OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Polish Succession War

See also War of the Polish Succession on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​ POLISH SUCCESSION WAR (1733-1735), the name given to a war which arose out of the competition for the throne of Poland between the elector August of Saxony, son of August II. (the Strong), and Stanislaus Leszcynski, the king of Poland installed thirty years before by Charles XII. of Sweden and displaced by ​August the Strong when Charles's projects collapsed. The claims of Stanislaus were supported by France, Spain and Sardinia, those of the Saxon prince by Russia and the empire, the local quarrel being made the pretext for the settlement of minor outstanding claims of the great powers amongst themselves. The war was therefore a typical 18th century “war with a limited object,” in which no one but the cabinets and the professional armies were concerned. It was fought on two theatres, the Rhine and Italy. The Rhine campaigns were entirely unimportant, and are remembered only for the last appearance in the field of Prince Eugène and Marshal Berwick—the latter was killed at the siege of Philippsburg—and the baptism of fire of the young crown prince of Prussia, afterwards Frederick the Great. In Italy, however, there were three hard-fought—though indecisive—battles, Parma (June 29, 1734), Luzzara (Sept. 19, 1734) and Bitonto (May 25, 1735), the first and last won by the Austrians, the second by the French and their allies. In Poland itself, Stanislaus, elected king in September 1733, was soon expelled by a Russian army and was afterwards besieged in Danzig by the Russians and Saxons (Feb.-June 1733).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Khotin

See also Khotyn on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​KHOTIN, or Khoteen (variously written Khochim, Choczim, and Chocim), a fortified town of South Russia, in the government of Bessarabia, in 48° 30′ N. and 26° 30′ E., on the right bank of the Dniester, near the Austrian (Galician) frontier, and opposite Podolian Kamenets. Pop. (1897), 18,126. It possesses a few manufactures (leather, candles, beer, shoes, bricks), and carries on a considerable trade, but has always been of importance mainly as a military post, defending one of the most frequented passages of the Dniester. In the middle ages it was the seat of a Genoese colony; and it has been in Polish, Turkish and Austrian possession. The chief events in its annals are the defeat of the Turks in 1621 by Ladislaus IV., of Poland, in 1673 by John Sobieski, of Poland, and in 1739 by the Russians under Münnich; the defeat of the Russians by the Turks in 1768; the capture by the Russians in 1769, and by the Austrians in 1788; and the occupation by the Russians in 1806. It finally passed to Russia with Bessarabia in 1812 by the peace of Bucharest.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Khunsar

See also Khansar, Iran on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​KHUNSAR, a town of Persia, sometimes belonging to the province of Isfahan, at others to Irak, 96 m. N.W. of Isfahan, in 33° 9′ N., 50° 23′ E., at an elevation of 7600 ft. Pop., about 10,000. It is picturesquely situated on both sides of a narrow valley through which the Khunsar River, a stream about 12 ft. wide, flows in a north-east direction to Kuom. The town and its fine gardens and orchards straggle some 6 m. along the valley with a mean breadth of scarcely half a mile. There is a great profusion of fruit, the apples yielding a kind of cider which, however, does not keep longer than a month. The climate is cool in summer and cold in winter. There are five caravanserais, three mosques and a post office.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Kiakhta

See also Kyakhta on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​KIAKHTA, a town of Siberia, one of the chief centres of trade between Russia and China, on the Kiakhta, an affluent of the Selenga, and on an elevated plain surrounded by mountains, in the Russian government of Transbaikalia, 320 m. S.W. of Chita, the capital, and close to the Chinese frontier, in 50° 20′ N., 106° 40′ E. Besides the lower town or Kiakhta proper, the municipal jurisdiction comprises the fortified upper town of Troitskosavsk, about 2 m. N., and the settlement of Ust-Kiakhta, 10 m. farther distant. The lower town stands directly opposite to the Chinese emporium of Maimachin, is surrounded by walls, and consists principally of one broad street and a large exchange courtyard. From 1689 to 1727 the trade of Kiakhta was a government monopoly, but in the latter year it was thrown open to private merchants, and continued to improve until 1860, when the right of commercial intercourse was extended along the whole Russian-Chinese frontier. The annual December fairs for which Kiakhta was formerly famous, and also the regular traffic passing through the town, have considerably fallen off since that date. The Russians exchange here leather, sheepskins, furs, horns, woollen cloths, coarse linens and cattle for teas (in value 95% of the entire imports), porcelain, rhubarb, manufactured silks, nankeens and other Chinese produce. The population, including Ust-Kiakhta (5000) and Troitskosavsk (9213 in 1897), is nearly 20,000.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Khorremabad

