria, British West Africa. The Brass river is one of the deltaic branches of the Niger, lying east of the Rio Nun or main channel of the river. From the point of divergence from the main stream to the sea the Brass has a course of about 100 m., its mouth being in 6° 20′ E., 4° 35′ N. Brass town is a flourishing trading settlement at the mouth of the river. It is the headquarters of a district commissioner and the seat of a native court. Its most conspicuous building is a fine church, the gift of a native chief. The capital of the Brass tribes is Nimbé, 30 m. up river.
The Brass river, called by its Portuguese discoverers the Rio Bento, is said to have received its English name from the brass rods and other brass utensils imported by the early traders in exchange for palm-oil and slaves. The Brass natives, of the pure negro type, were noted for their savage character. In 1856 their chiefs concluded a treaty with Great Britain agreeing to give up the slave-trade in exchange for a duty on the palm-oil exported. Finding their profitable business as middlemen between the up-river producer and the exporter threatened by the appearance of European traders, they made ineffective complaints to the British authorities. The establishment of the Royal Niger Company led to further loss of trade, and on the 29th of January 1895 the natives attacked and sacked the company’s station at Akassa on the Rio Nun, over forty prisoners being killed and eaten as a sacrifice to the fetish gods. In the following month a punitive expedition partially destroyed Nimbé, and a heavy fine was paid by the Brass chiefs. Since then the country has settled down under British administration. The trade regulations of which complaint had been made were removed in 1900 on the establishment of the protectorate of Southern Nigeria (see Nigeria).
Valuable information concerning the country and people will be found in the Report by Sir John Kirk on the Disturbances at Brass (Africa, No. 3, 1896).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Brasseur de Bourbourg, Charles Etienne

See also Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​BRASSEUR DE BOURBOURG, CHARLES ÉTIENNE (1814–1874), Belgian ethnographer, was born at Bourbourg, near Dunkirk, on the 8th of September 1814. He entered the Roman Catholic priesthood, was professor of ecclesiastical history in the Quebec seminary in 1845, vicar-general at Boston in 1846, and from 1848 to 1863 travelled as a missionary, chiefly in Mexico ​and Central America. He gave great attention to Mexican antiquities, published in 1857–1859 a history of Aztec civilization, and from 1861 to 1864 edited a collection of documents in the indigenous languages. In 1863 he announced the discovery of a key to Mexican hieroglyphic writing, but its value is very questionable. In 1864 he was archaeologist to the French military expedition in Mexico, and his Monuments anciens du Mexique was published by the French Government in 1866. Perhaps his greatest service was the publication in 1861 of a French translation of the Popol Vuh, a sacred book of the Quiché Indians, together with a Quiché grammar, and an essay on Central American mythology. In 1871 he brought out his Bibliothèque Mexico-Guatemalienne, and in 1869–1870 gave the principles of his decipherment of Indian picture-writing in his Manuscrit Troano, études sur le système graphique et la langue des Mayas. He died at Nice on the 8th of January 1874. His chief merit is his diligent collection of materials; his interpretations are generally fanciful.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Drew

See also John Drew (actor) and John Drew, Jr. on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​DREW, the name of a family of American actors. John Drew (1827–1862) was born in Dublin and made his first New York appearance in 1846. He played Irish and light comedy parts with success in all the American cities, and was manager of the Arch Street theatre in Philadelphia. He visited England in 1855, and Australia in 1859, and died in Philadelphia. His wife, Louise Lane Drew (1820–1897), was the daughter of a London actor, and in 1827 went to America, appearing as the Duke of York to the elder Booth’s Richard III., and as Albert to Edwin Forrest’s William Tell. After this she starred as a child actress, and then as leading lady. She had been twice married before she became Mrs Drew in 1850. From 1861 to 1892 she had the management of the Arch Street theatre in Philadelphia. In 1880 she toured with Joseph Jefferson in his elaborate revival of The Rivals, playing Mrs Malaprop to perfection. She had three children, John, Sidney and Georgiana, wife of Maurice Barrymore (1847–1905), and mother of Lionel and Ethel Barrymore, all actors. The eldest son, John Drew (b. 1853), began his stage career under his mother’s management in Philadelphia as Plumper in Cool as a Cucumber, on the 22nd of March 1873; and after playing with Edwin Booth and others, became leading man in Augustin Daly’s company in 1879. His association with this company, and with Ada Rehan as the leading lady, constituted a brilliant period in recent stage history, his Petruchio being only one, though perhaps the most striking, of a series of famous impersonations. In 1892 he left Daly’s company, and began a career as a “star.”
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Drexel, Anthony Joseph

