OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pollard, Edward Albert

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​POLLARD, EDWARD ALBERT (1828–1872), American journalist, was born in Nelson county, Virginia, on the 27th of February 1828. He graduated at the university of Virginia in 1849, studied law at the College of William and Mary, and in Baltimore (where he was admitted to the bar), and was engaged in newspaper work in California until 1855. In 1857–1861 he was clerk of the judiciary committee of the National House of Representatives. By 1859 he had become an outspoken Secessionist, and during the Civil War he was one of the principal editors-of the Richmond Examiner, which supported the Confederacy but was hostile to President Jefferson Davis. In 1864 Pollard sailed for England, but the vessel on which he sailed was captured as a blockade runner, and he was confined in Fort Warren in Boston Harbour from the 29th of May until the 12th of August, when he was paroled. In December he was placed in close confinement at Fort Monroe by order of Secretary Stanton, but was soon again paroled by General B. F. Butler, and in January proceeded to Richmond to be exchanged there for Albert D. Richardson (1833–1869), a well-known correspondent of the New York Tribune, who, however, had escaped before Pollard arrived. In 1867–1869 Pollard edited a weekly paper at Richmond, and he conducted the Political Pamphlet there during the presidential campaign of 1868.
His publications include Black Diamonds Gathered in the Darkey Homes of the South (1859), in which he advocated a reopening of the slave trade; The Southern History of the War (3 vols.: First Year of the War, with B. M. DeWitt, 1862; Second Year of the War, 1864; Third Year of the War, 1864); Observations in the North: Eight Months in Prison and on Parole (1865); The Lost Cause (1866); Lee and His Lieutenants (1867); The Lost Cause Regained (1868), a southern view of reconstruction urging the necessity of white supremacy; The Life of Jefferson Davis (1869), an arraignment of the Confederate president; and The Virginia Tourist (1870).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Polka

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POLKA (either from the Czech pulka, half, with an allusion to the short steps characteristic of the dance, or from the Polish Polka, feminine of Polak, a Pole), a lively dance of Bohemian origin, danced to music written in 2/4 time. (See Dance.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Poll

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POLL, strictly the head, in men or animals. Skeat connects the word with O. Swed. kolle (initial p and k being interchangeable) and considers a Celtic origin probable; cf. Irish coll, Welsh col, peak, summit. "Poll" is chiefly used in various senses derived from that of a unit in an enumeration of persons or things, e.g. poll-tax (q.v.), or "challenge to the polls" in the case of a jury (q.v.). The most familiar derivative uses are those connected with voting at parliamentary or other elections; thus "to poll" is to vote or to secure a number of votes, and "the poll," the voting, the number of votes cast, or the time during which voting takes place. The verb "to poll" also means to clip or shear the top of anything, hence "polled" of hornless cattle, or "deed-poll" (i.e. a deed with smooth or unindented edges, as distinguished from an "indenture"). A tree which has been "polled," or cut back close in order to induce it to make short bushy growth, is called a "pollard."
At the university of Cambridge, a "pass" degree is known as a "poll-degree." This is generally explained as from the Greek οἱ πολλοί, the many, the common people.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Poll-tax

