OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alais

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​ALAIS, a town of southern France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Gard, 25 m. N.N.W. of Nîmes on the Paris-Lyon railway, on which it is an important junction. Pop. (1906) 18,987. The town is situated at the foot of the Cévennes, on the left bank of the Gardon, which half surrounds it. The streets are wide and its promenades and fine plane-trees make the town attractive; but the public buildings, the chief of which are the church of St Jean, a heavy building of the 18th century, and the citadel, which serves as barracks and prison, are of small interest. Pasteur prosecuted his investigations into the silkworm disease at Alais, and the town has dedicated a bust to his memory. There is also a statue of the chemist J. B. Dumas. Alais has tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a board of trade-arbitrators, a lycée and a school of mines. The town is one of the most important markets for raw silk and cocoons in the south of France, and the Gardon supplies power to numerous silk-mills. It is also the centre of a mineral field, which yields large quantities of coal, iron, zinc and lead; its blast-furnaces, foundries, glass-works and engineering works aliord employment to many workmen.
In the 16th century Alais was an important Huguenot centre. In 1629 the town was taken by Louis XIII., and by the peace of Alais the Huguenots gave up their right to places de sûreté (garrison towns) and other privileges. A bishopric was established there in 1694 but suppressed in 1790.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alamanni

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​ALAMANNI, or Allemanni, a German tribe, first mentioned by Dio Cassius, under the year 213. They apparently dwelt in the basin of the Maine, to the south of the Chatti. According to Asinius Quadratus their name indicates that they were a conglomeration of various tribes. There can be little doubt, however, that the ancient Hermunduri formed the preponderating element in the nation. Among the other elements may be mentioned the Juthungi, Bucinobantes, Lentienses, and perhaps the Armalausi. From the 4th century onwards we hear also of the Suebi or Suabi. The Hermunduri had apparently belonged to the Suebi, but it is likely enough that reinforcements from new Suebic tribes had now moved westward. In later times the names Alamanni and Suebi seem to be synonymous. The tribe was continually engaged in conflicts with the Romans, the most famous encounter being that at Strassburg, in which they were defeated by Julian, afterwards emperor, in the year 357, when their king Chonodomarius was taken prisoner. Early in the 5th century the Alamanni appear to have crossed the Rhine and conquered and settled Alsace and a large part of Switzerland. Their kingdom lasted until the year 495, when they were conquered by Clovis, from which time they formed part of the Frankish dominions. The Alamannic and Swabian dialects are now spoken in German Switzerland, the southern parts of Baden and Alsace, Württemberg and a small portion of Bavaria.
See Dio Cassius lxvii. ff.; Ammianus Marcellinus, passim; Gregory of Tours, Historia Francorum, book ii.; C. Zeuss, Die Deutschen und die Nachbarstämme (Munich, 1837), pp. 303 ff.; O. Bremer in H. Paul, Grundriss der germanischen Philologie (2nd ed., Strassburg, 1900), vol. iii. pp. 930 ff. (F. G. M. B.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alambagh

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​ALAMBAGH, or Alumbagh, the name of a large park or walled enclosure, containing a palace, a mosque and other buildings, as well as a beautiful garden, situated about 4 m. from Lucknow, near the Cawnpore road, in the United Provinces of India. It was converted into a fort by the mutineers in 1857, and after its capture by the British was of importance in connexion with the military operations around Lucknow. (See Indian Mutiny and Outram, Sir James.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alacoque, Marguerite Marie

