OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Brunswick-Bevern, August Wilhelm

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​BRUNSWICK-BEVERN, AUGUST WILHELM, Duke of (1715–1781), Prussian soldier, son of Ernst Ferdinand, duke of Brunswick-Bevern, was born at Brunswick in 1715, and entered the Prussian army in 1731, becoming colonel of an infantry regiment in 1739. He won great distinction at Hohenfriedeberg as a major-general, and was promoted lieutenant-general in 1750. He was one of the most experienced and exact soldiers in the army of Frederick the Great. He commanded a wing in the battle of Lobositz in 1756, and defeated the Austrians under Marshal Konigsegg in a well-fought battle at Reichenberg on the 21st of April 1757. He took part in the battles of Prague and Kolin and the retreat to Görlitz, and subsequently commanded the Prussians left behind by Frederick in the autumn of 1757 when he marched against the French. Bevern conducted a defensive campaign against overwhelming numbers with great skill, but he soon lost the valuable assistance of General Winterfeld, who was killed in a skirmish at Moys; and he was eventually brought to battle and suffered a heavy defeat at Breslau on the 22nd of November. He fell into the hands of the Austrians on the following morning, and remained prisoner for a year. He was made general of infantry in 1759, and on the 11th of August 1762 inflicted a severe defeat at Reichenbach on an Austrian army endeavouring to relieve Schweidnitz. Bevern retired, after the peace of Hubertusburg, to his government of Stettin, where he died in 1781.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Berry, Charles Albert

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​BERRY, CHARLES ALBERT (1852–1899), English nonconformist divine, was born on the 14th of December 1852 at Bradshawgate, Leigh, Lancashire. At the age of seventeen he entered Airedale College, Bradford, to train for the Congregational ministry, and in 1875 became pastor of St George’s Road Congregational church, Bolton. He became widely known as a man of administrative ability, a vigorous platform speaker and an eloquent preacher. In July 1883 he undertook the pastorate of the church at Queen Street, Wolverhampton, with the supervision of nine dependent churches in the neighbourhood. Here again he exercised a wide influence, due in part to his evangelical conviction, eloquence, broad views and powers of organization, but also to the magnetic force of his personality. In 1887 he went to America in fulfilment of a promise to Henry Ward Beecher of Brooklyn, and received a unanimous invitation to succeed Beecher in what was then the best-known pulpit in the United States. Berry, however, felt that his work lay in England and declined the invitation. In 1892 he took part in a conference at Grindelwald on the question of Christian Reunion, and subsequently, with Hugh Price Hughes and Alexander Mackennal of Bowdon, conducted a campaign throughout England, introducing the ideas and principles of Free Church federation. He was the first president of the Free Church congress. He played an effective part in expressing the popular desire for peace between England and America in reply to President Cleveland’s message on the Venezuelan boundary dispute, and was invited to Washington to preach in connexion with the endeavour to establish an international arbitration treaty. In 1896 he was elected chairman of the Congregational Union of England and Wales. In 1898 his health began to fail, and he died suddenly on the 31st of January 1899. His published works consist chiefly of addresses, and two volumes of sermons, Vision and Duty, and Mischievous Goodness. (D. Mn.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Berserker

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​BERSERKER (from the “sark” or shirt of the “bear,” or other animal-skins worn by them), in Scandinavian mythology, the name of the twelve sons of the hero Berserk, grandson of the eight-handed Starkadder and Alfhilde. Berserk was famed for the reckless fury with which he fought, always going into battle without armour. By the daughter of King Swafurlam, whom he had killed, he had the twelve sons who were his equals in bravery. In Old Norse the term berserker thus became synonymous with reckless courage, and was later applied to the bodyguards of several of the Scandinavian heroes.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Berossus

