OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gorsas, Antoine Joseph

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​GORSAS, ANTOINE JOSEPH (1752–1793), French publicist and politician, was born at Limoges (Haute-Vienne) on the 24th of March 1752, the son of a shoemaker. He established himself as a private tutor in Paris, and presently set up a school for the army at Versailles, which was attended by commoners as well as nobles. In 1781 he was imprisoned for a short time in the Bicêtre on an accusation of corrupting the morals of his pupils, his real offence being the writing of satirical verse. These circumstances explain the violence of his anti-monarchical sentiment. At the opening of the states-general he began to publish the Courrier de Versailles à Paris et de Paris à Versailles, in which appeared on the 4th of October 1789 the account of the banquet of the royal bodyguard. Gorsas is said to have himself read it in public at the Palais Royal, and to have headed one of the columns that marched on Versailles. He then changed the name of his paper to the Courrier des quatre-vingt-trois départements, continuing his incendiary propaganda, which had no small share in provoking the popular insurrections of June and August 1792. During the September massacres he wrote in his paper that the prisons were the centre of an anti-national conspiracy and that the people exercised a just vengeance on the guilty. On the 10th of September 1792 he was elected to the Convention for the department of Seine-et-Oise, and on the 10th of January 1793 was elected one of its secretaries. He sat at first with the Mountain, but having been long associated with Roland and Brissot, his agreement with the Girondists became gradually more pronounced; during the trial of Louis XVI. he dissociated himself more and more from the principles of the Mountain, and he voted for the king’s detention during the war and subsequent banishment. A violent attack on Marat in the Courrier led to an armed raid on his printing establishment on the 9th of March 1793. The place was sacked, but Gorsas escaped the popular fury by flight. The facts being reported to the Convention, little sympathy was shown to Gorsas, and a resolution (which was evaded) was passed forbidding representatives to occupy themselves with journalism. On the 2nd of June he was ordered by the Convention to hold himself under arrest with other members of his party. He escaped to Normandy to join Buzot, and after the defeat of the Girondists at Pacy-sur-Eure he found shelter in Brittany. He was imprudent enough to return to Paris in the autumn, where he was arrested on the 6th of October and guillotined the next day.
See the Moniteur, No. 268 (1792), Nos. 20, 70 new series 18 (1793); M. Tourneux, Bibl. de l’hist. de Paris, 10,291 seq. (1894).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gorget

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​GORGET (O. Fr. gorgete, dim. of gorge, throat), the name applied after about 1480 to the collar-piece of a suit of armour. It was generally formed of small overlapping rings of plate, and attached either to the body armour or to the armet. It was worn in the 16th and 17th centuries with the half-armour, with the plain cuirass, and even occasionally without any body armour at all. During these times it gradually became a distinctive badge for officers, and as such it survived in several armies—in the form of a small metal plate affixed to the front of the collar of the uniform coat—until after the Napoleonic wars. In the German army to-day a gorget-plate of this sort is the distinctive mark of military police, while the former officer’s gorget is represented in British uniforms by the red patches or tabs worn on the collar by staff officers and by the white patches of the midshipmen in the Royal Navy.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gorgias

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​GORGIAS (c. 483–375 B.C.), Greek sophist and rhetorician, was a native of Leontini in Sicily. In 427 he was sent by his fellow-citizens at the head of an embassy to ask Athenian protection against the aggression of the Syracusans. He subsequently settled in Athens, and supported himself by the practice of oratory and by teaching rhetoric. He died at Larissa in Thessaly. His chief claim to recognition consists in the fact that he transplanted rhetoric to Greece, and contributed to the diffusion of the Attic dialect as the language of literary prose. He was the author of a lost work On Nature or the Non-existent (Περὶ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος ἢ περὶ φύσεως, fragments edited by M. C. Valeton, 1876), the substance of which may be gathered from the writings of Sextus Empiricus, and also from the treatise (ascribed to Theophrastus) De Melisso, Xenophane, Gorgia. Gorgias is the central figure in the Platonic dialogue Gorgias. The genuineness of two rhetorical exercises (The Encomium of Helen and The Defence of Palamedes, edited with Antiphon by F. Blass in the Teubner series, 1881), which have come down under his name, is disputed.
For his philosophical opinions see Sophists and Scepticism. See also Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, Eng. trans. vol. i. bk. iii. chap. vii.; Jebb’s Attic Orators, introd. to vol. i. (1893); F. Blass, Die attische Beredsamkeit, i. (1887); and article Rhetoric.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gorki, Maxim