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​POLL-TAX, a tax levied on the individual, and not on property or on articles of merchandise, so-called from the old English poll, a head. Raised thus per capita, it is sometimes called a capitation tax. The most famous poll-tax in English history is the one levied in 1380, which led to the revolt of the peasants under Wat Tyler in 1381, but the first instance of the kind was in 1377, when a tax of a groat a head was voted by both clergy and laity. In 1379 the tax was again levied, but on a graduated scale. John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, paid ten marks, and the scale descended from him to the peasants, who paid one groat each, every person over sixteen years of age being liable. In 1380 the tax was also graduated, but less steeply. For some years after the rising of 1381 money was only raised in this way from aliens, but in 1513 a general poll tax was imposed. This, however, only produced about £50,000, instead of £160,000 as was expected, but a poll-tax levied in 1641 resulted in a revenue of about £400,600. During the reign of ​Charles II. money was obtained in this way on several occasions, although in 1676–1677 especially there was a good deal of resentment against the tax. For some years after 1688 poll taxes were a favourite means of raising money for the prosecution of the war with France. Sometimes a single payment was asked for the year; at other times quarterly payments were required. The poll-tax of 1697 included a weekly tax of one penny from all persons not receiving alms. In 1698 a quarterly poll-tax produced £321,391. Nothing was required from the poor, and those who were liable may be divided roughly into three classes. Persons worth less than £360 paid one shilling; those worth £300, including the gentry and the professional classes, paid twenty shillings; while tradesmen and shopkeepers paid ten shillings. Non-jurors were charged double these rates. Like previous poll-taxes, the tax of 1698 did not produce as much as was anticipated, and it was the last of its kind in England.
Many of the states of the United States of America raise money by levying poll-taxes, or, as they are usually called, capitation taxes, the payment of this tax being a necessary preliminary to the exercise of the suffrage.
See S. Dowell, History of Taxation and Taxes in England (1888), vol. iii.; and W. Stubbs, Constitutional History (1896), vol. ii.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pollaiuolo

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​POLLAIUOLO, the popular name of the brothers Antonio and Piero di Jacobo Benci, Florentines who contributed much to Italian art in the 15th century. They were called Pollaiuolo because their father was a poulterer. The nickname was also extended to Simone, the nephew of Antonio.
Antonio (1429–1498) distinguished himself as a sculptor, jeweller, painter and engraver, and did valuable service in perfecting the art of enamelling. His painting exhibits an excess of brutality, of which the characteristics can be studied in the “Saint Sebastian,” painted in 1475, and now in the National Gallery, London. A “St Christopher and the Infant Christ” is in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. But it was as a sculptor and metal-worker that he achieved his greatest successes. The exact ascription of his works is doubtful, as his brother Piero did much in collaboration with him. The museum of Florence contains the bronze group “Hercules strangling Cacus” and the terra-cotta bust “The Young Warrior”; and in the South Kensington Museum, London, is a bas-relief representing a contest between naked men. In 1489 Antonio took up his residence in Rome, where he executed the tomb of Sixtus IV. (1493), a composition in which he again manifested the quality of exaggeration in the anatomical features of the figures. In 1496 he went to Florence in order to put the finishing touches to the work already begun in the sacristy of Santo Spirito. He died in 1498, having just finished his mausoleum of Innocent VIII., and was buried in the church of San Pietro in Vincula, where a monument was raised to him near that of his brother.
Piero (1443–1496) was a painter, and his principal works were his “Coronation of the Virgin,” an altar-piece painted in 1483, in the choir of the cathedral at San Gimignano; his “Three Saints,” an altar-piece, and “Prudence” are both at the Uffizi Gallery.
Simone (1457–1508), nephew of Antonio Pollaiuolo, a celebrated architect, was born in Florence and went to Rome in 1484; there he entered his uncle’s studio and studied architecture. On his return to Florence he was entrusted with the completion of the Strozzi palace begun by Benedetto de Maiano, and the cornice on the façade has earned him lasting fame. His highly coloured accounts of Rome earned for him the nickname of il Cronaca (chronicler). About 1498 he built the church of San Francesco at Monte and the vestibule of the sacristy of Santo Spirito. In collaboration with Guiliano da Sangallo he designed the great hall in the Palazzo Vecchio. He was a close friend and adherent of Savonarola.
See also Maud Cruttwell, Antonio Pollaiuolo (1907).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Rugeley

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​RUGELEY, a market town in the Lichfield parliamentary division of Staffordshire, England, in the Trent valley. Pop. of urban district (1901), 4447. The London & North-Western railway has stations on the main line (Trent Valley, 124½ m. N.W. from London), and at the town, on a branch line to Walsall. The Grand Trunk canal here follows the Trent. To the S.W. lie the hills of Cannock Chase. The church of St Augustine is modern; of the parish church of the 14th century only the tower and chancel remain. The municipal offices, market hall and assembly-room are contained in one building (1879). A grammar school was founded in 1611. There are ironfoundries, corn-mills and tanneries; and the parish includes several collieries.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ruge, Arnold

