OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bémont, Charles

See also Charles Bémont on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​BÉMONT, CHARLES (1848– ), French scholar, was born at Paris on the 16th of November 1848. In 1884 he graduated with two theses, Simon de Montfort and La Condamnation de Jean Sansterre (Revue historique, 1886). His Les Chartes des libertés anglaises (1892) has an introduction upon the history of Magna Carta, &c., and his History of Europe from 395 to 1270, in collaboration with G. Monod, was translated into English. He was also responsible for the continuation of the Gascon Rolls, the publication of which had been begun by Francisque Michel in 1885 (supplement to vol. i., 1896; vol. ii., for the years 1273–1290, 1900; vol. iii., for the years 1290–1307, 1906). He received the honorary degree of Litt. Doc. at Oxford in 1909.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Békéscsaba

See also Békéscsaba on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​BÉKÉSCSABA, a market-town of Hungary, 123 m. S.E. of Budapest by rail. Pop. (1900) 37,108, mostly Slovaks and Lutherans, who form the largest Lutheran community in Hungary. The town is situated near the White Körös, with which it is connected by a canal, and is an important railway-junction in central Hungary. Békéscsaba possesses several large milling establishments, while the weaving of hemp and the production of hemp-linen is largely pursued as a home industry. The town carries on an active trade in cereals, wines and cattle.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bécquer, Gustavo Adolfo

See also Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​BÉCQUER, GUSTAVO ADOLFO (1836–1870), Spanish poet and romance-writer, was born at Seville on the 17th of February 1836. Left an orphan at an early age, he was educated by his godmother, refused to adopt any profession, and drifted to Madrid, where he obtained a small post in the civil service. He was dismissed for carelessness, became an incorrigible Bohemian, and earned a precarious living by translating foreign novels; he died in great poverty at Madrid on the 22nd of December 1870. His works were published posthumously in 1873. In such prose tales as El Rayo de Luna and La Mujer de piedra, Bécquer is manifestly influenced by Hoffmann, and as a poet he has analogies with Heine. He dwells in a fairyland of his own, crooning a weird elfin music which has no parallel in Spanish; his work is unfinished and unequal, but it is singularly free from the rhetoric characteristic of his native Andalusia, and its lyrical ardour is of a beautiful sweetness and sincerity.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bowles, Samuel

See also Samuel Bowles (journalist) on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​BOWLES, SAMUEL (1826–1878), American journalist, was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, on the 9th of February 1826. He was the son of Samuel Bowles (1779–1851) of the same city, who had established the weekly Springfield Republican in 1824. The daily issue was begun in 1844, as an evening newspaper, afterwards becoming a morning journal. To its service Samuel Bowles, junior, devoted his life (with the exception of a brief period during which he was in charge of a daily in Boston), and he gave the paper a national reputation by the vigour, incisiveness and independence of its editorial utterances, and the concise and convenient arrangement of its local and general news-matter. During the controversies affecting slavery and resulting in the Civil War, Bowles supported, in general, the Whig and Republican parties, but in the period of Reconstruction under President Grant his paper represented anti-administration or “Liberal Republican” opinions, while in the disputed election of 1876 it favoured the claims of Tilden, and subsequently became independent in politics. Bowles died at Springfield on the 16th of January 1878. During his lifetime, and subsequently, the Republican office was a sort of school for young journalists, especially in the matter of pungency and conciseness of style, one of his maxims being “put it all in the first paragraph.” Bowles published two books of travel, Across the Continent (1865) and The Switzerland of America (1869), which were combined into one volume under the title Our New West (1869). He was succeeded as publisher and editor-in-chief of the Republican by his son Samuel Bowles (b. 1851).
A eulogistic Life and Times of Samuel Bowles (2 vols., New York, 1885), by George S. Merriam, is virtually a history of American political movements after the compromise of 1850.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bowell, Sir Mackenzie