See also Anthony Joseph Drexel on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​DREXEL, ANTHONY JOSEPH (1826–1893), American banker, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the 13th of September 1826. He was the son of Francis M. Drexel (1792–1863), a native of Austrian Tirol, who emigrated to America in 1817, and, after some years spent as a portrait-painter, became a banker and the founder of the house of Drexel & Company. Anthony, who entered his father’s counting-house in 1839, eventually, with his brothers Francis and Joseph, succeeded to the control of the business, and organized the banking houses of Drexel, Morgan & Company, New York, of which his brother Joseph W. (1833–1888) was long the resident head, and of Drexel, Harjes & Company, Paris. In 1864 he joined his friend George W. Childs in the purchase of the Philadelphia Public Ledger, and with him in 1892 founded the Printers’ Home for union men at Colorado Springs. In 1891 he founded, and endowed with $2,000,000, the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry in Philadelphia, the buildings for which he constructed at a cost of $750,000. This institution provides technical instruction for both night and day classes and public lecture courses, and has a good museum and a library of 35,000 volumes. Drexel died at Carlsbad, Germany, on the 30th of June 1893.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Drente

See also Drenthe on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​DRENTE, a province of Holland, bounded N. and N.E. by Groningen, S.E. by the Prussian province of Hanover, S. and S.W. by Overysel, and N.W. by Friesland; area, 1128 sq. m.; pop. (1900) 149,551. The province of Drente is a sandy plateau forming the kernel of the surrounding provinces. The soil consists almost entirely of sand and gravel, and is covered with bleak moorland, patches of wood, and fen. This is only varied by the strip of fertile clay and grass-land which is found along the banks of the rivers, and by the areas of high fen in the south-eastern corner and on the western borders near Assen. The surface of the province is a gentle slope from the south-west towards the north-east, where it terminates in the long ridge of hills known as the Hondsrug (Dog’s Back) extending along the eastern border into Groningen. The watershed of the province runs from east to west across the middle of the province, along the line of the Orange canal. The southern streams are all collected at two points on the southern borders, namely, at Meppel and Koevorden, whence they communicate with the Zwarte Water and the Vecht respectively by means of the Meppeler Diep and the Koevorden canal. The Steenwyker Aa, however, enters the Zuider Zee independently. The northern rivers all flow into Groningen. The piles of granite rocks somewhat in the shape of cromlechs which are found scattered about this province, and especially along the western edge of the Hondsrug, have long been named Hunebedden, from a popular superstition that they were “Huns’ beds.” Possibly the word originally meant “beds of the dead,” or tombs.
Two industries have for centuries been associated with the barren heaths and sodden fens so usually found together on the sand-grounds, namely, the cultivation of buckwheat and peat-digging. The work is conducted on a regular system of fen colonization, the first operation being directed towards the drainage of the country. This is effected by means of drainage canals cut at regular intervals and connected by means of cross ditches. These draining ditches all have their issue in a main drainage canal, along which the transport of the peat and peat-litter takes place and the houses of the colonists are built. The heathlands when sufficiently drained are prepared for cultivation by being cut into sods and burnt. This system appears to have been practised already at the end of the 17th century. After eight years, however, the soil becomes exhausted, and twenty to thirty years are required for its refertilization. The cultivation of buckwheat on these grounds has decreased, and large areas which were formerly thus treated now lie waste. Potatoes, rye, oats, beans and peas are also largely cultivated. In connexion with the cultivation of potatoes, factories are established for making spirits, treacle, potato-meal, and straw-paper.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Dress

See also Dress on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​DRESS (from the Fr. dresser, to set out, arrange, formed from Lat. directus, arranged, dirigere, to direct, arrange), a substantive of which the current meaning is that of clothing or costume in general, or, specifically, the principal outer garment worn by a woman (see Costume). The verb “to dress” has various applications which can be deduced from its original meaning. It is thus used not only of the putting on of clothing, but of the preparing and finishing of leather, the preparation of food for eating, the application of cleansing and healing substances or of bandages, &c., to a wound, the drawing up in a correct line of a body of troops, and, generally, adorning or decking out, as of a ship with flags. In the language of the theatre the “dresser” is the person who looks after the actor’s wardrobe and assists him in the changing of his costumes. For the printer’s use of “dresser” see Typography.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Dresser

