OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ecgbert (king)

See also Egbert of Wessex on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​ECGBERT, or Ecgberht (d. 839), king of the West Saxons, succeeded to the throne in 802 on the death of Beorhtric. It is said that at an earlier period in his life he had been driven out for three years by Offa and Beorhtric. The accession of Ecgbert seems to have brought about an invasion by Æthelmund, earl of the Hwicce, who was defeated by Weoxtan, earl of Wiltshire. In 815 Ecgbert ravaged the whole of the territories of the West Welsh, which probably at this time did not include much more than Cornwall. The next important occurrence in the reign was the defeat of Beornwulf of Mercia at a place called Ellandun in 825. After this victory Kent, Surrey, Sussex and Essex submitted to Wessex; while the East Anglians, who slew Beornwulf shortly afterwards, acknowledged Ecgbert as overlord. In 829 the king conquered Mercia, and Northumbria accepted him as overlord. In 830 he led a successful expedition against the Welsh. In 836 he was defeated by the Danes, but in 838 he won a battle against them and their allies the West Welsh at Hingston Down in Cornwall. Ecgbert died in 839, after a reign of thirty-seven years, and was succeeded by his son Æthelwulf. A somewhat difficult question has arisen as to the parentage of Ecgbert. Under the year 825 the Chronicle states ​that in his eastern conquests Ecgbert recovered what had been the rightful property of his kin. The father of Ecgbert was called Ealhmund, and we find an Ealhmund, king in Kent, mentioned in a charter dated 784, who is identified with Ecgbert’s father in a late addition to the Chronicle under the date 784. It is possible, however, that the Chronicle in 825 refers to some claim through Ine of Wessex from whose brother Ingeld Ecgbert was descended.
See Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, edited by Earle and Plummer (Oxford, 1899); W. de G. Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum (London, 1885–1893). Also a paper by Sir H. H. Howorth in Numismatic Chronicle, third series, vol. xx. pp. 66-87 (reprinted separately, London, 1900), where attention is called to the peculiar dating of several of Ecgbert’s charters, and the view is put forward that he remained abroad considerably later than the date given by the Chronicle for his accession. On the other hand a charter in Birch, Cart. Sax., purporting to date from 799, contains the curious statement that peace was made between Cœnwulf and Ecgbert in that year.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ecgbert (archbishop)

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​ECGBERT, or Ecgberht (d. 766), archbishop of York, was made bishop of that see in 734 by Ceolwulf, king of Northumbria, succeeding Wilfrid II. on the latter’s resignation. The pall was sent him in 735 and he became the first northern archbishop after Paulinus. He was the brother of Eadberht, who ruled Northumbria 737–758. He was the recipient of the famous letter of Bede, dealing with the evils arising from spurious monasteries. Ecgberht himself wrote a Dialogus Ecclesiasticae Institutionis, a Penitentiale and a Pontificale. He was a correspondent of St Boniface, who asks him to support his censure of Æthelbald of Mercia.
See Bede, Continuatio, sub. ann. 732, 735, 766, and Epistola ad Ecgberctum (Plummer, Oxford, 1896); Chronicle, sub ann. 734, 735, 738, 766 (Earle and Plummer, Oxford, 1899); Haddan and Stubbs, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents (Oxford, 1869–1878), iii. 403-431; Proceedings of Surtees Society (Durham, 1853).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ecgfrith

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​ECGFRITH (d. 685), king of Northumbria, succeeded his father Oswio in 671. He was married to Æthelthryth, daughter of Anna of East Anglia, who, however, took the veil shortly after Ecgfrith’s accession, a step which possibly led to his long quarrel with Wilfrid archbishop of York. Ecgfrith married a second wife, Eormenburg, before 678, the year in which he expelled Wilfrid from his kingdom. Early in his reign he defeated the Picts who had risen in revolt. Between 671 and 675 Ecgfrith defeated Wulfhere of Mercia and seized Lindsey. In 679, however, he was defeated by Æthelred of Mercia, who had married his sister Osthryth, on the river Trent. Ecgfrith’s brother Ælfwine was killed in the battle, and the province of Lindsey was given up when peace was restored at the intervention of Theodore of Canterbury. In 684 Ecgfrith sent an expedition to Ireland under his general Berht, which seems to have been unsuccessful. In 685, against the advice of Cuthbert, he led a force against the Picts under his cousin Burde, son of Bile, was lured by a feigned flight into their mountain fastnesses, and slain at Nechtanesmere (now Dunnichen) in Forfarshire. Bede dates the beginning of the decline of Northumbria from his death. He was succeeded by his brother Aldfrith.
See Eddius, Vita Wilfridi (Raine, Historians of Church of York, Rolls, Series, London, 1879–1894), 19, 20, 24, 34, 39, 44; Bede, Hist. Eccl. (Plummer, Oxford, 1896), iii. 24, iv. 5, 12, 13, 18, 19, 21, 26.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ecgonine