See also Mackenzie Bowell on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​BOWELL, SIR MACKENZIE (1823– ), Canadian politician, son of John Bowell, carpenter and builder, was born at Rickinghall, England, on the 27th of December 1823. In 1833 he moved with his family to Belleville, Canada, where he finally became editor and proprietor of the Intelligencer. He was elected grand master of the Orange Association of British America, and was long the exponent in the Canadian parliament of the claims of that order. From 1867 till 1892 he represented North Hastings in the House, after which he retired to the senate. From 1878 till 1891 he was minister of customs in the cabinet of Sir John Macdonald; then minister of militia; and under the premiership of Sir John Thompson, minister of trade and commerce. From December 1894 till April 1896 he was premier of Canada, and endeavoured to enforce remedial legislation in the question of the Manitoba schools. But his policy was unsuccessful, and he retired from the government. From 1896 till 1906 he led the Conservative party in the senate. In 1894 he presided over the colonial conference held in Ottawa, and in 1895 was created K.C.M.G.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bower, Walter

See also Walter Bower on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​BOWER, WALTER (1385–1449), Scottish chronicler, was born about 1385 at Haddington. He was abbot of Inchcolm (in the Firth of Forth) from 1418, was one of the commissioners for the collection of the ransom of James I., king of Scots, in 1423 and 1424, and in 1433 one of the embassy to Paris on the business of the marriage of the king’s daughter to the dauphin. He played an important part at the council of Perth (1432) in the defence of Scottish rights. During his closing years he was engaged on his work the Scotichronicon, on which his reputation now chiefly rests. This work, undertaken in 1440 by desire of a neighbour, Sir David Stewart of Rosyth, was a continuation of the Chronica Gentis Scotorum of Fordun. The completed work, in its original form, consisted of sixteen books, of which the first five and a portion of the sixth (to 1163) are Fordun’s—or mainly his, for Bower added to them at places. In the later books, down to the reign of Robert I. (1371), he was aided by Fordun’s Gesta Annalia, but from that point to the close the work is original and of contemporary importance, especially for James I., with whose death it ends. The task was finished in 1447. In the two remaining years of his life he was engaged on a reduction or “abridgment” of this work, which is known as the Book of Cupar, and is preserved in the Advocates’ library, Edinburgh (MS. 35. 1. 7). Other abridgments, not by Bower, were made about the same time, one about 1450 (perhaps by Patrick Russell, a Carthusian of Perth) preserved in the Advocates’ library (MS. 35. 6. 7) and another in 1461 by an unknown writer, also preserved in the same collection (MS. 35. 5. 2). Copies of the full text of the Scotichronicon, by different scribes, are extant. There are two in the British Museum, in The Black Book of Paisley, and in Harl. MS. 712; one in the Advocates’ library, from which Walter Goodall printed his edition (Edin., 1759), and one in the library of Corpus Christi, Cambridge.
Goodall’s is the only complete modern edition of Bower’s text. See also W. F. Skene’s edition of Fordun in the series of Historians of Scotland (1871). Personal references are to be found in the Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, iii. and iv. The best recent account is that by T. A. Archer in the Dict. of Nat. Biog.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bowie, James

See also James Bowie on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​BOWIE, JAMES (1796–1836), American pioneer, was born in Logan county, Kentucky. He was taken to Louisiana about 1802, and in 1818–1820 was engaged with his brothers, John J. and Rezin P., in smuggling negro slaves into the United States from the headquarters of the pirates led by Jean Lafitte on Galveston Island. Bowie removed to Texas in 1828 and took a prominent part in the revolt against Mexico, being present at the battles of Nacogdoches (1832), Concepcion (1835) and the Grass Fight (1835). He was one of the defenders of the Alamo (see San Antonio), but was ill of pneumonia at the time of the final assault on the 6th of March 1836, and was among the last to be butchered. Bowie’s name is now perpetuated by a county in north-eastern Texas, and by its association with that of the famous hunting-knife, which he used, but probably did not invent.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bowen, Francis