See also Welsh dresser on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​DRESSER, in furniture, a form of sideboard. The name is derived from the Fr. dressoir, a piece of furniture used to range or dresser the more costly appointments of the table. The appliance is the direct descendant of the credence and the buffet, and is, indeed, a much more legitimate inheritor of their functions than the modern sideboard, which, as we know it, is practically an 18th-century invention. It developed into its present shape about the second quarter of the 17th century, and has since then changed but little. As a piece of movable furniture it was made rarely, if at all, after the beginning of the 19th century until the revival of interest in what is called “farmhouse furniture” at the very beginning of the 20th century led in the first place to the construction of many imitation antique dressers from derelict pieces of old oak, and especially from panels of chests, and in the second to the making of avowed imitations. The dresser conformed to a model which varied only in detail and in ornament. Its simple and agreeable form consisted of a long and rather narrow table or slab, with drawers or cupboards beneath and a tall upright closed-in back arranged with a varying number of shallow shelves for the reception of plates; hooks for mugs were often fixed upon the face of these shelves. Towards the end of the 17th century small cupboards were often added to the superstructure. The majority of these dressers were made of oak, but when, early in the Georgian period ​mahogany came into general use, they were frequently inlaid with that wood; holly and box were also used for inlaying, most frequently in the shape of plain bands or lines. A peculiarly effective combination of oak and mahogany is found in the dressers, as in other “farmhouse furniture,” made on the borders of Staffordshire and Shropshire. The excellence of the work of this kind in that district and in the country lying west of it may perhaps explain the expression “Welsh dresser,” which is now no more than a trade term, not necessarily suggestive of the place of origin, and applied to all dressers of this type. They are most frequently found in the houses of small yeomen and substantial farmers, into which fashion penetrated slowly. The dresser is now most familiar as necessary plenishing of the kitchen, in which it is invariably a fixture. In form it is essentially identical with the movable variety, but it is usually much larger, is made of deal or other soft wood, and the superstructure has no back.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Dreyfus, Alfred

See also Alfred Dreyfus on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​DREYFUS, ALFRED (1859– ), French soldier, of Jewish parentage, the scandal of whose condemnation for treason and subsequent rehabilitation convulsed French political life between 1894 and 1899, and only ended in 1906, was born in Mülhausen, Upper Alsace, removing to Paris in 1874. After going through the usual course of military instruction with credit, he became a sous-lieutenant in the artillery in 1882, and was promoted captain in 1889; and, after passing through the École de Guerre with distinction, he was appointed to the general staff. His name was, however, unknown to the general public till he was arrested on the 15th of October 1894 on a charge of selling military secrets to Germany, condemned, publicly degraded (January 4, 1895), and transported (March 10) to the Ile du Diable, French Guiana. The story of the subsequent proceedings in this celebrated case is told in the article Anti-Semitism, and need not here be repeated. It was not till 1899 that the unfortunate prisoner was brought back to France for retrial by court-martial, and even then, so strong was the anti-Semitic and military prejudice, he was again found guilty “with extenuating circumstances” at Rennes (September 9), though ten days later he was “pardoned” by President Loubet. It was not till the Cour de Cassation ordered a further investigation, and on the 12th of July 1906 decided that his conviction had been based on a forgery and that Dreyfus was innocent, that the agitation came to a final conclusion. He was then restored to his rank in the army and promoted major. But the anti-Semitic and anti-Dreyfusard spirit in certain French circles could not easily be quelled even then; and on the occasion of the translation of the remains of Emile Zola (Dreyfus’s determined champion) to the Pantheon on the 4th of June 1908, Major Dreyfus was shot at and wounded by a fanatical journalist named Gregori, who was subsequently acquitted by a Paris jury of the charge of attempted murder, his own plea being that he had merely intended a “demonstration.”
See Dreyfus’s own Five Years of my Life (1901), and literature cited under Anti-Semitism.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Drewenz

