OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Begas, Reinhold

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​BEGAS, REINHOLD (1831– ), German sculptor, younger son of Karl Begas, the painter, was born at Berlin on the 15th of July 1831. He received his early education (1846–1851) in the ateliers of C. D. Rauch and L. Wichmann. During a period of study in Italy, from 1856 to 1858, he was influenced by Böcklin and Lenbach in the direction of a naturalistic style in sculpture. This tendency was marked in the group “Borussia,” executed for the façade of the exchange in Berlin, which first brought him into general notice. In 1861 he was appointed professor at the art school at Weimar, but retained the appointment only a few months. That he was chosen, after competition, to execute the statue of Schiller for the Gendarmen Markt in Berlin, was a high tribute to the fame he had already acquired; and the result, one of the finest statues in the German metropolis, entirely justified his selection. Since the year 1870, Begas has entirely dominated the plastic art in Prussia, but especially in Berlin. Among his chief works during this period are the colossal statue of Borussia for the Hall of Glory; the Neptune fountain in bronze on the Schlossplatz; the statue of Alexander von Humboldt, all in Berlin; the sarcophagus of the emperor Frederick III. in the mausoleum of the Friedenskirche at Potsdam; and, lastly, the national monument to the emperor William (see Berlin), the statue of Bismarck before the Reichstag building, and several of the statues in the Siegesallee. He was also entrusted with the execution of the sarcophagus of the empress Frederick.
See A. G. Meyer, “Reinhold Begas” in Künstler-Monographien, ed. H. Knackfuss, Heft xx. (Bielefeld, 1897; new ed., 1901).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Champmeslé, Marie

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​CHAMPMESLÉ, MARIE (1642–1698), French actress, was born in Rouen of a good family. Her father’s name was Desmares. She made her first appearance on the stage at Rouen with Charles Chevillet (1645–1701), who called himself sieur de Champmeslé, and they were married in 1666. By 1669 they were playing in Paris at the Théatre du Marais, her first appearance there being as Venus in Boyer’s Fête de Venus. The next year, as Hermione in Racine’s Andromaque, she had a great success at the Hôtel de Bourgogne. Her intimacy with Racine dates from then. Some of his finest tragedies were written for her, but her repertoire was not confined to them, and many an indifferent play—like Thomas Corneille’s Ariane and Comte d’Essex—owed its success to “her natural manner of acting, and her pathetic rendering of the hapless heroine.” Phèdre was the climax of her triumphs, and when she and her husband deserted the Hôtel de Bourgogne (see Béjart ad fin.), it was selected to open the Comédie Française on the 26th of August 1680. Here, with Mme Guérin as the leading comedy actress, she played the great tragic love parts for more than thirty years, dying on the 15th of May 1698. La Fontaine dedicated to her his novel Belphégor, and Boileau immortalized her in verse. Her husband distinguished himself both as actor and playwright, and his Parisien (1682) gave Mme Guérin one of her greatest successes.
Her brother, the actor Nicolas Desmares (c. 1650–1714), began as a member of a subsidized company at Copenhagen, but by her influence he came to Paris and was received in 1685 sans début—the first time such an honour had been accorded—at the Comédie Française, where he became famous for peasant parts. His daughter, to whom Christian V. and his queen stood sponsors, Christine Antoinette Charlotte Desmares (1682–1753), was a fine actress in both tragedy and soubrette parts. She made her début at the Comédie Française in 1699, in La Grange Chancel’s Oreste et Pylade, and was at once received as sociétaire. She retired in 1721.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Chance