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​BEROSSUS, a priest of Bel at Babylon, who translated into Greek the standard Babylonian work on astrology and astronomy, and compiled (in three books) the history of his country from native documents, which he published in Greek in the reign of Antiochus II. (250 B.C.). His works have perished, but extracts from the history have been preserved by Josephus and Eusebius, the latter of whom probably derived them not directly from Berossus, but through the medium of Alexander Polyhistor and Apollodorus. The extracts containing the Babylonian cosmology, the list of the antediluvian kings of Babylonia, and the Chaldaean story of the Deluge, have been shown by the decipherment of the cuneiform texts to have faithfully reproduced the native legends; we may, therefore, conclude that the rest of the History was equally trustworthy. On the other hand, a list of post-diluvian dynasties, which is quoted by Eusebius and Georgius Syncellus as having been given by Berossus, cannot, in its present form, be reconciled with the monumental facts, though a substratum of historical truth is discoverable in it. As it stands, it is as follows:—
| 1. 86 Chaldaean 2.  8 Median 3. 11 other kings  4. 49 Chaldaean 5.  9 Arabian 6. 45 Assyrian | kings ” ” ” ” ” | 34,080 or 33,091 224 no number. 458 245 526 | years ” ” ” ” |
After these, according to Eusebius, came the reign of Pul. By means of an ingenious chronological combination, the several items of which, however, are very questionable, J. A. Brandis assigned 258 years to the 3rd dynasty; other summations have been proposed with equally little assurance of certainty. If Eusebius can be trusted, the 6th dynasty ended in 729 B.C., the year in which Pul or Tiglath-pileser III. was crowned king of Babylonia. But all attempts to harmonize the scheme of dynasties thus ascribed to Berossus with the list given us in the so-called dynastic Tablets discovered by Dr Pinches have been failures. The numbers, whether of kings or of years, cannot have been handed down to us correctly by the Greek writers. All that seems certain is that Berossus arranged his history so that it should fill the astronomical period of 36,000 years, beginning with the first man and ending with the conquest of Babylon by Alexander the Great.
See J. P. Cory, Ancient Fragments (1826, ed. by E. R. Hodges, 1876); Fr. Lenormant, Essai de commentaire des fragments cosmogoniques de Bérose (1872); A. von Gutschmid in the Rheinisches Museum (1853); George Smith in T.S.B.A. iii., 1874, pp. 361-379; Th. G. Pinches in P.S.B.A., 1880–1881. (A. H. S.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Berry, Charles Ferdinand

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​BERRY, CHARLES FERDINAND, Duke of (1778–1820), younger son of Charles X. of France, was born at Versailles. At the Revolution he left France with his father, then comte d’Artois, and served in the army of Condé; from 1792 to 1797. He afterwards joined the Russian army, and in 1801 took up his residence in England, where he remained for thirteen years. During that time he married an Englishwoman, Anna Brown, by whom he had two daughters, afterwards the baronne de Charette and the comtesse de Lucinge-Faucigny. The marriage was cancelled for political reasons in 1814, when the duke set out for France. His frank, open manners gained him some favour with his countrymen, and Louis XVIII. named him commander-in-chief of the army at Paris on the return of Napoleon from Elba. He was, however, unable to retain the loyalty of his troops, and retired to Ghent during the Hundred Days. In 1816 he married the princess Caroline Ferdinande Louise (1798–1870), eldest daughter of King Francis I. of Naples. On the 13th of February 1820 he was mortally wounded, when leaving the opera-house at Paris with his wife, by a saddler named Louis Pierre Louvel. Seven months after his death the duchess gave birth to a son, who received the title of duke of Bordeaux, ​but who is known in history as the comte de Chambord. A daughter, afterwards duchess of Parma, was born in 1819.
The duchess of Berry was compelled to follow Charles X. to Holyrood after July 1830, but it was with the resolution of returning speedily and making an attempt to secure the throne for her son. From England she went to Italy, and in April 1832 she landed near Marseilles, but, receiving no support, was compelled to make her way towards the loyal districts of Vendée and Brittany. Her followers, however, were defeated, and, after remaining concealed for five months in a house in Nantes, she was betrayed to the government and imprisoned in the castle of Blaye. Here she gave birth to a daughter, the fruit of a secret marriage contracted with an Italian nobleman, Count Ettore Lucchesi-Palli (1805–1864). The announcement of this marriage at once deprived the duchess of the sympathies of her supporters. She was no longer an object of fear to the French government, who released her in June 1833. She set sail for Sicily, and, joining her husband, lived in retirement from that time till her death, at Brunnensee in Switzerland, in April 1870.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bert, Paul