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​ECGONINE, in chemistry, C$_9$H$_{15}$NO$_3$, a cycloheptane derivative with a nitrogen bridge. It is obtained by hydrolysing cocaine with acids or alkalis, and crystallizes with one molecule of water, the crystals melting at 198° to 199° C. It is laevo-rotatory, and on warming with alkalis gives iso-ecgonine, which is dextro-rotatory. It is a tertiary base, and has also the properties of an acid and an alcohol. When boiled with caustic baryta it gives methylamine. It is the carboxylic acid corresponding to tropine, for it yields the same products on oxidation, and by treatment with phosphorus pentachloride is converted into anhydroecgonine, C$_9$H$_{13}$NO$_2$, which, when heated to 280° C. with hydrochloric acid, splits out carbon dioxide and yields tropidine, C$_8$H$_{13}$N. Anhydroecgonine melts at 235° C., and has an acid and a basic character. It is an unsaturated compound, and on oxidation with potassium permanganate gives succinic acid. It is apparently a tropidine monocarboxylic acid, for on exhaustive methylation it yields cycloheptatriene-1·3·5-carboxylic acid-7. Sodium in amyl alcohol solution reduces it to hydroecgonidine C$_9$H$_{15}$NO$_2$, while moderate oxidation by potassium permanganate converts it into norecgonine. The presence of the heptamethylene ring in these compounds is shown by the production of suberone by the exhaustive methylation, &c., of hydroecgonidine ethyl ester (see Polymethylenes and Tropine). The above compounds may be represented as:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ducos, Pierre Roger

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​DUCOS, PIERRE ROGER (1754–1816), French politician and director, was born at Dax. He was an advocate when elected deputy to the Convention by the department of the Landes. He sat in the “Plain,” i.e. in the party which had no opinion of its own, which always leaned to the stronger side. He voted for the death of Louis XVI., without appeal or delay, but played no noticeable part in the Convention. He was a member of the Council of the Five Hundred, over which he presided on the 18th of Fructidor in the year V. (see French Revolution). At the end of his term he became a judge of the peace, but after the parliamentary coup d’état of the 30th of Prairial of the year VIII. he was named a member of the executive Directory, thanks to the influence of Barras, who counted on using him as a passive instrument. Ducos accepted the coup d’état of Bonaparte on the 18th of Brumaire, and was one of the three provisional consuls. He became vice-president of the senate. The Empire heaped favours upon him, but in 1814 he abandoned Napoleon, and voted for his deposition. He sought to gain the favour of the government of the Restoration, but in 1816 was exiled in virtue of the law against the regicides. He died in March 1816 at Ulm, from a carriage accident. In spite of his absolute lack of talent, he attained the highest of positions—an exceptional fact in the history of the French Revolution.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Duckweed

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​DUCKWEED, the common botanical name for species of Lemna which form a green coating on fresh-water ponds and ditches. The plants are of extremely simple structure and are the smallest and least differentiated of flowering plants. They consist of a so-called “frond”—a flattened green more or less oval structure which emits branches similar to itself from lateral pockets at or near the base. From the under surface a root with a well-developed sheath grows downwards into the water. The flowers, which are rarely found in Britain, are ​developed in one of the lateral pockets. The inflorescence is a very simple one, consisting of one or two male flowers each comprising a single stamen, and a female flower comprising a flask-shaped pistil. The order Lemnaceae to which they belong is regarded as representing a very reduced type nearly allied to the Aroids. It is represented in Britain by four species of Lemna, and a still smaller and simpler plant, Wolffia, in which the fronds are only one-twentieth of an inch long and have no roots.
* 1, Lemna minor (Lesser Duckweed) nat. size.
* 2, Plant in flower.
* 3, Inflorescence containing two male flowers each of one stamen,   and a female flower, the whole enclosed in a sheath.
* 4, Wolffia arrhiza.   (2, 3, 4 enlarged.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Duclaux, Agnes Mary F.