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​CHANCE (through the O. Fr. chéance, from the Late Lat. cadentia, things happening, from cadere, to fall out, happen; cf. “case”), an accident or event, a phenomenon which has no apparent or discoverable cause; hence an event which has not been expected, a piece of good or bad fortune. From the popular idea that anything of which no assignable cause is known has therefore no cause, chance (Gr. τύχη) was regarded as having a substantial objective existence, being itself the source of such uncaused phenomena. For the philosophic theories relating to this subject see Accidentalism.
“Chance,” in the theory of probability, is used in two ways. In the stricter, or mathematical usage, it is synonymous with probability; i.e. if a particular event may occur in n ways in an aggregate of p events, then the “chance” of the particular event occurring is given by the fraction n/p. In the second usage, the “chance” is regarded as the ratio of the number of ways which a particular event may occur to the number of ways in which it may not occur; mathematically expressed, this chance is n/(p−n) (see Probability). In the English law relating to gaming and wagering a distinction is drawn between games of chance and games of skill (see Gaming and Wagering).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Champollion, Jean François

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​CHAMPOLLION, JEAN FRANÇOIS (1790–1832), French Egyptologist, called le Jeune to distinguish him from Champollion-Figeac (q.v.), his elder brother, was born at Figeac, in the department of Lot, on the 23rd of December 1790. He was educated by his brother, and was then appointed government pupil at the Lyceum, which had recently been founded. His first work (1804) was an attempt to show by means of their names that the giants of the Bible and of Greek mythology were personifications of natural phenomena. At the age of sixteen (1807) he read before the academy of Grenoble a paper in which he maintained that the Coptic was the ancient language of Egypt. He soon after removed to Paris, where he enjoyed the friendship of Langlès, De Sacy and Millin. In 1809 he was made professor of history in the Lyceum of Grenoble, and there published his earlier works. Champollion’s first decipherment of hieroglyphics dates from 1821. In 1824 he was sent by Charles X. to visit the collections of Egyptian antiquities in the museums of Turin, Leghorn, Rome and Naples; and on his return he was appointed director of the Egyptian museum at the Louvre. In 1828 he was commissioned to undertake the conduct of a scientific expedition to Egypt in company with Rosellini, who had received a similar appointment from Leopold II., grand duke of Tuscany. He remained there about a year. In March 1831 he received the chair of Egyptian antiquities, which had been created specially for him, in the Collège de France. He was engaged with Rosellini in publishing the results of Egyptian researches at the expense of the Tuscan and French governments, when he was seized with a paralytic disorder, and died at Paris in 1832. Champollion, whose claims were hotly disputed for many years after his death, is now universally acknowledged to have been the founder of Egyptology.
He wrote L’Égypte sous les Pharaons (2 vols. 8vo, 1814); Sur l’écriture hiératique (1821); Sur l’écriture démotique; Précis du système hiéroglyphique, &c. (1824); Panthéon égyptien, ou collection des personnages mythologiques de l’ancienne Egypte (incomplete); ​Monumens de l’Égypte et de la Nubie considérés par rapport à l’histoire, la religion, &c.; Grammaire égyptienne (1836), and Dictionnaire égyptienne(1841), edited by his brother; Analyse méthodique du texte démotique de Rosette; Aperçu des résultats historiques de la découverte de l’alphabet hiéroglyphique (1827); Mémoires sur les signes employés par les Égyptiens dans leurs trois systèmes graphiques à la notation des principales divisions du temps; Lettres écrites d’Égypte et de Nubie (1833); and also several letters on Egyptian subjects, addressed at different periods to the duc de Blacas and others.
See H. Hartleben, Champollion, sein Leben und sein Werk (2 vols., 1906); also Egypt: Language and Writing (ad init.).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Champollion-Figeac, Jacques Joseph

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​CHAMPOLLION-FIGEAC, JACQUES JOSEPH (1778–1867), French archaeologist, elder brother of Jean François Champollion, was born at Figeac in the department of Lot, on the 5th of October 1778. He became professor of Greek and librarian at Grenoble, but was compelled to retire in 1816 on account of the part he had taken during the Hundred Days. He afterwards became keeper of manuscripts at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, and professor of palaeography at the École des Chartes. In 1849 he became librarian of the palace of Fontainebleau. He edited several of his brother’s works, and was also author of original works on philological and historical subjects, among which may be mentioned Nouvelles recherches sur les patois ou idiomes vulgaires de la France (1809), Annales de Lagides (1819) and Chartes latines sur papyrus du VI$^e$ siècle de l’ère chrétienne. His son Aimé (1812–1894) became his father’s assistant at the Bibliothèque Nationale, and besides a number of works on historical subjects wrote a biographical and bibliographical study of his family in Les Deux Champollion (Grenoble, 1887).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Chance-medley