See also Drwęca on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​DREWENZ, a river of Germany, a right-bank tributary of the Vistula. It rises on the plateau of Hohenstein in East Prussia, 5 m. S.W. of the town of Hohenstein. After passing through the lake of Drewenz (7 m. long), it flows S.W. through flat marshy country, and forms, from just below the town of Strassburg to that of Leibitsch, a distance of 30 m., the frontier between Prussia and Russian Poland. After a course of 148 m. it enters the Vistula from the right, a little above the fortress of Thorn. It is navigable only for rafts. Lake Drewenz is connected with Elbing (and so with the Baltic) by the navigable Elbing-Oberland Canal.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bretwalda

See also Bretwalda on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​BRETWALDA, a word used in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle under the date 827, and also in a charter of Æthelstan, king of the English. It appears in several variant forms (brytenwalda, bretenanwealda, &c.), and means most probably “lord of the Britons” or “lord of Britain”; for although the derivation of the word is uncertain, its earlier syllable seems to be cognate with the words Briton and Britannia. In the Chronicle the title is given to Ecgbert, king of the English, “the eighth king that was Bretwalda,” and retrospectively to seven kings who ruled over one or other of the English kingdoms. The seven names are copied from Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica, and it is interesting to note that the last king named, Oswiu of Northumbria, lived 150 years before Ecgbert. It has been assumed that these seven kings exercised a certain superiority over a large part of England, but if such superiority existed it is certain that it was extremely vague and was unaccompanied by any unity of organization. Another theory is that Bretwalda refers to a war-leadership, or imperium, over the English south of the Humber, and has nothing to do with Britons or Britannia. In support of this explanation it is urged that the title is given in the Chronicle to Ecgbert in the year in which he “conquered the kingdom of the Mercians and all that was south of the Humber.” Less likely is the theory of Palgrave that the Bretwaldas were the successors of the pseudo-emperors, Maximus and Carausius, and claimed to share the imperial dignity of Rome; or that of Kemble, who derives Bretwalda from the British word breotan, to distribute, and translates it “widely ruling.” With regard to Ecgbert the word is doubtless given as a title in imitation of its earlier use, and the same remark applies to its use in Æthelstan’s charter.
See E. A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest, vol. i. (Oxford, 1877); W. Stubbs, Constitutional History, vol. i. (Oxford, 1897); J. R. Green, The Making of England, vol. ii. (London, 1897); F. Palgrave, The Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth (London, 1832); J. M. Kemble, The Saxons in England (London, 1876); J. Rhys, Celtic Britain (London, 1884).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Breughel, Pieter

See also Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Jan Brueghel the Elder on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​BREUGHEL (or Brueghel), PIETER, Flemish painter, was the son of a peasant residing in the village of Breughel near Breda. After receiving instruction in painting from Koek, whose daughter he married, he spent some time in France and Italy, and then went to Antwerp, where he was elected into the Academy in 1551. He finally settled at Brussels and died there. The subjects of his pictures are chiefly humorous figures, like those of D. Teniers; and if he wants the delicate touch and silvery clearness of that master, he has abundant spirit and comic power. He is said to have died about the year 1570 at the age of sixty; other accounts give 1590 as the date of his death.
His son Pieter, the younger (1564–1637), known as “Hell” Breughel, was born in Brussels and died at Antwerp, where his “Christ bearing the Cross” is in the museum.
Another son Jan (c. 1569–1642), known as “Velvet” Breughel, was born at Brussels. He first applied himself to painting flowers and fruits, and afterwards acquired considerable reputation by his landscapes and sea-pieces. After residing long at Cologne he travelled into Italy, where his landscapes, adorned with small figures, were greatly admired. He left a large number of pictures, chiefly landscapes, which are executed with great skill. Rubens made use of Breughel’s hand in the landscape part of several of his small pictures—such as his “Vertumnus and Pomona,” the “Satyr viewing the Sleeping Nymph,” and the “Terrestrial Paradise.”
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Brevet

See also Brevet (military) on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​BREVET (a diminutive of the Fr. bref), a short writing, originally an official writing or letter, with the particular meaning of a papal indulgence. The use of the word is mainly confined to a commission, or official document, giving to an officer in the army a permanent, as opposed to a local and temporary, rank in the service higher than that he holds substantively in his corps. In the British army “brevet rank” exists only above the rank of captain, but in the United States army it is possible to obtain a brevet as first lieutenant. In France the term breveté is particularly used with respect to the General Staff, to express the equivalent of the English “passed Staff College” (p.s.c.).