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RUGE, ARNOLD (1802-1880), German philosopher and political writer, was born at Bergen, in the island of Rügen, on the 13th of September 1802. He studied at Halle, Jena and Heidelberg, and became an adherent of the party which sought to create a free and united Germany. For his zeal he was confined for five years in the fortress of Kolberg, where he studied Plato and the Greek poets. On his release in 1830 he published Schill und die Seinen, a tragedy, and a translation of Oedipus in Colonus. Ruge settled in Halle, where in 1837 with E. T. Echtermeyer he founded the Hallesche Jahrbücher für deutsche Kunst und Wissenschaft. In this periodical he discussed the questions of the time from the point of view of the Hegelian philosophy. The Jahrbücher was detested by the orthodox party in Prussia; and was finally suppressed by the Saxon government in 1843. In Paris Ruge tried to act with Karl Marx as co-editor of the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, but had little sympathy with Marx's socialistic theories, and soon left him. In the revolutionary movement of 1848 he organized the Extreme Left in the Frankfort parliament, and for some time he lived in Berlin as the editor of the Die Reform. The Prussian government intervened and Ruge soon afterwards left for Paris, hoping, through his friend Alexandre Ledru-Rollin, to establish relations between German and French republicans; but in 1849 both Ledru-Rollin and Ruge had to take refuge in London. Here, in company with Giuseppe Mazzini and other advanced politicians, they formed a “European Democratic Committee.” From this Ruge soon withdrew, and in 1850 went to Brighton, where he supported himself by teaching and writing. In 1866 and 1870 he vigorously
supported Prussia against Austria, and Germany against France. In his last years he received from the German government a pension of 1000 marks. He died on the 31st of December 1880.
Ruge was a leader in religious and political liberalism, but did not produce any work of enduring importance. In 1846-48 his Gesammelte Schriften were published in ten volumes. After this time he wrote, among other books, Unser System, Revolutionsnovellen, Die Loge des Humanismus, and Aus früherer Zeit (his memoirs). He also wrote many poems, and several dramas and romances, and translated into German various English works, including the Letters of Junius and Buckle's History of Civilization. His Letters and Diary (1825-80) were published by Paul Nerrlich (Berlin, 1885-87). See A. W. Bolin's L. Feuerbach, pp. 127-52 (Stuttgart, 1891).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ruhla

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​RUHLA, a town of Germany, partly in the duchy of Saxe-Weimar and partly in that of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Pop. (1905) 7017. It stretches along the valley of the Erb in the Thuringian forest 8 m. S. of Eisenach, and attracts a number of visitors owing to its beautiful natural surroundings and its mineral springs. Its staple industry is the making of wooden and meerschaum pipes; it has also electrical works, and some small manufactures. Ruhla, which is known locally as Die Ruhl, was famous in the middle ages for its armourers, and subsequently for its cutlers.
See Ziegler, Das Thüringerwalddorf Ruhla (Dresden, 1876).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ruhr

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​RUHR, a river of Germany, an important right-bank tributary of the lower Rhine. It rises on the north side of the Winterberg in the Sauerland, at a height of about 2000 ft. above the sea. It first takes a northerly and north-westerly course, and in a deep and well-wooded valley winds past the romantically situated town of Arnsberg. Shortly after reaching Neheim it bends to the south-west, courses through the mining district around Hagen, and receives from the left the waters of the Lenne. Hence in a tortuous course it works its way past Witten, Steele, Kettwig and Mülheim, and, after a course of 142 m., discharges itself into the Rhine at Ruhrort. From this place the Ruhr canal connects it with Duisburg. The river is navigable from Witten downwards (43 m.), by the aid of eleven locks; but navigation is often greatly impeded through dearth of water.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Rug

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​RUG, a term of Scandinavian origin (cf. Swed. rugg, rough hair; Norw. dial. ragga, rough), and probably connected with “rough” and “rag,” originally for a kind of coarse woollen material, like frieze; hence it is used of a piece of thick material used as a wrap or covering for the knees or body in travelling or in bed, and especially for a thick mat or small-sized carpet laid on the floor (see Carpet).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Rufus, Lucius Varius