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​CHANCE-MEDLEY (from the A.-Fr. chance-medlée, a mixed chance, and not from chaude-medlée, a hot affray), an accident of a mixed character, an old term in English law for a form of homicide arising out of a sudden affray or quarrel. The homicide has not the characteristic of “malice prepense” which would raise the death to murder, nor the completely accidental nature which would reduce it to homicide by misadventure. It was practically identical, therefore, with manslaughter.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Chancellorsville

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​CHANCELLORSVILLE, a village of Spottsylvania county, Virginia, U.S.A., situated almost midway between Washington and Richmond. It was the central point of one of the greatest battles of the Civil War, fought on the 2nd and 3rd of May 1863, between the Union Army of the Potomac under Major-General Hooker, and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia under General Lee. (See American Civil War, and Wilderness.) General “Stonewall” Jackson was mortally wounded in this battle.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Chintz

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​CHINTZ, a word derived from the Hindu chīnt, spotted or variegated. This name was given to a kind of stained or painted calico produced in India. It is now applied to a highly glazed printed calico, commonly made in several colours on a light ground and used for bed hangings, covering furniture, &c.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Chippewa Falls

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​CHIPPEWA FALLS, a city and the county-seat of Chippewa county, Wisconsin, U.S.A., on the Chippewa river, about 100 m. E. of St Paul, Minnesota, and 12 m. N.E. of Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Pop. (1890) 8670; (1900) 8094; (1910, census) 8893. It is served by the Minneapolis, St Paul & Sault Ste Marie, the Chicago & North-Western, and the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul railways, and by the electric line to Eau Claire. The first settlement on the site was made in 1837; and the city was chartered in 1870.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Chippenham

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​CHIPPENHAM, a market town and municipal borough in the Chippenham parliamentary division of Wiltshire, England, 94 m. W. of London by the Great Western railway. Pop. (1901) 5074. Chippenham is governed by a mayor, 4 aldermen and 12 councillors. Area, 361 acres. It lies in a hollow on the south side of the Upper Avon, here crossed by a picturesque stone bridge of 21 arches. St Andrew’s church, originally Norman of the 12th century, has been enlarged in different styles. A paved causeway running for about 4 m. between Chippenham Cliff and Wick Hill is named after Maud Heath, said to have been a market-woman, who built it in the 15th century, and bequeathed an estate for its maintenance. After the decline of its woollen and silk trades, Chippenham became celebrated for grain and cheese markets. There are also manufactures of broadcloth, churns, condensed milk, railway-signals, guns and carriages; besides bacon-curing works, flour mills, tanneries and large stone quarries. Bowood, the seat of the marquess of Lansdowne, is 31/2 m. S.E. of Chippenham. Lanhill barrow, or Hubba’s Low, 21/2 m. N.W., is an ancient tomb containing a kistvaen or sepulchral chamber of stone; it is probably British, though tradition makes it the grave of Hubba, a Danish leader.
Chippenham (Chepeham, Chippeham) was the site of a royal residence where in 853 Æthelwulf celebrated the marriage of his daughter Æthelswitha with Burhred, king of Mercia. The town also figured prominently in the Danish invasion of the 9th century, and in 933 was the meeting-place of the witan. In the Domesday Survey Chippenham appears as a crown manor and is not assessed in hides. The town was governed by a bailiff in the reign of Edward I., and returned two members to parliament from 1295, but it was not incorporated until 1553, when a charter from Mary established a bailiff and twelve burgesses and endowed the corporation with certain lands for the maintenance of two parliamentary burgesses and for the repair of the bridge over the Avon. In 1684 this charter was surrendered to Charles II., and in 1685 a new charter was received from James II., which was shortly abandoned in favour of the original grant. The Representation Act of 1868 reduced the number of parliamentary representatives to one, and the borough was disfranchised by the Redistribution Act of 1885. The derivation of Chippenham from cyppan, to buy, implies that the town possessed a market in Saxon times. When Henry VII. introduced the clothing manufacture into Wiltshire, Chippenham became an important centre of the industry, which has lapsed. A prize, however, was awarded to the town for this commodity at the Great Exhibition of 1851.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Chipping Norton