* related authors: Margaret Mary Alacoque.
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​ALACOQUE, or Al Coq, MARGUERITE MARIE (1647–1690), French nun and mystic, was born at Lauthecourt, a village in the diocese of Autun, on the 22nd of July 1647. She would seem to have been from the first of a morbid and unhealthy temperament, and before the age of thirteen was the subject of a paralytic seizure. Having been cured of this, as she believed, by the intercession of the Holy Virgin, she changed her name to Marie and vowed to devote her life to her service. In May 1671 she entered the Visitation convent at Paray-le-Monial, in the diocese of Autun, and took the final vows in November 1672. Though her reading was confined to the lives of the saints, she taught in the school kept by the nuns for the girls of the neighbourhood, to whom she endeared herself by her kindly disposition. The appalling austerities, however, to which she was allowed to subject herself quickly affected her mental and bodily health. Hallucinations, to which she had been always subject, became more and more frequent. She conceived herself to be specially favoured by Christ, who appeared to her in the most extravagant forms. At last, by dint of fasting and lacerating her flesh, she succeeded in reducing herself to such a state of ecstatic suffering that she believed herself to be undergoing in her own person the Passion of the Lord. Her reward was the supreme vision in which Christ revealed to her His heart burning with divine love, and even, so she affirmed, exchanged it with hers, at the same time bidding her establish, on the Friday following, the feast of Corpus Christi, a festival in honour of His Sacred Heart. It was not till ten years later, in 1685, that the festival was first celebrated at Paray, and not till after the death of Marguerite, on the 17th of October 1690, that the cult of the Sacred Heart, fostered by the Jesuits and the subject of violent controversies within the church, spread throughout France and Christendom. (See Sacred Heart.)
Marguerite Alacoque was beatified by Pius IX. in 1864. Her short devotional writing, La Dévotion au Sacré-Cœur de Jésus, was published by J. Croiset in 1698, and is now very popular among Roman Catholics.
See Bishop Languet, Vie de la vénérable Marguerite-Marie (Paris, 1724), translated and edited by F. W. Faber (1847); Mgr. Bougaud, Histoire de la bienheureuse Marguerite-Marie (Paris, 1874); G. Tickell, S.J., The Life of Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque, with some account of the devotion to the Sacred Heart (London, 1869); J. B. H. R. Capefigue, Marie Marguerite Al-Coq (Paris, 1866).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alva

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​ALVA, a police burgh of Clackmannanshire, Scotland, 31/4 m. N. of Alloa, terminus of a branch line of the North British railway. Pop. (1891) 5225; (1901) 4624. It is situated at the foot of three front peaks of the Ochils–West Hill (1682 ft.), Middle Hill (1436 ft.) and Wood Hill (1723 ft.). There are spinning-mills, and manufactures of tweeds, tartans and other woollen goods. Silver, lead and other metals have been found in the hills, but not in paying quantities. The glen to the east of the town, in which are abandoned workings, is called the Silver Glen. Alva House is the seat of the Johnstones, a family which has been intimately connected with the district since the latter half of the 18th century.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alvarado, Pedro de

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​ALVARADO, PEDRO DE (1495–1541), one of the Spanish leaders in the discovery and conquest of America, was born at Badajoz about 1495. He held a command in the expedition sent from Cuba against Yucatan in the spring of 1518, and returned in a few months, bearing reports of the wealth and splendour of Montezuma’s empire. In February 1519 he accompanied Hernando Cortes in the expedition for the conquest of Mexico, being appointed to the command of one of the eleven vessels of the fleet. He acted as Cortes’s principal officer, and on the first occupation of the city of Mexico was left there in charge. When the Spaniards had temporarily to retire before the Mexican uprising, Alvarado led the rear-guard (1st of July 1520), and the Salto de Alvarado–a long leap with the use of his spear, by which he saved his life–became famous. He was engaged (1523–24) in the conquest of Guatemala, of which he was subsequently appointed governor by Charles V. In 1534 he attempted to bring the province of Quito under his power, but had to content himself with the exaction of a pecuniary indemnity for the expenses of the expedition. During a visit to Spain, three years later, he had the governorship of Honduras conferred upon him in addition to that of Guatemala. He died in Guatemala in 1541.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alvarez, Don José

