OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mackenzie, Alexander

See also Alexander Mackenzie (politician) on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​MACKENZIE, ALEXANDER (1822–1892), Canadian statesman, was born in Perthshire, Scotland, on the 28th of January, 1822. His father was a builder, and young Mackenzie emigrated to Canada in 1842, and worked in Ontario as a stone-mason, setting up for himself later as a builder and contractor at Sarnia with his brother. In 1852 his interest in questions of reform led to his becoming the editor of the Lambton Shield, a local Liberal paper. This brought him to the front, and in 1861 he became a member of the Canadian parliament, where he at once made his mark and was closely connected with the liberal leader, George Brown. He was elected for Lambton to the first Dominion house of commons in 1867, and soon became the leader of the liberal opposition; from 1871 to 1872 he also sat in the Ontario provincial assembly, and held the position of provincial treasurer. In 1873 the attack on Sir John Macdonald’s ministry with regard to the Pacific Railway charter resulted in its defeat, and Mackenzie formed a new government, taking the portfolio of public works and becoming the first liberal premier of Canada. He remained in power till 1878, when industrial depression enabled Macdonald to return to office on a protectionist programme. In 1875 Mackenzie paid a visit to Great Britain, and was received at Windsor by Queen Victoria; he was offered a knighthood, but declined it. After his defeat he suffered from failing health, gradually resulting in almost total paralysis, but though in 1880 he resigned the leadership of the opposition, he retained a seat in parliament till his death at Toronto on the 17th of April 1892. While perhaps too cautious to be the ideal leader of a young and vigorous community, his grasp of detail, indefatigable industry, and unbending integrity won him the respect even of his political opponents.
His Life and Times by William Buckingham and the Hon. George W. Ross (Toronto, 1892) contains documents of much interest. See also George Stewart, Canada under the Administration of the Earl of Dufferin (Toronto, 1878).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mackay

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​MACKAY, a seaport of Carlisle county, Queensland, Australia, on the Pioneer river, 625 m. direct N.N.W. Pop. (1901), 4091. The harbour is not good. Sugar, tobacco and coffee thrive in the district. There are several important sugar mills, one of which, the largest in Queensland, is capable of an annual output of 8000 tons. Rum is distilled, and there are a brewery and a factory for tinning butter for export. Workable coal is found in the district. This is the port of the Mt Orange and Mt Gotthart copper mines, and the Mt Britten and Eungella gold-fields. It is a calling-station for the Queensland royal mail steamers. The town is named after Captain John Mackay, who discovered the harbour in 1860.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mackay, Hugh

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​MACKAY, HUGH (c. 1640–1692), Scottish general, was the son of Hugh Mackay of Scourie, Sutherlandshire, and was born there about 1640. He entered Douglas’s (Dumbarton’s) regiment of the English army (now the Royal Scots) in 1660, accompanied it to France when it was lent by Charles II. to Louis XIV., and though succeeding, through the death of his two elder brothers, to his father’s estates, continued to serve abroad. In 1669 he was in the Venetian service at Candia, and in 1672 he was back with his old regiment, Dumbarton’s, in the French army, taking part under Turenne in the invasion of Holland. In 1673 he married Clara de Bie of Bommel in Gelderland. Through her influence he became, as Burnet says, “the most pious man that I ever knew in a military way,” and, convinced that he was fighting in an unjust cause, resigned his commission to take a captaincy in a Scottish regiment in the Dutch service. He had risen to the rank of major-general in 1685, when the Scots brigade was called to England to assist in the suppression of the Monmouth rebellion. Returning to Holland, Mackay was one of those officers who elected to stay with their men when James II., having again demanded the services of the Scots brigade, and having been met with a refusal, was permitted to invite the officers individually into his service. As major-general commanding the brigade, and also as a privy councillor of Scotland, Mackay was an important and influential person, and James chose to attribute the decision of most of the officers to Mackay’s instigation. Soon after this event the Prince of Orange started on his expedition to England, Mackay’s division leading the invading corps, and in January 1688–89 Mackay was appointed major-general commanding in chief in Scotland. In this capacity he was called upon to deal with the formidable insurrection headed by Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee. In the battle of Killiecrankie Mackay was severely defeated, but Dundee was killed, and the English commander, displaying unexpected energy, subdued the Highlands in one summer. In 1690 he founded Fort William at Inverlochy, in 1691 he distinguished himself in the brilliant victory of Aughrim, and in 1692, with the rank of lieutenant-general, he commanded the British division of the allied army in Flanders. At the great battle of Steinkirk Mackay’s division bore the brunt of the day unsupported and the general himself was killed.
Mackay was the inventor of the ring bayonet which soon came into general use, the idea of this being suggested to him by the failure of the plug-bayonet to stop the rush of the Highlanders at Killiecrankie. Many of his despatches and papers were published by the Bannatyne Club in 1883.
See Life by John Mackay of Rockville (1836); and J. W. Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. i.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mackenzie, Sir Alexander

