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

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​ PIERREFONDS, a town of northern France, in the department of Oise, 9 m. S.E. of Compiègne by road. Pop. (1906), 1482. It is celebrated for its feudal stronghold, a masterpiece of modern restoration. The building is rectangular in shape, with a tower at each corner and at the centre of each of the walls, which are strengthened by crenelation and machicolation. A lofty keep defends the principal entrances on the south-west. The interior buildings are chiefly modern, but the exterior reproduces faithfully that of the medieval fortress. Pierrefonds has a church dating from various periods from the 11th to the 16th century, and its mineral springs are in some repute. The chateau was begun in the last decade of the 14th century by Louis d'Orléans, to whom the domain was given by Charles VI., and finished early in the 15th century. It was subsequently held by the Burgundians, the English and the adherents of the League, from whom it passed to Henry IV. It was dismantled in 1622. The ruins, bought by Napoleon I., were restored, by order of Napoleon III., from 1858 to 1895, under the direction, first of Viollet-le-Duc and afterwards of E. Boeswillwald.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pierrepont, William

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​ PIERREPONT, WILLIAM (c. 1607-1678), English politician, was the second son of Robert Pierrepont, 1st earl of Kingston. Returned to the Long Parliament in 1640 as member for Great Wenlock, he threw his influence on the side of peace and took part for the parliament in the negotiations with Charles I. at Oxford in 1643. Pierrepont was a member of the committee of both kingdoms, and represented the parliamentary party during the deliberations at Uxbridge in 1645; but from that time, according to Clarendon, he forsook his moderate attitude, and “contracted more bitterness and sourness than formerly.” This statement, however, is perhaps somewhat exaggerated, as Pierrepont favoured the resumption of negotiations with the king in 1647, and in the following year his efforts on behalf of peace at Newport, where again he represented the parliamentarians, brought upon him some slight censure from Cromwell. For his services at Newport he was thanked by parliament; but he retired from active political life soon afterwards, as he disliked the “purging” of the House of Commons by Colonel Pride and the proceedings against the king. In spite of his ​moderate views Pierrepont enjoyed the personal friendship of Cromwell, but, although elected, he would not sit in the parliament of 1656, nor would he take the place offered to him in the Protector’s House of Lords. When Richard Cromwell succeeded his father, Pierrepont was an unobtrusive but powerful influence in directing the policy of the government, and after a short period of retirement in Richard’s fall he was chosen, early in 1660, a member of the council of state. He represented Nottinghamshire in the Convention Parliament of 1660, and probably was instrumental in saving the lives of some of the parliamentary leaders. At the general election of 1661 he was defeated, and, spending the remainder of his life in retirement, he died in 1678. Pierrepont married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Thomas Harris, Bart., of Tong Castle, Shropshire, by whom he had five sons and five daughters. His eldest son, Robert (d. 1666), was the father of Robert, 3rd earl, William, 4th earl, and Evelyn, 1st duke of Kingston, and his third son, Gervase (1649–1715), was created in 1714 baron Pierrepont of Hanslope, a title which became extinct on his death.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pierrot

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​Pierrot (Ital. Pedrolino), the name given to the leading character in the French pantomime plays since the 18th century; transferred from the Italian stage, and revived especially in recent times. He is always in white, both face and costume, with a loose and daintily clownish garb, and is represented as of a freakish disposition. Modern pierrot plays have converted the pierrot into a romantic and even pathetic figure.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Piero di Cosimo