See also Francis Bowen on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​BOWEN, FRANCIS (1811–1890), American philosophical writer and educationalist, was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, on the 8th of September 1811. He graduated at Harvard in 1833, taught for two years at Phillips Exeter Academy, and then from 1835 to 1839 was a tutor and instructor at Harvard. After several years of study in Europe, he settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was editor and proprietor of the North American Review from 1843 to 1854. In 1850 he was appointed professor of history at Harvard; but his appointment was disapproved by the board of overseers on account of reactionary political opinions he had expressed in a controversy with Robert Carter (1819–1879) concerning the Hungarian revolution. In 1853 his appointment as Alford professor of natural religion, moral philosophy and civil polity was approved, and he occupied the chair until 1889. In 1876 he was a member of the Federal commission appointed to consider currency reform, and wrote (1877) the minority report, in which he opposed the restoration of the double standard and the remonetization of silver. He died in Boston, Massachusetts, on the 22nd of January 1890. His writings include lives of Sir William Phipps, Baron von Steuben, James Otis and Benjamin Lincoln in Jared Sparks’ “Library of American Biography”; Critical Essays on the History and Present Condition of Speculative Philosophy (1842); Lowell Lectures on the Application of Metaphysical and Ethical Science to the Evidences of Religion (1849); The Principles of Political Economy applied to the Condition, Resources and Institutions of the American People (1856); A Treatise on Logic (1864); American Political Economy (1870); Modern Philosophy from Descartes to Schopenhauer and Hartmann (1877); and Gleanings from a Literary Life, 1838 –1880 (1880).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bowen, Sir George Ferguson

See also George Bowen on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer. For a map, see Italy.
​BOWEN, SIR GEORGE FERGUSON (1821–1899), British colonial governor, eldest son of the Rev. Edward Bowen, afterwards rector of Taughboyne, Co. Donegal, was born on the 2nd of November 1821. Educated at Charterhouse school and Trinity College, Oxford, he took a first class in classics in 1844, and was elected a fellow of Brasenose. In 1847 he was chosen president of the university of Corfu. Having served as secretary of government in the Ionian Islands, he was appointed in 1859 the first governor of Queensland, which colony had just been separated from New South Wales. He was interested in the exploration of Queensland and in the establishment of a volunteer force, but incurred some unpopularity by refusing to sanction the issue of inconvertible paper money during the financial crisis of 1866. In 1867 he was made governor of New Zealand, in which position he was successful in reconciling the Maoris to the English rule, and saw the end of the struggle between the colonists and the natives. Transferred to Victoria in 1872, Bowen endeavoured to reduce the expenses of the colony, and in 1879 became governor of Mauritius. His last official position was that of governor of Hong-Kong, which he held from 1882 to 1887. He was made a K.C.M.G. in 1856, a privy councillor in 1886, and received honorary degrees from both Oxford and Cambridge. In December 1887 he was appointed chief of the royal commission which was sent to Malta with regard to the new constitution for ​the island, and all the recommendations made by him were adopted. He died at Brighton on the 21st of February 1899, having been married twice, and having had a family of one son and four daughters. Bowen wrote Ithaca in 1850 (London, 1854), translated into Greek in 1859; and Mount Athos, Thessaly and Epirus (London, 1852); and he was the author of Murray’s Handbook for Greece (London, 1854).
A selection of his letters and despatches, Thirty Years of Colonial Government (London, 1889), was edited by S. Lane-Poole.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bowerbank, James Scott