See also Khorremabad on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​KHORREMABAD, a town of Persia, capital of the province of Luristan, in 33° 32′ N., 48° 15′ E., and at an elevation of 4250 ft. Pop. about 6000. It is situated 138 m. W.N.W. of Isfahan and 117 m. S.E. of Kermanshah, on the right bank of the broad but shallow Khorremabad river, also called Ab-i-istaneh, and, lower down, Kashgan Rud. On an isolated rock between the town and the river stands a ruined castle, the Diz-i-siyah (black castle), the residence of the governor of the district (then called Samha) in the middle ages, and, with some modern additions, one of them consisting of rooms on the summit, called Felek ul aflak (heaven of heavens), the residence of the governors of Luristan in the beginning of the 19th century. At the foot of the castle stands the modern residence of the governor, built c. 1830, with several spacious courts and gardens. On the left bank of the river opposite the town are the ruins of the old city of Samha. There are a minaret 60 ft. high, parts of a mosque, an aqueduct, a number of walls of other buildings and a four-sided monolith, measuring 91/2 ft. in height, by 3 ft. long and 21/3 broad, with an inscription partly illegible, commemorating Mahmud, a grandson of the Seljuk king Malik Shah, and dated A.H. 517, or 519 (A.D. 1148–1150). There also remain ten arches of a bridge which led over the river from Samha on to the road to Shapurkhast, a city situated some distance west.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Khurja

See also Khurja on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​KHURJA, a town of British India, in the Bulandshahr district of the United Provinces, 27 m. N.W. of Aligarh, near the main ​line of the East Indian railway. Pop. (1901), 29,277. It is an important centre of trade in grain, indigo, sugar and ghi, and has cotton gins and presses and a manufacture of pottery. Jain traders form a large and wealthy class; and the principal building in the town is a modern Jain temple, a fine domed structure richly carved and ornamented in gold and colours.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Khulna

See also Khulna and Khulna District on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​KHULNA, a town and district of British India, in the Presidency division of Bengal. The town stands on the river Bhairab, and is the terminus of the Bengal Central railway, 109 m. E. of Calcutta. Pop. (1901), 10,426. It is the most important centre of river-borne trade in the delta.
The District of Khulna lies in the middle of the delta of the Ganges, including a portion of the Sundarbans or seaward fringe of swamps. It was formed out of Jessore in 1882. Area (excluding the Sundarbans), 2077 sq. m. Besides the Sundarbans, the north-east part of the district is swampy; the north-west is more elevated and drier, while the central part, though low-lying, is cultivated. The whole is alluvial. In 1901 the population was 1,253,043, showing an increase of 6% in the decade. Rice is the principal crop; mustard, jute and tobacco are also grown, and the fisheries are important. Sugar is manufactured from the date palm. The district is entered by the Bengal Central railway, but by far the greater part of the traffic is carried by water.
See District Gazetteer (Calcutta, 1908).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Laurustinus

See also Laurustinus on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​LAURUSTINUS, in botany, the popular name of a common hardy evergreen garden shrub known botanically as Viburnum Tinus, with rather dark-green ovate leaves in pairs and flat-topped clusters (or corymbs) of white flowers, which are rose-coloured before expansion, and appear very early in the year. It is a native of the Mediterranean region, and was in cultivation in Britain at the end of the 16th century. Viburnum belongs to the natural order Caprifoliaceae and includes the common wayfaring tree (V. Lantana) and the guelder rose (V. Opulus).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Laurvik