See also Alexander Mackenzie (explorer) on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​MACKENZIE, SIR ALEXANDER (c. 1755–1820), Canadian explorer, was probably a native of Inverness, Emigrating to North America at an early age, he was for several years engaged in the fur trade at Fort Chippewyan, at the head of Lake Athabasca, and it was here that his schemes of travel were formed. His first journey, made in 1789, was from Fort Chippewyan along the Great Slave Lake, and down the river which now bears his name to the Arctic Ocean; and his second, made in 1792 and 1793, from Fort Chippewyan across the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific coast near Cape Menzies. He wrote an account of these journeys, Voyages on the River St Lawrence and through the Continent of North America to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans (London, 1801), which is of considerable interest from the information it contains about the native tribes. It is prefaced by an historical dissertation on the Canadian fur trade. Amassing considerable wealth, Mackenzie was knighted in 1802, and later settled in Scotland. He died at Mulnain, near Dunkeld, on the 11th of March 1820.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gadara

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​GADARA, an ancient town of the Syrian Decapolis, the capital of Peraea, and the political centre of the small district of Gadaris. It was a Greek city, probably entirely non-Syrian in origin. The earliest recorded event in its history is its capture by Antiochus III. of Syria in 218 B.C.; how long it may have existed before this date is unknown. About twenty years later it was besieged for ten months by Alexander Jannaeus. It was restored by Pompey, and in 30 B.C. was presented by Augustus to Herod the Great; on Herod’s death it was reunited to Syria. The coins of the place bear Greek legends, and such inscriptions as have been found on its site are Greek. Its governing and wealthy classes were probably Greek, the common people being Hellenized and Judaized Aramaeans. The community was Hellenistically organized, and though dependent on Syria and acknowledging the supremacy of Rome it was governed by a democratic senate and managed its own internal affairs. In the Jewish war it surrendered to Vespasian, but in the Byzantine period it again flourished and was the seat of a bishop. It was renowned for its hot sulphur baths; the springs still exist and show the remains of bath-houses. The temperature of the springs is 110° F. This town was the birthplace of Meleager the anthologist. There is a confusion in the narrative of the healing of the demoniac between the very similar names Gadara, Gerasa and Gergesa; but the probabilities, both textual and geographical, are in favour of the reading of Mark (Gerasenes, ch. v. 1, revised version); and that the miracle has nothing to do with Gadara, but took place at Kersa, on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee.
Gadara is now represented by Umm Kais, a group of ruins about 6 m. S.E. of the Sea of Galilee, and 1194 ft. above the sea-level. There are very fine tombs with carved sarcophagi in the neighbourhood. There are the remains of two theatres and (probably) a temple, and many heaps of carved stones, representing ancient buildings of various kinds. The walls are, or were, traceable for a circuit of 2 m., and there are also the remains of a street of columns. The natives are rapidly destroying the ruins by quarrying building material out of them.  (R. A. S. M.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gadolinium

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​GADOLINIUM (symbol Gd., atomic weight 157.3), one of the rare earth metals (see Erbium). The element was discovered in 1880 in the mineral samarskite by C. Marignac (Comptes rendus, 1880, 90, p. 899; Ann. chim. phys., 1880 [5] 20, p. 535). G. Urbain (Comptes rendus, 1905, 140, p. 583) separates the metal by crystallizing the double nitrate of nickel and gadolinium. The salts show absorption bands in the ultra-violet. The oxide Gd$_2$O$_3$ is colourless (Lecoq de Boisbaudran).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gadag

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​GADAG, or Garag, a town of British India, in the Dharwar district of Bombay, 43 m. E. of Dharwar town. Pop. (1901) 30,652. It is an important railway junction on the Southern Mahratta system, with a growing trade in raw cotton, and also in the weaving of cotton and silk. There are factories for ginning and pressing cotton, and a spinning mill. The town contains remains of a number of temples, some of which exhibit fine carving, while inscriptions in them indicate the existence of Gadag as early as the 10th century.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gade, Niels Wilhelm