See also James Scott Bowerbank on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​BOWERBANK, JAMES SCOTT (1797–1877), English naturalist and palaeontologist, was born in Bishopsgate, London, on the 14th of July 1797, and succeeded in conjunction with his brother to his father’s distillery, in which he was actively engaged until 1847. In early years astronomy and natural history, especially botany, engaged much of his attention; he became an enthusiastic worker at the microscope, studying the structure of shells, corals, moss-agates, flints, &c., and he also formed an extensive collection of fossils. The organic remains of the London Clay attracted particular attention, and about the year 1836 he and six other workers founded “The London Clay Club”—the members comprising Dr Bowerbank, Frederick E. Edwards (1799–1875), author of The Eocene Mollusca (Palaeontograph. Soc.), Searles V. Wood, John Morris, Alfred White (zoologist), N. T. Wetherell, surgeon of Highgate (1800–1875), and James de Carle Sowerby. In 1840 Bowerbank published A History of the Fossil Fruits and Seeds of the London Clay, and two years later he was elected F.R.S. In 1847 he suggested the establishment of a society for the publication of undescribed British Fossils, and thus originated the Palaeontographical Society. From 1844 until 1864 he did much to encourage a love of natural science by being “at home” every Monday evening at his residence in Park Street, Islington, and afterwards in Highbury Grove, where the treasures of his museum, his microscopes, and his personal assistance were at the service of every earnest student. In the study of sponges he became specially interested, and he was author of A Monograph of the British Spongiadae in 4 vols., published by the Ray Society, 1864–1882. He retired in 1864 to St Leonards, where he died on the 8th of March 1877.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bowdoin, James

See also James Bowdoin and James Bowdoin III on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​BOWDOIN, JAMES (1726–1790), American political leader, was born of French Huguenot descent, in Boston, Massachusetts, on the 7th of August 1726. He graduated at Harvard in 1745, and was a member of the lower house of the general court of Massachusetts in 1753–1756, and from 1757 to 1774 of the Massachusetts council, in which, according to Governor Thomas Hutchinson, he “was without a rival,” and, on the approach of the War of Independence, was “the principal supporter of the opposition to the government.” From August 1775 until the summer of 1777 he was the president of the council, which had then become to a greater extent than formerly an executive as well as a legislative body. In 1779–1780 he was president of the constitutional convention of Massachusetts, also serving as chairman of the committee by which the draft of the constitution was prepared. Immediately afterward he was a member of a commission appointed “to revise the laws in force in the state; to select, abridge, alter and digest them, so as to be accommodated to the present government.” From 1785 to 1787 he was governor of Massachusetts, suppressing with much vigour Shays’ Rebellion, and failing to be re-elected largely because it was believed that he would punish the insurrectionists with more severity than would his competitor, John Hancock. Bowdoin was a member of the state convention which in February 1788 ratified for Massachusetts the Federal Constitution, his son being also a member. He died in Boston on the 6th of November 1790. He took much interest in natural philosophy, and presented various papers before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, of which he was one of the founders and, from 1780 to 1790, the first president. Bowdoin College was named in his honour.
His son, James Bowdoin (1752–1811), was born in Boston on the 22nd of September 1752, graduated at Harvard in 1771, and served, at various times, as a representative, senator and councillor of the state. From 1805 until 1808 he was the minister plenipotentiary of the United States in Spain. He died on Naushon Island, Dukes county, Massachusetts, on the 11th of October 1811. To Bowdoin College he gave land, money and apparatus; and he made the college his residuary legatee, bequeathing to it his collection of paintings and drawings, then considered the finest in the country.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Carloman (King of Bavaria and Italy)

See also Carloman of Bavaria on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​CARLOMAN (828–880), king of Bavaria and Italy, was the eldest son of Louis the German, king of the East Franks. In 856 he undertook the defence of the eastern frontier of Bavaria against the Bohemians and Moravians, and won considerable fame in various campaigns. He married a daughter of Ernest, count of the Bohemian mark, and in conjunction with his father-in-law resisted the authority of his father in 861. For some years he alternated between rebellion and submission to his father, but in 865 an arrangement was made by which he became possessed of Bavaria and Carinthia as his expectant share of the kingdom of Louis. During the troubles between Louis and his two younger sons Carloman remained faithful to his father, and carried on the war with the Moravians so successfully that in 870 their territory was completely under the power of the ​Franks; and when peace was made at Forchheim in 874, they recognized the Frankish supremacy. In 875 the emperor Louis II. died, having named his cousin Carloman as his successor in Italy. Carloman crossed the Alps to claim his inheritance, but was cajoled into returning by the king of the West Franks, Charles the Bald. In 876, on his father’s death, Carloman became actually king of Bavaria, and after a short campaign against the Moravians he went again to Italy in 877 and was crowned king of the Lombards at Pavia; but his negotiations with Pope John VIII. for the imperial crown were fruitless, and personal illness added to the outbreak of an epidemic in his army compelled him to return to Bavaria. Stricken with paralysis, Carloman was unable to prevent his brother Louis from seizing Bavaria; so making a virtue of necessity, he bequeathed the whole of his lands to Louis. He died on the 22nd of September 880 at Öttingen, where he was buried, leaving an illegitimate son, afterwards the emperor Arnulf.
See “Annales Fuldenses,” “Annales Bertiniani,” Regino von Prum, “Chronicon,” all in the Monumenta Germaniae historica. Scriptores, Band i. (Hanover and Berlin, 1826–1892); E. Mühlbacher, Die Regesten des Kaiserreichs unter den Karolingern (Innsbruck, 1881); and E. Dümmler, Geschichte des ostfränkischen Reiches (Leipzig, 1887–1888).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Carlow (town)