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​ PIERO DI COSIMO (1462-1521), the name by which the Florentine painter Pietro di Lorenzo is generally known. He was born in Florence about 1462, and worked in the bottega of Cosimo Rosselli (from whom he derived his popular name). Other influences that can be traced in his work are those of Filippino Lippi, Luca Signorelli, and Leonardo da Vinci, and, as has been recently suggested by Professor R. Muther, that of Hugo van der Goes, whose Portinari altar-piece (now at the ​Spedale of S. Maria Novella in Florence) helped to lead the whole of Florentine painting into new channels. From him, most probably, he acquired the love of landscape and the intimate knowledge of the growth of flowers and of animal life. The influence of Hugo van der Goes is especially apparent in the “Adoration of the Shepherds,” at the Berlin Museum. He had the gift of a fertile fantastic imagination, which, as a result of a journey to Rome in 1482 with his master, Rosselli, became directed towards the myths of classic antiquity. He proves himself a true child of the Renaissance in such pictures as the “Death of Procris,” at the National Gallery, the “Mars and Venus,” at the Berlin Gallery, the “Perseus and Andromeda” series, at the Uffizi in Florence, and the “Hylas and the Nymphs” belonging to Mr Benson. If, as we are told by Vasari, he spent the last years of his life in gloomy retirement, the change was probably due to Savonarola, under whose influence he turned his attention once more to religious art. The “Immaculate Conception,” at the Uffizi, and the “Holy Family,” at Dresden, best illustrate the religious fervour to which he was stimulated by the stern preacher. With the exception of the landscape background in Rossell1's fresco of the “Sermon on the Mount,” in the Sistine Chapel, we have no record of any fresco work from his brush. On the other hand, he enjoyed a great reputation as a portrait painter, though the only known examples that can be definitely ascribed to him are the portrait of a warrior, at the National Gallery, (No. 895), the so-called “Bella Simonetta,” at Chantilly, the portraits of Giuliano di San Gallo and his father, at the Hague, and a head of a youth, at Dulwich. Vasari relates that Piero excelled in designing pageants and triumphal processions for the pleasure-loving youths of Florence, and gives a vivid description of one such procession at the end of the carnival of 1507, which illustrated the triumph of death. Piero di Cosimo exercised considerable influence upon his fellow pupils Albertinelli and Bartolommeo della Porta and was the master of Andrea del Sarto. Examples of his work are also to be found at the Louvre in Paris, the Harrach and Liechtenstein collections in Vienna, the Borghese Gallery in Rome, the Spedale degli Innocenti in Florence, and in the collections of Mr John Burke and Colonel Cornwallis West in London. A “Magdalen” from his brush was added to the National Gallery of Rome in 1907.
See Piero di Cosimo, by F. Knapp (Halle, 1899); Piero di Cosimo, by H. Haberfeld (Breslau, 1901).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pierre

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​ PIERRE, the capital of South Dakota, U.S.A., and the county-seat of Hughes county, situated on the east bank of the Missouri river, opposite the mouth of the Bad river, about 185 m. N.W. of Yankton. Pop (1905) 2794, (1910) 3656. Pierre is served by the Chicago & North-Western railway; the Missouri is navigable here, but river traffic has been practically abandoned. Among the principal buildings are the state capitol (1909) and the post office building. Pierre has a public library, and is the seat of the Pierre Industrial School (co-educational, opened in 1890), a government boarding school (non-reservation) for Indian children. The city has a large trade in livestock, and is a centre for the mining districts of the Black Hills and for a grain-growing country. Natural gas is used for lighting, heating and power. A fur-trading post, Fort La Framboise, as built in 1817 by a French fur-trader (from whom it took its name) at the mouth of the Teton or Little Missouri river (now called the Bad River), on or near the site of the present village of Fort Pierre (pop. in 1910, 792). In 1822 Fort Tecumseh was built about 2 m. up-stream by the Columbia Fur Company, which turned it over in 1827 to the American Fur Company. The washing away of the river bank caused the abandonment of this post and the erection about a mile farther up-stream, and a short distance west of the river, of Fort Pierre Chouteau (later called Fort Pierre), occupied in 1832, and named in honour of Pierre Chouteau, jun. (1789-1865). For twenty years thereafter Fort Pierre was the chief fur-trading depot of the Upper Missouri country. In 1855 the United States government bought the post building and other property for $45,000, and laid out around them a military reservation of about 270 sq. m. The fort was the headquarters of General William S. Harney (1800-1889) in his expedition against the Sioux in 1856, and in March of that year an important council between General Harney and the chiefs of all the Sioux bands, except the Blackfeet, was held here. The fort was abandoned in 1857. Pierre was laid out in 1880, was incorporated as a village in 1883, and was chartered as a city in 1900.
See Major Frederick T. Wilson, “Fort Pierre and Its Neighbors,” in South Dakota Historical Collections, vol i (Aberdeen, S.D., 1902); and Hiram M. Chittenden, The American Fur Trade of the Far West (3 vols., New York, 1902).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lacquer