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​ALVAREZ, DON JOSÉ (1768–1827), Spanish sculptor, was born at Priego, in the province of Cordova, in 1768. His full name was José Alvarez de Pereira y Cubero. Bred to his father’s trade of a stone-mason, he devoted all his spare time to drawing and modelling. His education in art was due partly to the teaching of the French sculptor Verdiguier at Cordova, and partly to lessons at Madrid, where he attended the lectures of the academy of San Fernando. In 1799 he obtained from Charles IV. a pension of 12,000 reals to enable him to visit Paris and Rome. In the former city he executed in 1804 a statue of Ganymede, which placed him at once in the front rank of the sculptors of his time, and which is now in the sculpture gallery of the Prado. Shortly afterwards his pension was more than doubled, and he left Paris for Rome, where he remained till within a year of his death. He had married in Paris Elizabeth Bougel, by whom he had a son in 1805. This son, known as Don José Alvarez y Bougel, also distinguished himself as a sculptor and a painter, but he died at Burgos before he had reached the age of twenty-five, a little more than two years after his father’s death in Madrid in 1827. One of the most successful works of the elder Alvarez was a group representing Antilochus and Memnon, which was commissioned in marble (1818) by Ferdinand VII., and secured for the artist the appointment of court-sculptor. It is now in the museum of Madrid. He also modelled a few portrait busts (Ferdinand VII., Rossini, the duchess of Alba), which are remarkable for their vigour and fidelity.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alvarez, Francisco

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​ALVAREZ, FRANCISCO (c. 1465–1541 ?), Portuguese missionary and explorer, was born at Coimbra. He was a chaplain-priest and almoner to Dom Manuel, king of Portugal, and was sent in 1515 as secretary to Duarte Galvão and Rodrigo da Lima on an embassy to the negūs of Abyssinia (Lebna Dengel Dawit (David) II.). The expedition having been delayed by the way, it was not until 1520 that he reached Abyssinia, where he remained six years, returning to Lisbon in 1526–1527. In 1533 he was sent to Rome on an embassy to Pope Clement VII. The precise date of his death, like that of his birth, is unknown, but it must have been later than 1540, in which year he published at Lisbon under the king’s patronage an account of his travels in one volume folio, entitled Verdadera Informaçam das terras do Preste Joam. This curious work was translated into Italian (G. B. Ramusio, Navagationi, vol. i., Venice, 1550); into Spanish (Historia de las Cosas de Etiopia, by Fray Thomas de Padilla, Antwerp, 1557); into French (Historiale Description de l'Ethiopie, Christ. Plantin, Antwerp, 1558); into German (Wahrhaftiger Bericht von . . . Ethiopien, Eisleben, 1566); into English (Sam. Purchas, Pilgrimes, part ii., London, 1625). The information it contains must, however, be received with caution, as the author is prone to exaggerate, and does not confine himself to what came within his own observation.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alvarez, Don Manuel

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​ALVAREZ, DON MANUEL (1727–1797), Spanish sculptor, was born at Salamanca. He followed classical models so closely that he was styled by his countrymen El Griego, “The Greek.” His works, which are very numerous, are chiefly to be found at Madrid.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alvary, Max

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​ALVARY, MAX (1858–1898), German singer, was born at Düsseldorf. Gifted with a fine tenor voice and handsome presence he speedily made a reputation in Germany in the leading roles in Wagnerian opera, and from 1885 onwards appeared also in America and England. He was at his best in 1892, when his performances as Tristan and Siegfried at Covent Garden aroused great enthusiasm.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alveary

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​ALVEARY (from the Lat. alvearium), a beehive; used, like apiarium in the same sense, figuratively for a collection of hardworking people, or a scholarly work (e.g. dictionary) involving bee-like industry. By analogy the term is used for the hollow of the ear, where the wax collects.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alveolate

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​ALVEOLATE (from Lat. alveolus), honeycombed, a word used technically in biology, &c., to mean pitted like a honeycomb.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Clonmacnoise