See also Carlow on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​CARLOW, the county town of Co. Carlow, Ireland, on the navigable river Barrow. Pop. of urban district (1901) 6513. It is 56 m. S.W. of Dublin by the Great Southern & Western railway. The castle (supposed to have been founded by Hugh de Lacy, appointed governor of Ireland in 1179, but sometimes attributed to King John), situated on an eminence overlooking the river, is still a chief feature of attraction in the general view of the town, although there is not much of the original building left. It consisted of a hollow quadrangle, with a massive round tower at each angle. The principal buildings are the Roman Catholic College of St Patrick (1793), a plain but spacious building in a picturesque park adjoining the Roman Catholic cathedral of the diocese of Kildare and Leighlin; the Protestant parish church, with a handsome steeple of modern erection; the court-house, where the assizes are held, an octagonal stone building with a handsome Ionic portico; and other county buildings. The cathedral, in the Perpendicular style, has a highly ornamented west front, and a monument to Bishop James Doyle (d. 1834). The Wellington Bridge over the river Barrow connects Carlow with the suburb of Graigue. Two m. N. E. of the town is one of the finest cromlechs in Ireland, and 3 m. to the west is the notable church, of Norman and pre-Norman date, of Killeshin in Queen’s county. The industries of Carlow consist of brewing and flour-milling, and a considerable trade is carried on in the sale of butter and eggs.
Carlow was of early importance. In the reign of Edward III. the king’s exchequer was removed thither, and £500, a large sum at that period, applied towards surrounding the town with a strong wall. In the early part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth the castle was taken, and the town burned by the Irish chieftain, Rory Oge O’More. When summoned to surrender by Ireton, the Commonwealth general, during the war of 1641, Carlow submitted without resistance. In the insurrection of 1798 the castle was attacked by an undisciplined body of insurgents. They were speedily repulsed, and suffered severe loss, no quarter being given; and, in the confusion of their flight, many of the insurgents took refuge in houses, which the king’s troops immediately set on fire. Carlow obtained a charter of incorporation as early as the 13th century, and was reincorporated, with enlarged privileges, by James I. The corporation, which was styled “The Sovereign, Free Burgesses and Commonalty of the Borough of Catherlogh,” was authorized to return two members to the Irish parliament. The town returned one member to the Imperial parliament until 1885.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Carloforte

See also Carloforte on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​CARLOFORTE, a town of Sardinia, in the province of Cagliari, the capital of the small island (6 by 5 m.) of San Pietro (anc. Accipitrum or Ίερακοννῆσος) off the west coast of Sardinia. Pop. (1901) 7693. It lies on the east coast of the island, 6 m. west by sea from Portoscuso, which is 47 m. west by rail from Cagliari. It was founded in 1737 by Charles Emmanuel III. of Savoy, who planted a colony of Genoese, whose dialect and costume still prevail. In 1798 it was attacked by the Tunisians and 933 inhabitants taken away as slaves. They were ransomed after five years and the place fortified. It is now a centre of the tunny fishery, and there are manganese mines also. The coral banks, which were once important, are now exhausted. Three m. to the south-east is the island of S. Antioco.