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​GADE, NIELS WILHELM (1817–1890), Danish composer, was born at Copenhagen, on the 22nd of February 1817, his father being a musical instrument maker. He was intended for his father’s trade, but his passion for a musician’s career, made evident by the ease and skill with which he learnt to play upon a number of instruments, was not to be denied. Though he became proficient on the violin under Wexschall, and in the elements of theory under Weyse and Berggreen, he was to a great extent self-taught. His opportunities of hearing and playing in the great masterpieces were many, since he was a member of the court band. In 1840 his Aladdin and his overture of Ossian attracted attention, and in 1841 his Nachklänge aus Ossian overture gained the local musical society’s prize, the judges being Spohr and Schneider. This work also attracted the notice of the king, who gave the composer a stipend which enabled him to go to Leipzig and Italy. In 1844 Gade conducted the Gewandhaus concerts in Leipzig during Mendelssohn’s absence, and on the latter’s death became chief conductor. In 1848, on the outbreak of the Holstein War, he returned to Copenhagen, where he was appointed organist and conductor of the Musik-Verein. In 1852 he married a daughter of the composer J. P. E. Hartmann. He became court conductor in 1861, and was pensioned by the government in 1876—the year in which he visited Birmingham to conduct his Crusaders. This work, and the Frühlingsfantasie, the Erlkönigs Tochter, Frühlingsbotschaft and Psyche (written for Birmingham in 1882) have enjoyed a wide popularity. Indeed, they represent the strength and the weakness of Gade’s musical ability quite as well as any of his eight symphonies (the best of which are the first and fourth, while the fifth has an obbligato pianoforte part). Gade was distinctly a romanticist, but his music is highly polished and beautifully finished, lyrical rather than dramatic and effective. Much of the pianoforte music, Aquarellen, Spring Flowers, for instance, enjoyed a considerable vogue, as did the Novelletten trio; but Gade’s opera Mariotta has not been heard outside the Copenhagen opera house. He died at Copenhagen on the 21st of December 1890.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gabrieli, Giovanni

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​GABRIELI, GIOVANNI (1557–1612?), Italian musical composer, was born at Venice in 1557, and was a pupil of his uncle Andrea, a distinguished musician of the contrapuntal school and organist of St Mark’s. He succeeded Claudio Merulo as first organist of the same church in 1585, and died at Venice either in 1612 or 1613. He was remarkable for his compositions for several choirs, writing frequently for 12 or 16 voices, and is important as an early experimenter in chromatic harmony. It was probably for this reason that he made a special point of combining voices with instruments, being thus one of the founders of choral and orchestral composition. Among his pupils was Heinrich Schütz; and the church of St Mark, from the time of the Gabrielis onwards down to that of Lotti, became one of the most important musical schools in Europe.
See also Winterfeld, Johann Gabrieli und seine Zeit (1834).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gace Brulé

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​GACE BRULÉ (d. c. 1220), French trouvère, was a native of Champagne. It has generally been asserted that he taught Thibaut of Champagne the art of verse, an assumption which is based on a statement in the Chroniques de Saint-Denis: “Si fist entre lui [Thibaut] et Gace Brulé les plus belles chançons et les plus délitables et melodieuses qui onque fussent oïes.” This has been taken as evidence of collaboration between the two poets. The passage will bear the interpretation that with those of Gace the songs of Thibaut were the best hitherto known. Paulin Paris, in the Histoire littéraire de la France (vol. xxiii.), quotes a number of facts that fix an earlier date for Gace’s songs. Gace is the author of the earliest known jeu parti. The interlocutors are Gace and a count of Brittany who is identified with Geoffrey of Brittany, son of Henry II. of England. Gace appears to have been banished from Champagne and to have found refuge in Brittany. A deed dated 1212 attests a contract between Gatho Bruslé (Gace Brulé) and the Templars for a piece of land in Dreux. It seems most probable that Gace died before 1220, at the latest in 1225.
See Gédéon Busken Huet, Chansons de Gace Brulé, edited for the Société des anciens textes français (1902), with an exhaustive introduction. Dante quotes a song by Gace, Ire d’amor qui en mon cuer repaire, which he attributes erroneously to Thibaut of Navarre (De vulgari eloquentia, p. 151, ed. P. Rajna, Florence, 1895).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gachard, Louis Prosper

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​GACHARD, LOUIS PROSPER (1800–1885), Belgian man of letters, was born in Paris on the 12th of March 1800. He entered the administration of the royal archives in 1826, and was appointed director-general, a post which he held for fifty-five years. During this long period he reorganized the service, added to the records by copies taken in other European collections, travelled for purposes of study, and carried on a wide correspondence with other keepers of records, and with historical scholars. He also edited and published many valuable collections of state papers; a full list of his various publications was printed in the Annuaire de l’académie royale de Belgique by Ch. Piot in 1888, pp. 220–236. It includes 246 entries. He was the author of several historical writings, of which the best known are Don Carlos et Philippe II (1867), Études et notices historiques concernant l’histoire des Pays-Bas (1863), Histoire de la Belgique au commencement du XVIII $^e$ siècle (1880), Histoire politique et diplomatique de P. P. Rubens (1877), all published at Brussels. His chief editorial works are the Actes des états généraux des Pays-Bas 1576–1585 (Brussels, 1861–1866), Collection de documents inédits concernant l’histoire de la Belgique (Brussels, 1833–1835), and the Relations des ambassadeurs Vénitiens sur Charles V et Philippe II (Brussels, 1855). Gachard died in Brussels on the 24th of December 1885.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gabun