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​LACQUER, or Lacker, a general term for coloured and frequently opaque varnishes applied to certain metallic objects and to wood. The term is derived from the resin lac, which substance is the basis of lacquers properly so called. Technically, among Western nations, lacquering is restricted to the coating of polished metals or metallic surfaces, such as brass, pewter and tin, with prepared varnishes which will give them a golden, bronze-like or other lustre as desired. Throughout the East Indies the lacquering of wooden surfaces is universally practised, large articles of household furniture, as well as small boxes, trays, toys and papier-mâché objects, being decorated with bright-coloured and variegated lacquer. The lacquer used in the East is, in general, variously coloured sealing-wax, applied, smoothed and polished in a heated condition; and by various devices intricate marbled, streaked and mottled designs are produced. Quite distinct from these, and from all other forms of lacquer, is the lacquer work of Japan, for which see Japan, § Art.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lacroma

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​LACROMA (Serbo-Croatian Lokrum), a small island in the Adriatic Sea, forming part of the Austrian kingdom of Dalmatia, and lying less than half a mile south of Ragusa. Though barely 11/4 m. in length, Lacroma is remarkable for the beauty of its sub-tropical vegetation. It was a favourite resort of the archduke Maximilian, afterwards emperor of Mexico (1832–1867), who restored the château and park; and of the Austrian crown prince Rudolph (1857–1889). It contains an 11th-century Benedictine monastery; and the remains of a church, said by a very doubtful local tradition to have been founded by Richard I. of England (1157–1199), form part of the imperial château.
See Lacroma, an illustrated descriptive work by the crown princess Stéphanie (afterwards Countess Lónyay) (Vienna, 1892).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lacrymatory

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​LACRYMATORY (from Lat. lacrima, a tear), a class of small vessels of terra-cotta, or, more frequently, of glass, found in Roman and late Greek tombs, and supposed to have been bottles into which mourners dropped their tears. They contained unguents, and to the use of unguents at funeral ceremonies the finding of so many of these vessels in tombs is due. They are shaped like a spindle, or a flask with a long small neck and a body in the form of a bulb.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lacroix, Paul

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​LACROIX, PAUL (1806–1884), French author and journalist, was born in Paris on the 27th of April 1806, the son of a novelist. He is best known under his pseudonym of P. L. Jacob, bibliophile, or “Bibliophile Jacob,” suggested by the constant interest he took in public libraries and books generally. Lacroix was an extremely prolific and varied writer. Over twenty historical romances alone came from his pen, and he also wrote a variety of serious historical works, including a history of Napoleon III., and the life and times of the Tsar Nicholas I. of Russia. He was the joint author with Ferdinand Séré of a five-volume work, Le Moyen Âge et La Renaissance (1847), a standard work on the manners, customs and dress of those times, the chief merit of which lies in the great number of illustrations it contains. He also wrote many monographs on phases of the history of culture. Over the signature Pierre Dufour was published an exhaustive Histoire de la Prostitution (1851–1852), which has always been attributed to Lacroix. His works on bibliography were also extremely numerous. In 1885 he was appointed librarian of the Arsenal Library, Paris. He died in Paris on the 16th of October 1884.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lacroix, Antoine François Alfred

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​LACROIX, ANTOINE FRANÇOIS ALFRED (1863– ), French mineralogist and geologist, was born at Mâcon, Saône et Loire, on the 4th of February 1863. He took the degree of D. ès Sc. in Paris, 1889. In 1893 he was appointed professor of mineralogy at the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, and in 1896 director of the mineralogical laboratory in the École des Hautes Études. He paid especial attention to minerals connected with volcanic phenomena and igneous rocks, to the effects of metamorphism, and to mineral veins, in various parts of the world, notably in the Pyrenees. In his numerous contributions to scientific journals he dealt with the mineralogy and petrology of Madagascar, and published an elaborate and exhaustive volume on the eruptions in Martinique, La Montagne Pelée et ses éruptions (1904). He also issued an important work entitled Mineralogie de la France et de ses Colonies (1893–1898), and other works in conjunction with A. Michel Lévy. He was elected member of the Académie des sciences in 1904.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Michaud, Joseph François