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​RUFUS, LUCIUS VARIUS (c 74–14 B.C.), Roman poet of the Augustan age. He was the friend of Virgil, after whose death he and Plotius Tucca prepared the Aeneid for publication, and of Horace, for whom he and Virgil obtained an introduction to Maecenas. Horace speaks of him as a master of epic and the only poet capable of celebrating the achievements of Vipsanius Agrippa (Odes, i. 6); Virgil (under the name of Lycidas, Ecl. ix. 35) regrets that he had hitherto produced nothing comparable to the work of Varius or Helvius Cinna. From Macrobius (Saturnalia, vi. 1, 39; 2, 19) we learn that Varius composed an epic poem De Morte, some lines of which are quoted as having been imitated or appropriated by Virgil; Horace (Sat. i. 10, 43) probably alludes to another epic, and, according to the scholiast on Epistles, i. 16, 27–29, these three lines are taken bodily from a panegyric of Varius on Augustus. But his most famous literary production was the tragedy Thyestes, which Quintilian (Inst. Oral. x. 1, 98) declares fit to rank with any of the Greek tragedies. The didascalia (which is preserved in a Paris MS.) informs us that it was produced at the games celebrated (29 B.C.) by Augustus in honour of the victory at Actium, and that Varius received a present of a million sesterces from the emperor.
Fragments in E. Bährens, Frag. Poetarum Romanorum (1886); monographs by A. Weichert (1836) and R. Unger (1870, 1878, 1898); M. Schanz, Geschichte der römischen Litteratur (1899), ii. I; Teuffel, Hist. of Roman Literature (Eng. trans., 1900), 223.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ruhrort

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​RUHRORT, a town of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine province, situated at the junction of the Ruhr and the Rhine, in the midst of a productive coal district, 15 m. N. of Düsseldorf and 12 E. of Crefeld by rail. Ruhrort has the largest river harbour in Europe, with quays extending nearly 5 m. along the river, and it is the principal shipping port for the coal of the Westphalian coalfield, which is despatched in the fleet of steam-tugs and barges belonging to the port. The coal is sent principally to South Germany and the Netherlands. Grain and timber are also exported and iron ore is imported. In 1905 the port was entered and cleared by over 27,000 vessels of 7,418,065 tons. The industries of the town include large iron and steel works, shipbuilding yards and tanneries. Ruhrort has three Evangelical and three Roman Catholic churches, and several schools and public institutions.
Rurhort is first mentioned in 1379, and obtained civic rights in 1551. Having been in the possession of the counts of La Marck, it passed into that of Brandenburg in 1614. In 1905 it was united with Duisburg and Meiderich to form a single municipality, the joint population being 41,416.
See Geschichte der Stadt Ruhrort (Ruhrort, 1882).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Montmorency, Mathieu Jean Félicité de Montmorency-Laval, Duc de

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​MONTMORENCY, MATHIEU JEAN FÉLICITÉ DE MONT-MORENCY-LAVAL, Duc de (1766–1826), French politician, was born in Paris on the 10th of July 1766. He served with his father, the vicomte de Laval, in America, and returned to France imbued with democratic opinions. Mathieu de Montmorency was governor of Compiègne when he was returned as deputy to the states-general in 1789, where he joined the Third Estate and sat on the left of the Assembly. He moved the abolition of armorial bearings on the 19th of June 1790. The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in September 1791 set him free to join Lückner’s army on the frontier early in the next year. After the revolution of the 10th of August he abandoned his revolutionary principles; and he took no part in politics under the empire. At the Restoration he was promoted maréchal de camp, and accompanied Louis XVIII. to Ghent during the Hundred Days. At the second restoration he was made a peer of France, and two years later received the title of viscount. He adopted strong reactionary and ultramontane views, and became minister of foreign affairs under Villèle in 1821. He recommended armed intervention in Spain at the Congress of Verona in October 1822, but he resigned in December, being compensated by the title of duke and the cross of the Legion of Honour in the next year. He was elected to the French Academy in 1825, though he appears to have had small qualifications for the honour, and in the next year became tutor to the six-year-old Henri, duke of Bordeaux (afterwards known as the comte de Chambord). He died two months after receiving this last appointment, on the 24th of March 1826.
See Vétillard, Notice sur la vie de M. le duc Mathieu de Montmorency (Le Mans, 1826), and, for his curious relations with Mme de Staël, P. Gautier, Mathieu de Montmorency et Mme de Staël, d’aprės les lettres inédites de M. de Montmorency à Mme Necker de Saussure (1908).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Montluc, Blaise de Lassaran-Massen-Côme, Seigneur de