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​BERT, PAUL (1833–1886), French physiologist and politician, was born at Auxerre (Yonne) on the 17th of October 1833. He entered the École Polytechnique at Paris with the intention of becoming an engineer; then changing his mind, he studied law; and finally, under the influence of the zoologist, L. P. Gratiolet (1815–1865), he took up physiology, becoming one of Claude Bernard’s most brilliant pupils. After graduating at Paris as doctor of medicine in 1863, and doctor of science in 1866, he was appointed professor of physiology successively at Bordeaux (1866) and the Sorbonne (1869). After the revolution of 1870 he began to take part in politics as a supporter of Gambetta. In 1874 he was elected to the Assembly, where he sat on the extreme left, and in 1876 to the chamber of deputies. He was one of the most determined enemies of clericalism, and an ardent advocate of “liberating national education from religious sects, while rendering it accessible to every citizen.” In 1881 he was minister of education and worship in Gambetta’s short-lived cabinet, and in the same year he created a great sensation by a lecture on modern Catholicism, delivered in a Paris theatre, in which he poured ridicule on the fables and follies of the chief religious tracts and handbooks that circulated especially in the south of France. Early in 1886 he was appointed resident-general in Annam and Tonkin, and died of dysentery at Hanoi on the 11th of November of that year. But he was more distinguished as a man of science than as a politician or administrator. His classical work, La Pression barométrique (1878), embodies researches that gained him the biennial prize of 20,000 francs from the Academy of Sciences in 1875, and is a comprehensive investigation on the physiological effects of air-pressure, both above and below the normal. His earliest researches, which provided him with material for his two doctoral theses, were devoted to animal grafting and the vitality of animal tissues, and they were followed by studies on the physiological action of various poisons, on anaesthetics, on respiration and asphyxia, on the causes of the change of colour in the chameleon, &c. He was also interested in vegetable physiology, and in particular investigated the movements of the sensitive plant, and the influence of light of different colours on the life of vegetation. After about 1880 he produced several elementary text-books of scientific instruction, and also various publications on educational and allied subjects.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bertani, Agostino

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​BERTANI, AGOSTINO (1812–1886), Italian revolutionist, was born at Milan on the 19th of October 1812. He took part in the insurrection of 1848, though opposed to the fusion of Lombardy with Piedmont. During the Roman republic of 1849, he, as medical officer, organized the ambulance service, and, after the fall of Rome, withdrew to Genoa, where he worked with Sir James Hudson for the liberation of the political prisoners of Naples, but held aloof from the Mazzinian conspiracies. In 1859 he founded a revolutionary journal at Genoa, but, shortly afterwards, joined as surgeon the Garibaldian corps in the war of 1859. After Villafranca he became the organizer-in-chief of the expeditions to Sicily, remaining at Genoa after Garibaldi’s departure for Marsala, and organizing four separate volunteer corps, two of which were intended for Sicily and two for the papal states. Cavour, however, obliged all to sail for Sicily. Upon the arrival of Garibaldi at Naples, Bertani was appointed secretary-general of the dictator, in which capacity he reorganized the police, abolished the secret service fund, founded twelve infant asylums, suppressed the duties upon Sicilian products, prepared for the suppression of the religious orders, and planned the sanitary reconstruction of the city. Entering parliament in 1861, he opposed the Garibaldian expedition, which ended at Aspromonte, but nevertheless tended Garibaldi’s wound with affectionate devotion. In 1866 he organized the medical service for the 40,000 Garibaldians, and in 1867 fought at Mentana. His parliamentary career, though marked by zeal, was less brilliant than his revolutionary activity. Up to 1870 he remained an agitator, but, after the liberation of Rome, seceded from the historic left, and became leader of the extreme left, a position held until his death on the 30th of April 1886. His chief work as deputy was an inquiry into the sanitary conditions of the peasantry, and the preparation of the sanitary code adopted by the Crispi administration. (H. W. S.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Berry, John