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​MICHAUD, JOSEPH FRANÇOIS (1767–1839), French historian and publicist, was born of an old family on the 19th of June 1767, at Albens, Savoy, was educated at Bourg-en-Bresse, and afterwards engaged in literary work at Lyons, where the events of 1789 first called out the strong dislike to revolutionary principles which manifested itself throughout the rest of his life. In 1791 he went to Paris, where, not without danger, he took part in editing several royalist journals. In 1796 he became editor of La Quotidienne, for his connexion with which he was arrested after the 13th of Vendérniaire; he succeeded in escaping his captors, but was sentenced to death par contumace by the military council. Having resumed the editorship of his newspaper on the establishment of the Directory, he was again proscribed on the 18th of Fructidor, but at the close of two years returned to Paris when the consulate had superseded the Directory. His Bourbon sympathies led to a brief imprisonment in 1800, and on his release he for the time abandoned journalism, and began to write or edit books. Along with his brother and two colleagues he published in 1806 a Biographie moderne, ou dictionnaire des hommes qui se sont fait un nom en Europe depuis 1789, the earliest work of its kind; and in 1811 appeared the first volume of his Histoire des croisades and also the first volume of his Biographie universelle. In 1814 he resumed the editorship of La Quotidienne, and in the same year was elected Academician. In 1815 his brochure entitled Histoire des quinze semaines ou le dernier règne de Bonaparte met with extraordinary success, passing through twenty seven editions within a very short time. His political services were now rewarded with the cross of an officer in the Legion of Honour and the modest post of king’s reader, of which last he was deprived in 1827 for having opposed Peyronnet’s “Loi d’Amour” against the freedom of the Press. In 1830–1831 he travelled in Syria and Egypt for the purpose of collecting additional materials for the Histoire des croisades; his correspondence with a fellow explorer, J. J. F . Poujoulat, consisting practically of discussions and elucidations of various points in that work, was afterwards published (Correspondance d’orient, 7 vols., 1833–1835). Like the Histoire, it is more interesting than exact. The Bibliothèque des croisades, in four volumes more, contained the “Pièces justificatives” of the Histoire. Michaud died on the 30th of September 1839, at Passy, where his home had been since 1832.
His Histoire des croisades was published in its final form in six volumes in 1840 under the editorship of his friend Poujoulat (9th ed., with appendix, by Huillard-Bréholles, 1856). Michaud, along with Poujoulat, also edited Nouvelle collection des mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de France (32 vols., 1836–1844). See Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. vii.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Michel, Clémence Louise