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​MONTLUC (or Monluc), BLAISE DE LASSARAN-MASSEN-CÔME, Seigneur de (c. 1502–1577), marshal of France, was born about 1502, at the family seat near Condom in the modern department of Gers. He was the eldest son, and his family was a good one, but, like most gentlemen of Gascony, he had to ​trust to his sword. He served first as a private archer and man-at-arms in Italy, with Bayard for his captain, fought all through the wars of Francis I., and was knighted on the field of Cérisoles (1544), to which victory he had brilliantly contributed as adviser to the young duke of Enghien. Having apparently enjoyed no patronage, he was by this time a man of middle age. Thenceforward, however, his merits were recognized. His chief feat was the famous defence of Siena (1555), which he has told so admirably. When the religious wars broke out in France, Montluc, a staunch royalist, held Guyenne for the king. Henry III. made him in 1574 marshal of France, an honour which he had earned by nearly half a century of service and by numerous wounds. He died at Estillac near Agen in 1577. Montluc’s eminence above other soldiers of his day is due to his Commentaires de Messire Blaise de Montluc (Bordeaux, 1592), in which he described his fifty years of service (1521–1574). This book, the “soldier’s Bible” (or “breviary,” according to others), as Henry IV. called it, is one of the most admirable of the many admirable books of memoirs produced by the unlearned gentry of France at that time. It is said to have been dictated, which may possibly account in some degree for the singular vivacity and picturesqueness of the style.
The Commentaires are to be found conveniently in the collection of Michaud and Poujoulat, but the standard edition is that of the Société de l’histoire de France, ed. by M. de Ruble (5 vols., 1865–1872). See Rüstow, Militärische Biographien, v. i. (Zürich, 1858).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Montluçon

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​MONTLUÇON, a town of central France, capital of an arrondissement, and the most important industrial centre in the department of Allier. Pop. (1906), 31,888. It is situated on the Cher, 50 m. S.W. of Moulins by the Orléans railway. The upper town, on an eminence on the right bank, consists of steep, narrow, winding streets, and preserves several buildings of the 15th and 16th centuries; the lower town, traversed by the Cher, is the seat of the industries, which embrace the manufacture of glass, chemicals, mirrors, sewing-machines, and iron and steel production. The Commentry coal-mines and Néris, a town with thermal springs, are a few miles distant to the south-east. Of the churches, Notre-Dame is of the 15th century, St Pierre partly of the 12th and St Paul modern. The town-hall, with a library, occupies the site of an old Ursuline convent, and two other convents are used as college and hospital. Overlooking the town is the castle rebuilt by Louis II., duke of Bourbon, and taken by Henry IV. during the religious wars; it serves as a barracks. Montluçon is the seat of a sub-prefect and has tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a board of trade arbitration, a chamber of commerce and a lycée. The town, which formed part of the duchy of Bourbon, was taken by the English in 1171, and by Philip Augustus in 1181; the English were beaten under its walls in the 14th century.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Montoro

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​MONTORO, a town of southern Spain, in the province of Cordova, 27 m. E. by N of the city of Cordova, on the Madrid-Cordova railway. Pop. (1900), 14,581. Montoro was the Epora of the Romans, and became an important Moorish fortress in the middle ages, but it has been largely modernized. It stands on a rocky peninsula on the south bank of the Guadalquivir, here crossed by a fine bridge of four arches dating from the 16th century. Oil is largely manufactured, and there is considerable trade in timber, agricultural produce and livestock.