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​GABUN, a district on the west coast of Africa, one of the colonies forming French Congo (q.v.). It derives its designation from the settlements on the Gabun river or Rio de Gabão. The Gabun, in reality an estuary of the sea, lies immediately north of the equator. At the entrance, between Cape Joinville or Santa Clara on the N. and Cape Pangara or Sandy Point on the S., it has a width of about 10 m. It maintains a breadth of some 7 m. for a distance of 40 m. inland, when it contracts into what is known as the Rio Olambo, which is not more than 2 or 3 m. from bank to bank. Several rivers, of which the Komo is the chief, discharge their waters into the estuary. The Gabun was discovered by Portuguese navigators towards the close of the 15th century, and was named from its fanciful resemblance to a gabão or cabin. On the small island of Koniké, which lies about the centre of the estuary, scanty remains of a Portuguese fort have been discovered. The three principal tribes in the Gabun are the Mpongwe, the Fang and the Bakalai.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Maine, Anne Louise Bénédicte de Bourbon, Duchesse du

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​MAINE, ANNE LOUISE BÉNÉDICTE DE BOURBON, Duchesse du (1676–1753), daughter of Henri Jules de Bourbon, prince de Condé and Anne of Bavaria, was born on the 8th of November 1676. On the 19th of March 1692 she married Louis Auguste de Bourbon, duc du Maine, son of Louis XIV. and Mme de Montespan. The duchesse du Maine held a little court at Sceaux, where she gave brilliant entertainments and immersed herself in political intrigues. Displeased with the action of the regent Orleans in degrading the illegitimate children of Louis XIV. from their precedence above the peers of France, she induced her husband to join in the Cellamare conspiracy for the transference of the regency to the king of Spain. The plot, however, was discovered, and she was imprisoned in 1719. The following year she returned to Sceaux, where she resumed her salon and gathered round her a brilliant company of wits and poets. She died in Paris on the 23rd of January 1753.
See Général de Piépape, La Duchesse du Maine (1910).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mainpuri

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​MAINPURI, or Mynpooree, a town and district of British India, in the Agra division of the United Provinces. The town has a station on a branch of the East Indian railway recently opened from Shikohabad. Pop. (1901), 19,000. It consists of two separate portions, Mainpuri proper and Mukhamganj. Holkar plundered and burned part of the town in 1804, but was repulsed by the local militia. Since the British occupation the population has rapidly increased and many improvements have been carried out. The Agra branch of the Grand Trunk road runs through the town, forming a wide street lined on both sides by shops, which constitute the principal bazaar. Mainpuri has a speciality in the production of carved wooden articles inlaid with brass wire. The American Presbyterian mission manages a high school.
The District of Mainpuri lies in the central Doab. Area, 1675 sq. m. Pop. (1901), 829,357, an increase of 8.8% in the decade. It consists of an almost unbroken plain, intersected by small rivers, with a few undulating sand ridges. It is wooded throughout with mango groves, and isolated clumps of bábul trees occasionally relieve the bareness of its saline usar plains. On the south-western boundary the Jumna flows in a deep alluvial bed, sometimes sweeping close to the high banks which overhang its valley, and elsewhere leaving room for a narrow strip of fertile soil between the river and the upland plain. From the low-lying lands thus formed a belt of ravines stretches inland for some 2 m., often covered with jungle, but affording good pasturage for cattle. The district is watered by two branches of the Ganges canal, and is traversed by the main line of the East Indian railway.
Mainpuri anciently formed part of the great kingdom of Kanauj, and after the fall of that famous state it was divided into a number of petty principalities, of which Rapri and Bhongaon were the chief. In 1194 Rapri was made the seat of a Moslem governor. Mainpuri fell to the Moguls on Baber’s invasion in 1526, and, although temporarily wrested from them by the short-lived Afghan dynasty of Shere Shah, was again occupied by them on the reinstatement of Humayun after the victory of Panipat. Like the rest of the lower Doab, Mainpuri passed, towards the end of the 18th century, into the power of the Mahrattas, and finally became a portion of the province of Oudh. When this part of the country was ceded to the British, in 1801, Mainpuri town became the headquarters of the extensive district of Etawah, which was in 1856 reduced by the formation of Etah and Mainpuri into separate collectorates. On the outbreak of the Mutiny in 1857 the regiment stationed at Mainpuri revolted and attacked the town, which was successfully defended by the few Europeans of the station for a week, until the arrival of the Jhansi mutineers made it necessary to abandon the district.