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​CHIPPING NORTON, a market town and municipal borough in the Banbury parliamentary division of Oxfordshire, England, 26 m. N.W. of Oxford by a branch of the Great Western railway. ​Pop. (1901) 3780. It lies on the steep flank of a hill, and consists mainly of one very wide street. The church of St Mary the Virgin, standing on the lower part of the slope, is a fine building of the Decorated and Perpendicular periods, the hexagonal porch and the clerestory being good examples of the later style. The town has woollen and glove factories, breweries and an agricultural trade. It is governed by a mayor, 4 aldermen and 12 councillors. Area, 2456 acres. Chipping Norton (Chepyngnorton) was probably of some importance in Saxon times. At the Domesday Survey it was held in chief by Ernulf de Hesding; it was assessed at fifteen hides, and comprised three mills. It returned two members to parliament as a borough in 1302 and 1304–1305, but was not represented after this date, and was not considered to be a borough in 1316. The first and only charter of incorporation was granted by James I., in 1608; it established a common council consisting of 2 bailiffs and 12 burgesses; a common clerk, 2 justices of the peace, and 2 serjeants-at-mace; and a court of record every Monday. In 1205 William Fitz-Alan was granted a four days’ fair at the feast of the Invention of the Cross; and in 1276 Roger, earl of March, was granted a four days’ fair at the feast of St Barnabas. In the reign of Henry VI. the market was held on Wednesday, and a fair was held at the Translation of St Thomas Becket. These continued to be held in the reign of James I., who annulled the former two fairs, and granted fairs at the feasts of St Mark, St Matthew, St Bartholomew, and SS. Simon and Jude.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Chinsura

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​CHINSURA, a town of British India, on the Hugli river, 24 m. above Calcutta, formerly the principal Dutch settlement in Bengal. The Dutch erected a factory here in 1656, on a healthy spot of ground, much preferable to that on which Calcutta is situated. In 1759 a British force under Colonel Forde was attacked by the garrison of Chinsura on its march to Chandernagore, but in less than half an hour the Dutch were entirely routed. In 1795, during the Napoleonic wars, the settlement was occupied by a British garrison. At the peace of 1814 it was restored to the Dutch. It was among the cessions in India made by the king of the Netherlands in 1825 in exchange for the British possessions in Sumatra. Hugli College is maintained by government; and there are a number of schools, several of which are carried on by Scottish Presbyterian missionaries. Chinsura is included in the Hugli municipality.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Chipping Campden

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​CHIPPING CAMPDEN, a market town in the northern parliamentary division of Gloucestershire, England, on the Oxford and Worcester line of the Great Western railway. Pop. (1901) 1542. It is picturesquely situated towards the north of the Cotteswold hill-district. The many interesting ancient houses afford evidence of the former greater importance of the town. The church of St James is mainly Perpendicular, and contains a number of brasses of the 15th and 16th centuries and several notable monumental tombs. A ruined manor house of the 16th century and some almshouses complete, with the church, a picturesque group of buildings; and Campden House, also of the 16th century, deserves notice.
Apart from a medieval tradition preserved by Robert de Brunne that it was the meeting-place of a conference of Saxon kings, the earliest record of Campden (Campedene) is in Domesday Book, when Earl Hugh is said to hold it, and to have there fifty villeins. The number shows that a large village was attached to the manor, which in 1173 passed to Hugh de Gondeville, and about 1204 to Ralph, earl of Chester. The borough must have grown up during the 12th century, for both these lords granted the burgesses charters which are known from a confirmation of 1247, granting that they and all who should come to the market of Campedene should be quit of toll, and that if any free burgess of Campedene should come into the lord’s amerciament he should be quit for 12d. unless he should shed blood or do felony. Probably Earl Ralph also granted the town a portman-mote, for the account of a skirmish in 1273 between the men of the town and the county mentions a bailiff and implies the existence of some sort of municipal government. In 1605 Campedene was incorporated, but it never returned representatives to parliament. Camden speaks of the town as a market famous for stockings, a relic of that medieval importance as a mart for wool that had given the town the name of Chipping.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Chiquitos