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​GORKI, MAXIM (1868– ), the pen-name of the Russian novelist Alexei Maximovich Pyeshkov, who was born at Nizhni-Novgorod on the 26th of March 1868. His father was a dyer, but he lost both his parents in childhood, and in his ninth year was sent to assist in a boot-shop. We find him afterwards in a variety of callings, but devouring books of all sorts greedily, whenever they fell into his hands. He ran away from the boot-shop and went to help a land-surveyor. He was then a cook on board a steamer and afterwards a gardener. In his fifteenth year he tried to enter a school at Kazan, but was obliged to betake himself again to his drudgery. He became a baker, than hawked about kvas, and helped the barefooted tramps and labourers at the docks. From these he drew some of his most striking pictures, and learned to give sketches of humble life generally with the fidelity of a Defoe. After a long course of drudgery he had the good fortune to obtain the place of secretary to a barrister at Nizhni-Novgorod. This was the turning-point of his fortunes, as he found a sympathetic master who helped him. He also became acquainted with the novelist Korolenko, who assisted him in his literary efforts. His first story was Makar Chudra, which was published in the journal Kavkaz. He contributed to many periodicals and finally attracted attention by his tale called Chelkash, which appeared in Russkoe Bogatsvo (“Russian wealth”). This was followed by a series of tales in which he drew with extraordinary vigour the life of the bosniaki, or tramps. He has sometimes described other classes of society, tradesmen and the educated classes, but not with equal success. There are some vigorous pictures, however, of the trading class in his Foma Gordeyev. But his favourite type is the rebel, the man in revolt against society, and him he describes from personal knowledge, and enlists our sympathies with him. We get such a type completely in Konovalov. Gorki is always preaching that we must have ideals—something better than everyday life, and this view is brought out in his play At the Lowest Depths, which had great success at Moscow, but was coldly received at St Petersburg.
For a good criticism of Gorki see Ideas and Realities in Russian Literature, by Prince Kropotkin. Many of his works have been translated into English.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gorinchem

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​GORINCHEM, or Gorcum, a fortified town of Holland in the province of south Holland, on the right bank of the Merwede at the confluence of the Linge, 16 m. by rail W. of Dordrecht. It is connected by the Zederik and Merwede canals with Amsterdam, and steamers ply hence in every direction. Pop. (1900) 11,987. Gorinchem possesses several interesting old houses, and overlooking the river are some fortified gateways of the 17th century. The principal buildings are the old church of St Vincent, containing the monuments of the lords of Arkel; the town hall, a prison, custom-house, barracks and a military hospital. The charitable and benevolent institutions are numerous, and there are also a library and several learned associations. Gorinchem possesses a good harbour, and besides working in gold and silver, carries on a considerable trade in grain, hemp, cheese, potatoes, cattle and fish, the salmon fishery being noted. Woerkum, or Woudrichem, a little below the town on the left bank of the Merwede, is famous for its quaint old buildings, which are decorated with mosaics.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mahi

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​MAHI, a river of western India, which rises in Central India and, after flowing through south Rajputana, enters Gujarat and falls into the sea by a wide estuary near Cambay; total length, 300 m.; estimated drainage area, 16,000 sq. m. It has given its name to the Mahi Kantha agency of Bombay, and also to the mehwasis, marauding highlanders often mentioned in Mahommedan chronicles.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mahmud I.

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​MAHMUD I. (1696–1754), sultan of Turkey, was the son of Mustafa II., and succeeded his uncle Ahmed III. in 1730. After the suppression of a military revolt the war with Persia was continued with varying success, and terminated in 1736 by a treaty of peace restoring the status quo ante bellum. The next enemy whom Turkey was called upon to face was Russia, later joined by Austria. War went on for four years; the successes gained by Russia were outweighed by Austria’s various reverses, terminating by the defeat of Wallis at Krotzka, and the peace concluded at Belgrade was a triumph for Turkish diplomacy. The sultan, throughout desirous for peace, is said to have been much under the influence of the chief eunuch, Haji Beshir Aga. In 1754 Mahmud died of heart-disease when returning from the Friday service at the mosque. He had a passion for building, to which are due numberless kiosques, where nocturnal orgies were carried on by him and his boon companions. In this reign the system of appointing Phanariote Greeks to the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia was instituted. (See Phanariotes.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mahoba