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​BERRY, JOHN, Duke of (1340–1416), third son of John II., king of France and Bonne of Luxemburg, was born on the 30th of November 1340 at Vincennes. He was created count of Poitiers in 1356, and was made the king’s lieutenant in southern France, though the real power rested chiefly with John of Armagnac, whose daughter Jeanne he married in 1360. The loss of his southern possessions by the treaty of Bretigny was compensated by the fiefs of Auvergne and Berry, with the rank of peer of France. The duke went to England in 1360 as a hostage for the fulfilment of the treaty of Bretigny, returning to France in 1367 on the pretext of collecting his ransom. He took no leading part in the war against the English, his energies being largely occupied with the satisfaction of his artistic and luxurious tastes. For this reason perhaps his brother Charles V. assigned him no share in the government during the minority of Charles VI. He received, however, the province of Languedoc. The peasant revolt of the Tuchins and Coquins, as the insurgents were called, was suppressed with great harshness, and the duke exacted from the states of Languedoc assembled at Lyons a fine of £15,000. He fought at Rosebeke in 1382 against the Flemings and helped to suppress the Parisian revolts. By a series of delays he caused the failure of the naval expedition prepared at Sluys against England in 1386, and a second accusation of military negligence led to disgrace of the royal princes and the temporary triumph of the marmousets, as the advisers of the late king were nicknamed. Charles VI. visited Languedoc in 1389–1390, and enquired into his uncle’s government. The duke was deprived of the government of Languedoc, and his agent, Bétizac, was burnt. When in 1401 he was restored, he delegated his authority in the province, where he was still hated, to Bérnard d’Armagnac. In 1396 he negotiated a truce with Richard II. of England, and his marriage with the princess Isabella of France. He tried to mediate between his brother Philip the Bold of Burgundy and his nephew Louis, duke of Orleans, and later between John “sans Peur” of Burgundy and Orleans. He broke with John after the murder of Orleans, though he tried to prevent civil war, and only finally joined the Armagnac party in 1410. In 1413 he resumed his rôle of mediator, and was for a short time tutor to the dauphin. He died in Paris on the 15th of June 1416, leaving vast treasures of jewelry, objects of art, and especially of illuminated MSS., many of which have been preserved. He decorated the Sainte Chapelle at Bourges; he built the Hôtel de Nesle in Paris, and palaces at Poitiers, Bourges, Mehun-sur-Yèvre and elsewhere.
See also L. Raynal, Histoire du Berry (Bourges, 1845); “Jean, duc de Berry,” in S Luce, La France pendant la guerre de Cent Ans (1890), vol. i.; Toulgoët-Tréanna, in Mém. de la Soc. des antiquaires du centre, vol. xvii. (1890). His beautiful illuminated Livre d’heures was reproduced (Paris, fol. 1904) by P. Durrieu.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bertat

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​BERTAT (Arab. Jebalain), negroes of the Shangalla group of tribes, mainly agriculturists. They occupy the valleys of the Yabus and Tumat, tributaries of the Blue Nile. They are shortish and very black, with projecting jaws, broad noses and thick lips. By both sexes the hair is worn short or the head shaved; on cheeks and temple are tribal marks in the form of scars. The huts of the Bertat are circular, the floor raised on short poles. Their weapons are the spear, throwing-club, sword and dagger, and also the kulbeda or throwing-knife. Blocks of salt are the favourite form of currency. Gold washing is practised. Nature worship still struggles against the spread of Mahommedanism. The Bertat, estimated to number some 80,000, c. 1880, were ​nearly exterminated during the period of Dervish ascendancy (1884–1898) in the eastern Sudan. Settled among them are Arab communities governed by their own sheiks, while the meks or rulers of the Bertat speak Arabic, and show traces of foreign blood. (See Fazogli.)
See Koettlitz, “The Bertat,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxiii. 51; Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, edited by Count Gleichen (London, 1905).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Berhampur (Madras)