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​MICHEL, CLÉMENCE LOUISE (1850–1905), French anarchist, called la Vierge rouge de Montmartre, was born at the château of Vroncourt (Haute-Marne) on the 29th of May 1830, the daughter of a serving-maid, Marianne Michel, and the son of the house, Etienne Charles Demahis. She was brought up by her father’s parents, and received a liberal education. After her grandfather’s death in 1850 she was trained to teach, but her refusal to acknowledge Napoleon III. prevented her from serving in a state school. She found her way in 1866 to a school in the Montmartre quarter of Paris, where she threw herself ardently into works of charity and revolutionary politics. She became violently anti-Bonapartist, and is said to have meditated the assassination of Napoleon. During the siege of Paris she joined the ambulance service, and untiringly preached resistance to the Prussians. On the establishment of the Commune she joined the National Guard. She offered to shoot Thiers, and suggested the destruction of Paris by way of vengeance .for its surrender., She was with the Communards who made their last stand in the cemetery of Montmartre, and was closely allied with Theodore Ferré, who was executed in November 1871. This ardent attachment was perhaps one of the sources of the exaltation which marked her career, and gave many handles to her enemies. When she was brought before the 6th council of war in December 1871 she defied her judges and defended the Commune. She was sent as a convict to New Caledonia, among her companions being Henri Rochefort, who remained her friend till the day of her death. The amnesty of 1880 found her revolutionary ardour unchanged. She travelled throughout France, preaching revolution, and in 1883 she led a Paris mob which pillaged a baker’s shop. For this she was condemned to six years’ imprisonment, but was released in 1886, at the same time as Prince Kropotkin and other prominent anarchists. After a short period of freedom she was again arrested for making inflammatory speeches. She was Soon liberated, but, hearing that her enemies hoped to intern her in a lunatic asylum, she fled to England. She returned to France in 1895, and in 1902 was back in London. She was touring France and lecturing on behalf of anarchist propaganda when she died at Marseilles on the 10th of January 1905.
Her Mémoires (Paris, 1886) contain accounts of her trials. See also La Bonne Louise (Paris, 1906), by E. Girault.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Michel, Claude

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​MICHEL, CLAUDE, known as Clodion (1738–1814), French sculptor, was born on the 20th of December 1738 in Nancy. Here and probably in Lille he spent the earlier years of his life. In 1755 he came to Paris and entered the workshop of Lambert Sigisbert Adam, his maternal uncle, a clever sculptor. He remained four years in this workshop, and on the death of his uncle became a pupil of J. B. Pigalle. In 1759 he obtained the grand prize for sculpture at the Académie Royale; in 1761 he obtained the first silver medal for studies from models; and in 1762 he went to Rome. Here his activity was considerable between 1767 and 1771. Catherine II. was eager to secure his presence in St Petersburg, but he returned to Paris. Among his patrons, which were very numerous, were the chapter of Rouen, the states of Languedoc, and the Direction générale. His works were frequently exhibited at the Salon. In 1782 he married Catherine Flore, a daughter of the sculptor Augustin Pajou, who subsequently obtained a divorce from him. The agitation caused by the Revolution drove Clodion in 1792 to Nancy, where he remained until 1798, his energies being spent in the decoration of houses. Among Clodion’s works are a statue of Montesquieu, a “Dying Cleopatra,” and a chimney-piece at present in the South Kensington Museum, One of his last groups represented Homer as a beggar being driven away by fishermen (1810). On the 29th of March 1814 Clodion died in Paris, on the eve of the invasion of Paris by the allies.
Thirion’s Les Adam et Clodion (Paris, 1885) contains a list of the sculptor’s works sold between 1767 and 1884. See also A. Jacquot, Les Adam et les Michel et Clodion (Paris, 1898).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Michaux, André

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​MICHAUX, ANDRÉ (1746–1802), French botanist and traveller, was born at Versailles on the 7th of March 1746. In 1779 he spent some time botanizing in England, and in 1780 he explored Auvergne, the Pyrénées and the north of Spain. In 1782 he was sent by the French government on a botanical mission to Persia. His journey began unfavourably, as he was robbed by Arabs of all his equipment except his books; but he gained influential support in Persia, having cured the shah of a dangerous illness. After two years he returned to France with a fine herbarium, and also introduced numerous Eastern plants into the botanic gardens of France. In 1785 he was sent by the French government to North America, and travelled with his son François André (1770–1855) through Canada, ​Nova Scotia and the United States. On his return to France in 1797 he was shipwrecked and lost most of his collections. In 1800 he went to Madagascar to investigate the flora of that island, and died there on the 16th of November 1802. His work as a botanist was chiefly done in the field, and he added largely to what was previously known of the botany of the East and of America.
He wrote two valuable works on North American plants—the Histoire des chênes de l’Amérique septentrionale (1801), with 36 plates, and the Flora Boreali-Americana (2 vols., 1803), with 51 plates. His son François published a Histoire des arbres forestiers de l’Amérique septentrionale (3 vols., 1810–1813), with 156 plates, of which an English translation appeared in 1817–1819 as The North American Sylva.