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​MAHOBA, an ancient town in India, in Hamirpur district of the United Provinces. Pop. (1901), 10,074. As the capital of the Chandel dynasty, who ruled over Bundelkhand from the 9th to the 13th century, the neighbourhood is covered with architectural antiquities, prominent among which are artificial lakes, formed by banking up valleys with masonry dams. The largest of these is more than 4 m. in circuit.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mahmud Nedim Pasha

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​MAHMUD NEDIM PASHA (c. 1818–1883), Turkish statesman, was the son of Nejib Pasha, ex-governor-general of Bagdad. After occupying various subordinate posts at the Porte he became successively under-secretary of state for foreign affairs, governor-general of Syria and Smyrna, minister of commerce, and governor-general of Tripoli; minister successively of justice and of marine (1869); grand vizier from 1871 to 1872 and from 1875 to 1876. He was high in favour with Sultan Abd-ul-Aziz and fell much under the influence of General Ignatiev, the forceful Russian ambassador before the war of 1877–78, his subserviency to Russia earning for him the nickname of “Mahmudoff.” His administration was most unsuccessful from every point of view, and he was largely responsible for the issue of the decree suspending the interest on the Turkish funds. He was minister of the interior from 1879 to 1883.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mahogany

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​MAHOGANY, a dark-coloured wood largely used for household furniture, the product of a large tree indigenous to Central America and the West Indies. It was originally received from Jamaica; 521,300 ft. were exported from that island in 1753. It is known botanically as Swietenia Mahogani, and is a member of the order Meliaceae. It bears compound leaves, resembling those of the ash, and clusters of small flowers, with five sepals and petals and ten stamens which are united into a tube. The fruit is a pear-shaped woody capsule, and contains many winged seeds. The dark-coloured bark has been considered a febrifuge, and the seeds were used by the ancient Aztecs with oil for a cosmetic, but the most valuable product is the timber, first noticed by the carpenter on board Sir Walter Raleigh’s ship in 1595 for its great beauty, hardness and durability. Dr Gibbons brought it into notice as well adapted for furniture in the early part of the 18th century, and its use as a cabinet wood was first practically established by a cabinet-maker named Wollaston, who was employed by Gibbons to work up some mahogany brought to England by his brother. It was introduced into India in 1795, and is now cultivated in Bengal and as far north as Saharunpur.
The timber of species of Cedrela and Melia, other members of the order Meliaceae, are used as Mahogany, and the product of the West African Khaya senegalensis is known as African mahogany. There is some confusion between the product of these various trees. Herbert Stone (The Timbers of Commerce, 1904) says: “The various species of mahogany and cedar are so confusing that it is difficult to make precise statements as to their structure or origin. I know of no convincing proof that any of the American kinds met with on the English market are the wood of Swietenia Mahogani, nor that those shipped from Africa are the wood of Khaya senegalensis. These two genera are very nearly allied to Cedrela and Melia, and it is difficult to separate any of the four from the rest by the characters of the wood. After giving the most careful attention to every detail, I lean to the view that most if not all of the mahoganies commonly met with are Cedrelas.”
Kiggelaria Dregeana (natural order Bixineae), a native of South Africa, is known as Natal mahogany.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mahi Kantha

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​MAHI KANTHA, a political agency or collection of native states in India, within the Gujarat division of Bombay. Over half the territory is covered by the native state of Idar. There are eleven other chiefships, and a large number of estates belonging to Rajput or Koli thakurs, formerly feudatories of Baroda. Several of the states are under British administration. Total area, 3125 sq. m.; pop. (1901), 361,545, showing a decrease of 38% in the decade, due to famine; estimated revenue, £76,000; tribute (mostly to the gaekwar of Baroda), £9000. Many of the inhabitants belong to the wild tribes of Bhils and Kolis. In 1897 a metre-gauge railway was opened from Ahmedabad through Parantij to Ahmednagar. At Sadra is the Scott College for the education of the sons of chiefs on the lines of an English public school. There are also Anglo-vernacular schools at Sadra, Idar and Mansa. The famine of 1899–1900 was severely felt in this tract.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gelsenkirchen

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​GELSENKIRCHEN, a town of Germany in the Prussian province of Westphalia, 27 m. W. of Dortmund on the railway Duisburg-Hamm. Pop. (1905) 147,037. It has coal mines, iron furnaces, steel and boiler works, and soap, glass and chemical factories. In 1903 various neighbouring industrial townships were incorporated with the town.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gemini