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​CLONMACNOISE, one of the most noteworthy of the numerous early religious settlements in Ireland, on the river Shannon, in King’s county, 9 m. S. of Athlone. An abbey was founded here by St Kieran in 541, which as a seat of learning gained a European fame, receiving offerings, for example, from Charles the Great, whose companion Alcuin the scholar received part of his education from the great teacher Colcu at Conmacnoise. Several books of annals were compiled here, and the foundation became the seat of a bishopric, but it was plundered and wasted by the English in 1552, and in 1568 the diocese was united with that of Meath. The most remarkable literary monument of Clonmacnoise is the Book of the Dun Cow, written about 1100, still preserved (but in an imperfect form) by the Royal Irish Academy, and containing a large number of romances. It is a copy of a much earlier original, which was written on the skin of a favourite cow of St Kieran, whence the name of the work. The full title of the foundation is the “Seven Churches of Clonmacnoise,” and remains of all these are extant. The Great Church, though rebuilt by a chief named McDermot, in the 14th century, retains earlier remains in a fine west doorway; the other churches are those of Fineen, Conor, St Kieran, Kelly, Melaghlin and Dowling. There are two round towers; O’Rourke’s, lacking the roof, but occupying a commanding situation on rising ground, is dated by Petrie from the early 10th century, and stands 62 ft. in height; and McCarthy’s, attached to Fineen’s church, which is more perfect, but rather shorter, and presents the unusual feature of a doorway level with the ground, instead of several feet above it as is customary. There are three crosses, of which the Great Cross, made of a single stone and 15 ft. in height, is splendidly carved, with tracery and inscriptions. It faces the door of the Great Church, and is of the same date. A large number of inscribed stones dating from the 9th century and after are preserved in the churches. There are further remains of the Castle and Episcopal palace, a fortified building of the 14th century, and of a nunnery of the 12th century. In the neighbourhood are seen striking examples of the glacial phenomenon of eskers, or gravel ridges.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Cloots, De Grâce

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​CLOOTS, JEAN BAPTISTE DU VAL DE GRACE, Baron von (1755–1794), better known as Anacharsis Cloots, a noteworthy figure in the French Revolution, was born near Cleves, at the castle of Gnadenthal. He belonged to a noble Prussian family of Dutch origin. The young Cloots, heir to a great fortune, was sent at eleven years of age to Paris to complete his education. There he imbibed the theories of his uncle the Abbé Cornelius de Pauw (1739–1799), philosopher, geographer and diplomatist at the court of Frederick the Great. His father placed him in the military academy at Berlin, but he left it at the age of twenty and traversed Europe, preaching his revolutionary philosophy as an apostle, and spending his money as a man of pleasure. On the breaking out of the Revolution he returned in 1789 to Paris, thinking the opportunity favourable for establishing his dream of a universal family of nations. On the 19th of June 1790 he appeared at the bar of the Assembly at the head of thirty-six foreigners; and, in the name of this “embassy of the human race,” declared that the world adhered to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. After this he was known as “the orator of the human race,” by which title he called himself, dropping that of baron, and substituting for his baptismal names the pseudonym of Anacharsis, from the famous philosophical romance of the Abbé Jean Jacques Barthélemy. In 1792 he placed 12,000 livres at the disposal of the Republic—“for the arming of forty or fifty fighters in the sacred cause of man against tyrants.” The 10th of August impelled him to a still higher flight; he declared himself the personal enemy of Jesus Christ, and abjured all revealed religions. In the same month he had the rights of citizenship conferred on him; and, having in September been elected a member of the Convention, he voted the king’s death in the name of the human race, and was an active partisan of the war of propaganda. Excluded at the instance of Robespierre from the Jacobin Club, he was soon afterwards implicated in an accusation levelled against the Hébertists. His innocence was manifest, but he was condemned, and guillotined on the 24th of March 1794.
Cloots’ main works are: La Certitude des preuves du mahométisme (London, 1780), published under the pseudonym of Ali-Gur-Ber, in answer to Bergier’s Certitude des preuves du christianisme; L’Orateur du genre humain, ou Dépêches du Prussien Cloots au Prussien Herzberg (Paris, 1791), and La République universelle (1792).
The biography of Cloots by G. Avenel (2 vols., Paris, 1865) is too eulogistic. See the three articles by H. Baulig in La Révolution française, t. 41 (1901).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Close