See also Larvik on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​LAURVIK, Larvik or Laurvig, a seaport of Norway, in Jarlsberg and Laurvik amt (county), at the head of a short fjord near the mouth of the Laagen river, 98 m. S.S.W. of Christiania by the Skien railway. Pop. (1900) 10,664. It has various industries, including saw and planing mills, shipbuilding, glass-works and factories for wood-pulp, barrels and potato flour; and an active trade in exporting timber, ice, wood-pulp and granite, chiefly to Great Britain, and in importing from the same country coal and salt. The port has a depth of 18 to 24 ft. beside the quays. Four miles south is Fredriksvaern, formerly a station of the Norwegian fleet and the seat of a naval academy. Laurviks Bad is a favourite spa, with mineral and sulphur springs and mud-baths.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Laurium (Michigan)

See also Laurium, Michigan on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​LAURIUM, a village of Houghton county, Michigan, U.S.A., near the centre of Keweenaw peninsula, the northern extremity of the state. Pop. (1890) 1159; (1900) 5643, of whom 2286 were foreign-born; (1904) 7653; (1910) 8537. It is served by ​the Mineral Range and the Mohawk and Copper Range railways. It is in one of the most productive copper districts in the United States, and copper mining is its chief industry. Immediately W. of Laurium is the famous Calumet and Hecla mine. The village was formerly named Calumet, and was incorporated under that name in 1889, but in 1895 its name was changed by the legislature to Laurium, in allusion to the mineral wealth of Laurium in Greece. The name Calumet is now applied to the post office in the village of Red Jacket (incorporated 1875; pop. 1900, 4668; 1904, 3784; 1910, 4211), W. of the Calumet and Hecla mine; and Laurium, the mining property and Red Jacket are all in the township of Calumet (pop. 1904, state census, 28,587).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lauriston, Jacques Alexandre Bernard Law, Marquis de

See also Jacques Lauriston on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​LAURISTON, JACQUES ALEXANDRE BERNARD LAW, Marquis de (1768–1828), French soldier and diplomatist, was the son of Jacques François Law de Lauriston (1724–1785), a general officer in the French army, and was born at Pondicherry on the 1st of February 1768. He obtained his first commission about 1786, served with the artillery and on the staff in the earlier Revolutionary campaigns, and became brigadier of artillery in 1795. Resigning in 1796, he was brought back into the service in 1800 as aide-de-camp to Napoleon, with whom as a cadet Lauriston had been on friendly terms. In the years immediately preceding the first empire Lauriston was successively director of the Le Fère artillery school and special envoy to Denmark, and he was selected to convey to England the ratification of the peace of Amiens (1802). In 1805, having risen to the rank of general of division, he took part in the war against Austria. He occupied Venice and Ragusa in 1806, was made governor-general of Venice in 1807, took part in the Erfurt negotiations of 1808, was made a count, served with the emperor in Spain in 1808–1809 and held commands under the viceroy Eugène Beauharnais in the Italian campaign and the advance to Vienna in the same year. At the battle of Wagram he commanded the guard artillery in the famous “artillery preparation” which decided the battle. In 1811 he was made ambassador to Russia; in 1812 he held a command in the Grande Armée and won distinction by his firmness in covering the retreat from Moscow. He commanded the V. army corps at Lützen and Bautzen and the V. and XI. in the autumn campaign, falling into the hands of the enemy in the disastrous retreat from Leipzig. He was held a prisoner of war until the fall of the empire, and then joined Louis XVIII., to whom he remained faithful in the Hundred Days. His reward was a seat in the house of peers and a command in the royal guard. In 1817 he was created marquis and in 1823 marshal of France. During the Spanish War he commanded the corps which besieged and took Pamplona. He died at Paris on the 12th of June 1828.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Laurium (Greece)