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​GEMINI (“The Twins,” i.e. Castor and Pollux), in astronomy, the third sign in the zodiac, denoted by the symbol ♊︎. It is also a constellation, mentioned by Eudoxus (4th century B.C.) and Aratus (3rd century B.C.), and catalogued by Ptolemy, 25 stars, Tycho Brahe 25, and Hevelius 38. By the Egyptians this constellation was symbolized as a couple of young kids; the Greeks altered this symbol to two children, variously said to be Castor and Pollux, Hercules and Apollo, or Triptolemus and Iasion; the Arabians used the symbol of a pair of peacocks. Interesting objects in this constellation are: α Geminorum or Castor, a very fine double star of magnitudes 2.0 and 2.8, the fainter component is a spectroscopic binary; η Geminorum, a long period (231 days) variable, the extreme range in magnitude being 3.2 to 4; ζ Geminorum, a short period variable, 10.15 days, the extreme range in magnitude being 3.7 to 4.5; Nova Geminorum, a “new” star discovered in 1903 by H. H. Turner of Oxford; and the star cluster M.35 Geminorum, a fine and bright, but loose, cluster, with very little central condensation.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Geminiani, Francesco

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​GEMINIANI, FRANCESCO (c. 1680–1762), Italian violinist, was born at Lucca about 1680. He received lessons in music from Alessandro Scarlatti, and studied the violin under Lunati (Gobbo) and afterwards under Corelli. In 1714 he arrived in London, where he was taken under the special protection of the earl of Essex, and made a living by teaching and writing music. In 1715 he played his violin concertos with Handel at the English court. After visiting Paris and residing there for some time, he returned to England in 1755. In 1761 he went to Dublin, where a servant robbed him of a musical manuscript on which he had bestowed much time and labour. His vexation at this loss is said to have hastened his death on the 17th of September 1762. He appears to have been a first-rate violinist, but most of his compositions are dry and deficient in melody. His Art of Playing the Violin is a good work of its kind, but his Guida ​armonica is an inferior production. He published a number of solos for the violin, three sets of violin concertos, twelve violin trios, The Art of Accompaniment on the Harpsichord, Organ, &c., Lessons for the Harpsichord and some other works.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gendarmerie

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​GENDARMERIE, originally a body of troops in France composed of gendarmes or men-at-arms. In the days of chivalry they were mounted and armed cap-à-pie, exactly as were the lords and knights, with whom they constituted the most important part of an army. They were attended each by five soldiers of inferior rank and more lightly armed. In the later middle ages the men-at-arms were furnished by owners of fiefs. But after the Hundred Years’ War this feudal gendarmerie was replaced by the compagnies d’ordonnance which Charles VII. formed when the English were driven out of France, and which were distributed throughout the whole extent of the kingdom for preserving order and maintaining the king’s authority. These companies, fifteen in number, were composed of 100 lances or gendarmes fully equipped, each of whom was attended by at least three archers, one coutillier (soldier armed with a cutlass) and one varlet (soldier’s servant). The states-general of Orleans (1439) had voted a yearly subsidy of 1,200,000 livres in perpetuity to keep up this national soldiery, which replaced, and in fact was recruited chiefly amongst, the bands of mercenaries who for about a century had made France their prey. The number and composition of the compagnies d’ordonnance were changed more than once before the reign of Louis XIV. This sovereign on his accession to the throne found only eight companies of gendarmes surviving out of an original total of more than one hundred, but after the victory of Fleurus (1690), which had been decided by their courage, he increased their number to sixteen. The four first companies (which were practically guard troops) were designated by the names of Gendarmes écossais, Gendarmes anglais, Gendarmes bourguignons and Gendarmes flamands, from the nationality of the soldiers who had originally composed them; but at that time they consisted entirely of French soldiers and officers. These four companies had a captain-general, who was the king. The fifth company was that of the queen; and the others bore the name of the princes who respectively commanded them. This organization was dissolved in 1788. The Revolution swept away all these institutions of the monarchy, and, with the exception of a short revival of the Gendarmes de la garde at the Restoration, henceforward the word “gendarmerie” possesses an altogether different significance—viz. military police.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gembloux

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​GEMBLOUX, a town in the province of Namur and on the borders of Brabant, Belgium, 25 m. S.E. of Brussels on the main line to Namur and Luxemburg. Pop. (1904) 4643. It is a busy place with large railway and engine works, and the junction for several branch lines. On the 31st of January 1578 Don John of Austria gained here a signal victory over the army of the provinces led by Antony de Goignies.