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​BERHAMPUR, a town of British India, in the presidency of Madras. Pop. (1901) 25,729. It is the headquarters of Ganjam district, and is situated about 9 m. from the sea. It is a station on the East Coast railway, which connects Calcutta with Madras. Berhampur had a military cantonment, sometimes distinguished as Baupur, containing a wing of a native regiment; but the troops have been transferred elsewhere. There is some weaving of silk cloth, and export trade in sugar. The college, originally founded by government, is now maintained by the raja of Kallikota. Silk-weaving and sugar-manufacture are carried on.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bering, Vitus

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​BERING (Behring), VITUS (1680–1741), Danish navigator, was born in 1680 at Horsens. In 1703 he entered the Russian navy, and served in the Swedish war. A series of explorations of the north coast of Asia, the outcome of a far-reaching plan devised by Peter the Great, led up to Bering’s first voyage to Kamchatka. In 1725, under the auspices of the Russian government, he went overland to Okhotsk, crossed to Kamchatka, and built the ship “Gabriel.” In her he pushed northward in 1728, until he could no longer observe any extension of the land to the north, or its appearance to the east. In the following year he made an abortive search for land eastward, and in 1730 returned to St Petersburg. He was subsequently commissioned to a further expedition, and in 1740 established the settlement of Petropavlosk in Kamchatka; and built two vessels, the “St Peter” and “St Paul,” in which in 1741 he led an expedition towards America. A storm separated the ships, but Bering sighted the southern coast of Alaska, and a landing was made at Kayak Island or in the vicinity. Bering was forced by adverse conditions to return quickly, and discovered some of the Aleutian Islands on his way back. He was afflicted with scurvy, and became too ill to command his ships, which were at last driven to refuge on an uninhabited island in the south-west of Bering Sea, where Bering himself and many of his company died. This island bears his name. Bering died on the 19th of December 1741. It was long before the value of his work was recognized; but Captain Cook was able to prove his accuracy as an observer.
See G. F. Müller, Sammlung russischer Geschichten, vol. iii. (St Petersburg, 1758); P. Lauridsen, Bering og de Russiske Opdagelsesrejser (Copenhagen, 1885).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Berja

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​BERJA, a town of southern Spain, in the province of Almeria; on the south-eastern slope of the Sierra de Gádor, 10 m. N.E. of Adra by road. Pop. (1900) 13,224. Despite the lack of a railway Berja has a considerable trade. Lead is obtained among the mountains, and the more sheltered valleys produce grain, wine, oil, fruit and esparto grass. These, with the paper, linen and cotton goods manufactured locally in small quantities, are exported from Adra.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Berka

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​BERKA, a town and watering-place of Germany, in the grand-duchy of Saxe-Weimar, on the Ilm and the Weimar-Kranichfeld railway, 8 m. S. of Weimar. Pop. 2300. It has sulphur baths, which are largely frequented in the summer. Berka was once celebrated for its Cistercian nunnery, founded in 1251. Two m. down the Ilm is the curious castle of Burgfarth, partly hewn out of the solid rock.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Berhampur (Bengal)

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​BERHAMPUR, a town of British India, the headquarters of Murshidabad district, in Bengal, situated on the left bank of the river Bhagirathi, 5 m. below Murshidabad city. Pop. (1901) 24,397. Berhampur was fixed upon after the battle of Plassey as the site of the chief military station for Bengal; and a huge square of brick barracks was erected in 1767, at a cost of £300,000. Here was committed the first overt act of the mutiny, on the 25th of February 1857. No troops are now stationed here, and the barracks have been utilized for a jail, a lunatic asylum and other civic buildings. A college, founded by government in 1853, was made over in 1888 to a local committee, being mainly supported by the munificence of the rani Svarnamayi. In the municipality of Berhampur is included the remnant of the once important, but now utterly decayed city of Cossimbazar (q.v.).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Beriot, Charles Auguste de

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​BERIOT, CHARLES AUGUSTE DE (1802–1870), Belgian violinist and composer. Although not definitely a pupil of Viotti or Baillot he was much influenced by both. He was very successful in his concert tours, and held appointments at the courts of Belgium and France. From 1843 to 1852 he was violin professor at the Brussels conservatoire. Then his eyesight began to fail, and in 1858 he became blind. His compositions are still often played, and are good, clean displays of technique.