See also Laurium on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​LAURIUM (Λαύριον, mod. Ergastiri), a mining town in Attica, Greece, famous for the silver mines which were one of the chief sources of revenue of the Athenian state, and were employed for coinage. After the battle of Marathon, Themistocles persuaded the Athenians to devote the revenue derived from the mines to shipbuilding, and thus laid the foundation of the Athenian naval power, and made possible the victory of Salamis. The mines, which were the property of the state, were usually farmed out for a certain fixed sum and a percentage on the working; slave labour was exclusively employed. Towards the end of the 5th century the output was diminished, partly owing to the Spartan occupation of Decelea. But the mines continued to be worked, though Strabo records that in his time the tailings were being worked over, and Pausanias speaks of the mines as a thing of the past. The ancient workings, consisting of shafts and galleries for excavating the ore, and pans and other arrangements for extracting the metal, may still be seen. The mines are still worked at the present day by French and Greek companies, but mainly for lead, manganese and cadmium. The population of the modern town was 10,007 in 1907.
See E. Ardaillon, “Les Mines du Laurion dans l’antiquité,” No. lxxvii. of the Bibliothèque des écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lautrec, Odet de Foix, Vicomte de

See also Odet of Foix, Viscount of Lautrec on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​LAUTREC, ODET DE FOIX, Vicomte de (1488–1528), French soldier. The branch of the viscounts of Lautrec originated with Pierre, the grandson of Archambaud de Grailly, captal de Buch, who came into possession of the county of Foix in 1401. Odet de Foix and his two brothers, the seigneur de Lescun and the seigneur de l’Esparre or Asparros, served Francis I. as captains; and the influence of their sister, Françoise de Châteaubriant, who became the king’ mistress, gained them high offices. In 1515 Lautrec took part in the campaign of Marignano. In 1516 he received the government of the Milanese, and by his severity made the French domination insupportable. In 1521 he succeeded in defending the duchy against the Spanish army, but in 1522 he was completely defeated at the battle of the Bicocca, and was forced to evacuate the Milanese. The mutiny of his Swiss troops had compelled him, against his wish, to engage in the battle. Created marshal of France, he received again, in 1527, the command of the army of Italy, occupied the Milanese, and was then sent to undertake the conquest of the kingdom of Naples. The defection of Andrea Doria and the plague which broke out in the French camp brought on a fresh disaster. Lautrec himself caught the infection, and died on the 15th of August 1528. He had the reputation of a gallant and able soldier, but this reputation scarcely seems to be justified by the facts; though he was always badly used by fortune.
There is abundant MS. correspondence in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. See the Works of Brantôme (Coll. Société d’Histoire de France, vol. iii., 1867); Memoirs of Martin du Bellay (Coll. Michaud and Poujoulat, vol. v., 1838).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lauria

See also Lauria on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​LAURIA, or Loria, a city of Basilicata, Italy, in the province of Potenza, situated near the borders of Calabria, 71/2 m. by road S. of Lagonegro. Pop. (1901) 10,470. It is a walled town on the steep side of a hill with another portion in the plain below, 1821 ft. above sea-level. The castle was the birthplace of Ruggiero di Loria, the great Italian admiral of the 13th century. It was destroyed by the French under Masséna in 1806.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pond

See also Pond on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​POND, a small pool or body of standing water, a word often applied to one for which the bed has been artificially constructed. The word is a variant of " pound " (q.v.), an enclosure.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pond, John