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​CLOSE (from Lat. clausum, shut), a closed place or enclosure. In English law, the term is applied to a portion of land, enclosed or not, held as private property, and to any exclusive interest in land sufficient to maintain an action for trespass quare clausum fregit. The word is also used, particularly in Scotland, of the entry or passage, including the common staircase, of a block of tenement houses, and in architecture for the precincts of a cathedral or abbey.
The adjective “close” (i.e. closed) is found in several phrases, such as “close time” or “close season” (see Game Laws); close borough, one of which the rights and privileges were enjoyed by a limited class (see Borough); close rolls and writs, royal letters, &c., addressed to particular persons, under seal, and not open to public inspection (see Record; Chancery; Letters Patent). From the sense of “closed up,” and so “confined,” comes the common meaning of “near.”
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Close, Maxwell Henry

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​CLOSE, MAXWELL HENRY (1822–1903), Irish geologist, was born in Dublin in 1822. He was educated at Weymouth and at Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated in 1846; and two years later he entered holy orders. For a year he was curate of All Saints, Northampton; from 1849 to 1857 he was rector of Shangton in Leicestershire; and then for four years he was curate of Waltham-on-the-Wolds. In 1861, on the death of his father, he returned to Dublin, and while giving his services to various churches in the city, devoted himself almost wholly to literary and scientific pursuits, and especially to the glacial geology of Ireland, on which subject he became an acknowledged authority. His paper, read before the Geological Society of Ireland in 1866, on the “General Glaciation of Ireland” is a masterly description of the effects of glaciation, and of the evidence in favour of the action of land-ice. Later on he discussed the origin of the elevated shell-bearing gravels near Dublin, and expressed the view that they were accumulated by floating ice when the land had undergone submergence. He was for a time treasurer of the Royal Irish Academy, an active member of the Royal Dublin Society, and president in 1878 of the Royal Geological Society of Ireland. Astronomy and physics, as well as the ancient language and antiquities of Ireland, attracted his attention. He died in Dublin on the 12th of September 1903.
The obituary by Prof. G. A. J. Cole in Irish Naturalist, vol. xii. (1903) pp. 301-306, contains a list of publications and portrait.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Clot, Antoine Barthélemy

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​CLOT, ANTOINE BARTHELEMY (1793–1868), French physician, known as Clot Bey, was born at Grenoble on the 7th of November 1793, and graduated in medicine and surgery at Montpellier. After practising for a time at Marseilles he was made chief surgeon to Mehemet Ali, viceroy of Egypt. At Abuzabel, near Cairo, he founded a hospital and schools for all branches of medical instruction, as well as for the study of the French language; and, notwithstanding the most serious religious difficulties, instituted the study of anatomy by means of dissection. In 1832 Mehemet Ali gave him the dignity of bey without requiring him to abjure his religion; and in 1836 he received the rank of general, and was appointed head of the medical administration of the country. In 1849 he returned to Marseilles, though he revisited Egypt in 1856. He died at Marseilles on the 28th of August 1868. His publications included: Relation des épidémies de choléra qui ont régné à l’Heggiaz, ​à Suez, et en Égypte (1832); De la peste observée en Égypte (1840); Aperçu général sur l’Égypte (1840); Coup d’œil sur la peste et les quarantaines (1851); De l’ophthalmie (1864).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Clones

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​CLONES, a market town of Co. Monaghan, Ireland, in the north parliamentary division, 64½ m. S.W. by W. from Belfast, and 93½ m. N.W. from Dublin by the Great Northern railway, on which system it is an important junction, the lines from Dublin, from Belfast, from Londonderry and Enniskillen, and from Cavan converging here. Pop. of urban district (1901), 2068. The town has a considerable agricultural trade, and there are corn mills and manufactures of agricultural implements. A former lace-making industry is extinct. The market-place, called the Diamond, occupies the summit of the slight elevation on which the town is situated. Clones was the seat of an abbey founded in the 6th century by St Tighernach (Tierney), to whom the Protestant parish church is dedicated. Remains of the abbey include a nave and tower of the 12th century, and a curious shrine formed out of a great block of red sandstone. Other antiquities are a round tower of rude masonry, 75 ft. high but lacking the cap; a rath, or encampment, and an ancient market cross in the Diamond.