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​CHIQUITOS (Span. “very small”), a group of tribes in the province of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, and between the head waters of the rivers Mamoré and Itenez. When their country was first invaded they fled into the forests, and the Spaniards, coming upon their huts, the doorways of which are built excessively low, supposed them to be dwarfs: hence the name. They are in fact well formed and powerful, of middle height and of an olive complexion. They are an agricultural people, but made a gallant resistance to the Spaniards for nearly two centuries. In 1691, however, they made the Jesuit missionaries welcome, and rapidly became civilized. The Chiquito language was adopted as the means of communication among the converts, who soon numbered 50,000, representing nearly fifty tribes. Upon the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767 the Chiquitos became decadent, and now number short of 20,000. Their houses, regularly ranged in streets, are built of adobes thatched with coarse grass. They manufacture copper boilers for making sugar and understand several trades, weave ponchos and hammocks and make straw hats. They are fond of singing and dancing, and are a gentle-mannered and hospitable folk. The group is now divided into forty tribes.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Clive, Caroline

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​CLIVE, CAROLINE (1801–1873), English authoress, was born in London on the 24th of June 1801, the daughter of Mr Meysey-Wigley, M.P. for Worcester. She married, in 1840, the Rev. Archer Clive. She published, over the signature “V.,” eight volumes of poetry, but is best known as the author of Paul Ferrell (1855), a sensational novel, and Why Paul Ferrell killed his Wife (1860). She died on the 13th of July 1873, at Whitfield, Herefordshire.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Clive, Catherine

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​CLIVE, CATHERINE [Kitty] (1711–1785), British actress, was born, probably in London, in 1711. Her father, William Raftor, an Irishman of good family but small means, had held a captain’s commission in the French army under Louis XIV. From her earliest years she showed a talent for the stage, and about 1728 became a member of the company at Drury Lane, of which Colley Cibber was then manager. Her first part was that of the page Ismenes (“with a song”) in the tragedy Mithridates. Shortly afterwards she married George Clive, a barrister and a relative of the 1st Lord Clive, but husband and wife soon separated by mutual consent. In 1731 she definitely established her reputation as a comic actress and singer in Charles Coffey’s farce-opera adaptation, The Devil to Pay, and from this time she was always a popular favourite. She acted little outside Drury Lane, where in 1747 she became one of the original ​members of Garrick’s company. She took part, however, in some of the oratorios of Handel, whose friend she was. In 1769, having been a member of Garrick’s company for twenty-two years, she quitted the stage, and lived for sixteen years in retirement at a villa at Twickenham, which had been given her some time previously by her friend Horace Walpole. Mrs Clive had small claim to good looks, but as an actress of broad comedy she was unreservedly praised by Goldsmith, Johnson and Garrick. She had a quick temper, which on various occasions involved her in quarrels, and at times sorely tried the patience of Garrick, but her private life remained above suspicion, and she regularly supported her father and his family. She died at Twickenham on the 6th of December 1785. Horace Walpole placed in his garden an urn to her memory, bearing an inscription, of which the last two lines run:
“The comic muse with her retired And shed a tear when she expired.”
See Percy Fitzgerald, Life of Mrs Catherine Clive (1888); W. R. Chetwood, General History of the Stage (1749); Thomas Davies, Memoirs of the Life of David Garrick (1784).