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​DUCLAUX, AGNES MARY F. (1856– ), English poet and critic, who first became known in England under her maiden name of Mary F. Robinson, was born at Leamington on the 27th of February 1856. She was educated at University College, London, devoting herself chiefly to the study of Greek literature. Her first volume of poetry, A Handful of Honeysuckle, was published in 1879. Her next work was a translation from Euripides, The Crowned Hippolytus (1881). Monographs on Emily Brontë (1883) and on Marguerite of Angoulême (1886) followed; and The New Arcadia and other Poems (1884) and An Italian Garden (1886) contain some of her best verses. Her poems attracted the attention of the orientalist, James Darmesteter (q.v.), then in Peshawur, and he made an admirable translation of them in French. The acquaintance led to their marriage in 1888, and from that time a large part of her work was done in French. Madame Darmesteter translated her husband’s Études anglaises into English (1896). Her most considerable prose work is the Life of Ernest Renan (1897). She also wrote the End of the Middle Ages (1888); the volume on Froissart (1894) in the Grands écrivains français; essays on the Brontës, the Brownings and others, entitled Grands écrivains d’Outre-Manche (1901). After Darmesteter’s death, she married in 1901 Émile Duclaux, the associate of Pasteur, and director of the Pasteur institute. He died in 1904. She published Retrospect and other Poems in 1893, and in 1904 appeared The Return to Nature, Songs and Symbols. The qualities of Mary Robinson’s work, its conciseness and purity of expression, were only gradually recognized. Her Collected Poems, Lyrical and Narrative were published in 1902.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Duchenne, Guillaume Benjamin Amand

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​DUCHENNE, GUILLAUME BENJAMIN AMAND (1806–1875), French physician, was born on the 17th of September 1806 at Boulogne, the son of a sea-captain. He was educated at Douai, and then studied medicine in Paris until the year 1831, when he returned to his native town to practise his profession. Two years later he first tried the effect of electro-puncture of the muscles on a patient under his care, and from this time on devoted himself more and more to the medical applications of electricity, thereby laying the foundation of the modern science of electro-therapeutics. In 1842 he removed to Paris for the sake of its wider clinical opportunities, and there he worked until his death over thirty years later. His greatest work, L’Électrisation localisée (1855), passed through three editions during his lifetime, though by many his Physiologie des mouvements (1867) is considered his masterpiece. He published over fifty volumes containing his researches on muscular and nervous diseases, and on the applications of electricity both for diagnostic purposes and for treatment. His name is especially connected with the first description of locomotor ataxy, progressive muscular atrophy, pseudo-hypertrophic paralysis, glosso-labio laryngeal paralysis and other nervous troubles. He died in Paris on the 17th of September 1875.
For a detailed life see Archives générales de médicine (December 1875), and for a complete list of his works the 3rd edition of L’Électrisation localisée (1872).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ducking and Cucking Stools

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​DUCKING and CUCKING STOOLS, chairs used for the punishment of scolds, witches and prostitutes in bygone days. The two have been generally confused, but are quite distinct. The earlier, the Cucking-stool or Stool of Repentance, is of very ancient date, and was used by the Saxons, who called it the Scealding or Scolding Stool. It is mentioned in Domesday Book as in use at Chester, being called cathedra stercoris, a name which seems to confirm the first of the derivations suggested in the footnote below. Seated on this stool the woman, her head and feet bare, was publicly exposed at her door or paraded through the streets amidst the jeers of the crowd. The Cucking-stool was used for both sexes, and was specially the punishment for dishonest brewers and bakers. Its use in the case of scolding women declined on the introduction in the middle of the 16th century of the Scold’s Bridle (see Branks), and it disappears on the introduction a little later of the Ducking-stool. The earliest record of the use of this latter is towards the beginning of the 17th century. It was a strongly made wooden armchair (the surviving specimens are of oak) in which the culprit was seated, an iron band being placed around her so that she should not fall out during her immersion. Usually the chair was fastened to a long wooden beam fixed as a seesaw on the edge of a pond or river. Sometimes, however, the Ducking-stool was not a fixture but was mounted on a pair of wooden wheels so that it could be wheeled through the streets, and at the river-edge was hung by a chain from the end of a beam. In sentencing a woman the magistrates ordered the number of duckings she should have. Yet another type of Ducking-stool was called a tumbrel. It was a chair on two wheels with two long shafts fixed to the axles. This was pushed into the pond and then the shafts released, thus tipping the chair up backwards. Sometimes the punishment proved fatal, the unfortunate woman dying of shock. Ducking-stools were used in England as late as the beginning of the 19th century. The last recorded cases are those of a Mrs Ganble at Plymouth (1808); of Jenny Pipes, “a notorious scold” (1809), and Sarah Leeke (1817), both of Leominster. In the last case the water in the pond was so low that the victim was merely wheeled round the town in the chair.
See W. Andrews, Old Time Punishments (Hull, 1890); A. M. Earle, Curious Punishments of Bygone Days (Chicago, 1896); W. C. Hazlitt, Faiths and Folklore (London, 1905); Llewellynn Jewitt in The Reliquary, vols. i. and ii. (1860–1862); Gentleman’s Magazine for 1732.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Dupont de l'Eure, Jacques Charles