See also John Pond on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​POND, JOHN (c. 1767–1836), English astronomer-royal, was born about 1767 in London, where his father made a fortune in trade. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, at the age of sixteen, but took no degree, his course being interrupted by severe pulmonary attacks which compelled a long residence abroad. In 1800 he settled at Westbury near Bristol, and began to determine star-places with a line altitude and azimuth circle of 21/2 ft. diameter by E. Troughton. His demonstration in 1806 (Phil. Trans. xcvi. 420) of a change of form in the Greenwich mural quadrant led to the introduction of astronomical circles at the Royal Observatory, and to his own appointment as its head. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society on the 26th of February 1807; he married and went to live in London in the same year, and in 1811 succeeded Maskelyne as astronomer-royal.
During an administration of nearly twenty-five years Pondeffected a reform of practical astronomy in England comparable to that effected by Bessel in Germany. In 1821 he began to employ the method of observation by reflection; and in 1825 he devised means (see Mem. Roy. Astron. Soc. ii. 499) of combining two mural circles in the determination of the place of a single object, the one serving for direct and the other for reflected vision. Under his auspices the instrumental equipment at Greenwich was completely changed, and the number of assistants increased from one to six. The superior accuracy of his determinations was attested by S. C. Chandler's discussion of them in 1894, in the course of his researches into the variation of latitude (Astron. Journ. Nos. 313, 315). He persistently controverted (1810–1824) the reality of J. Brinkley's imaginary star-parallaxes (Phil. Trans. cviii. 477, cxiii. 53). Delicacy of health compelled his retirement in the autumn of 1835. He died at Blackheath on the 7th of September 1836, and was buried beside Halley in the churchyard of Lee. The Copley medal was conferred upon him in 1823, and the Lalande prize in 1817 by the Paris Academy, of which he was a corresponding member. He published eight folio volumes of Greenwich Observations, translated Laplace's Système du monde (in 2 vols. 8vo., 1809), and contributed thirty-one papers to scientific collections. His catalogue of 1112 stars (1833) was of great value.
See Mem. Roy. Astron. Soc. x. 357; Proc. Roy. Soc. iii. 434; Penny Cyclopaedia (De Morgan); F. W. Bessel, Pop. Vorlesungen, p. 543; Report Brit. Assoc. i. 128, 136 (Airy); Sir G. Airy's Autobiography, p. 127; Observatory, xiii. 204, xxii. 357; Annual Biography and Obituary (1837); R. Grant, Hist. of Phys. Astron. p. 491; Royal Society's Cat. Scient. Papers.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pondicherry

See also Pondicherry on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​PONDICHERRY, the capital of the French possessions in India, situated on the Coromandel or western coast, 122 m. by rail S. of Madras. The territory, which is entirely surrounded by the British district of South Arcot, has an area of 115 sq. m. with a population (1901) of 174,456. The chief crops are dry grains, rice, earth-nuts and a little indigo. The territory is traversed by a branch of the South Indian railway from Villapuram. The town has a population of 27,448. It is well laid out with fine public buildings; the water-supply is derived from artesian wells. It has an openroad stead, with a small iron pier. The port is visited yearly by 500 vessels, and has trade of the value of about some £1,300,000. The principal imports are areca-nuts, wines and liqueurs, and the chief exports groundnuts, oil, cotton fabrics and rice. Of the export trade more than one-half is with France, but of the import trade only one fourth. The weaving of various fabrics forms the principal industry.
Pondicherry was founded, in 1683 by Francois Martin, on the site of a village given him by the governor of Gingee. In 1693 the Dutch took Pondicherry, but restored it, with the fortifications greatly improved, in 1697, at the peace of Ryswick. In 1748 Admiral Boscawen laid siege to it without success, but in 1761 it was taken by Colonel Coote from Lally. In 1763 it Was restored to the French. In 1778 it was again taken by Sir Hector Munro, and its fortifications destroyed. In 1783 it was retransferred to the French, and in 1793 recaptured by the English. The treaty of Amiens in 1802 restored it to the French, but it was retaken in 1803. In 1816 it was finally restored to the French.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pondo

See also Pondo people on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​PONDO, a Kaffir people who have given their name to Pondoland, the country comprising much of the seaboard of Kaffraria, Cape province, immediately to the south-west of Natal. The Pondo, who number about 200,000, are divided into several tribal groups, but the native government, since the annexation of the country to Cape Colony in 1894, has been subject to the control of the colonial authorities. (See Kaffirs)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Poncho

See also Poncho on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​PONCHO (a South American Spanish word, adopted from the Araucanian poncho or pontho in the 17th century), a form of cloak worn originally by the South American Indians, and afterwards adopted by the Spaniards living in South America. It is merely a long strip of cloth, doubled, with a hole for the head.