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​DUPONT DE L’EURE, JACQUES CHARLES (1767–1855), French lawyer and statesman, was born at Neubourg (Eure), in Normandy, on the 27th of February 1767. In 1789 he was an advocate at the parlement of Normandy. During the republic and the empire he filled successively judicial offices at Louviers, Rouen and Evreux. He had adopted the principles of the Revolution, and in 1798 he commenced his political life as a member of the Council of Five Hundred. In 1813 he became a member of the Corps Legislatif. During the Hundred Days he was vice-president of the chamber of deputies, and when the allied armies entered Paris he drew up the declaration in which the chamber asserted the necessity of maintaining the principles of government that had been established at the Revolution. He was chosen one of the commissioners to negotiate with the allied sovereigns. From 1817 till 1849 he was uninterruptedly a member of the chamber of deputies, and he acted consistently with the liberal opposition, of which at more than one crisis he was the virtual leader. For a few months in 1830 he held office as minister of justice, but, finding himself out of harmony with his colleagues, he resigned before the close of the year and resumed his place in the opposition. At the revolution of 1848 Dupont de l’Eure was made president of the provisional assembly as being its oldest member. In the following year, having failed to secure his re-election to the chamber, he retired into private life. He died in 1855. The consistent firmness with which he adhered to the cause of constitutional liberalism during the many changes of his times gained him the highest respect of his countrymen, by whom he was styled the Aristides of the French tribune.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Dupuy, Charles Alexandre

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​DUPUY, CHARLES ALEXANDRE (1851– ), French statesman, was born at Le Puy on the 5th of November 1851, his father being a local official. After being a professor of philosophy in the provinces, he was appointed a school inspector, and thus obtained a practical acquaintance with the needs of French education. In 1885 he was elected to the chamber as an Opportunist Republican. After acting as “reporter” of the budget for public instruction, he became minister for the department, in M. Ribot’s cabinet, in 1892. In April 1893 he formed a ministry himself, taking as his office that of minister of the interior, but resigned at the end of November, and on 5th December was elected president of the chamber. During his first week of office an anarchist, Vaillant, who had managed to gain admission to the chamber, threw a bomb at the president, and M. Dupuy’s collected bearing, and his historic words: “Messieurs, la séance continue,” gained him much credit. In May 1894 he again became premier and minister of the interior; and he was by President Carnot’s side when the latter was stabbed to death at Lyons in June. He then became a candidate for the presidency, but was defeated, and his cabinet remained in office till January 1895; it was under it that Captain Dreyfus was arrested and condemned (23rd of December 1894). The progress of l’affaire then cast its shadow upon M. Dupuy, along with other French “ministrables,” but in November 1898, after M. Brisson had at last remitted the case to the judgment of the court of cassation, he formed a cabinet of Republican concentration. In view of the apparent likelihood that the judges of the criminal division of the court of cassation—who formed the ordinary tribunal for such an appeal—would decide in favour of Dreyfus, it was thought that M. Dupuy’s new cabinet would be strong enough to reconcile public opinion to such a result; but, to the surprise of outside observers, it was no sooner discovered how the judges were likely to decide than M. Dupuy proposed a law in the chamber transferring the decision to a full court of all the divisions of the court of cassation. This arbitrary act, though adopted by the chamber, was at once construed as a fresh attempt to maintain the judgment of the first court-martial; but in the interval President Faure (an anti-Dreyfusard) died, and the accession of M. Loubet doubtless had some effect in quieting public feeling. At all events, the whole court of cassation decided that there must be a new court-martial, and M. Dupuy at once resigned (June 1899). In June 1900 he was elected senator for the Haute Saône.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Dupont de l'Étang, Pierre Antoine

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​DUPONT DE L’ÉTANG, PIERRE ANTOINE, Count (1765–1840), French general, first saw active service as a member of Maillebois’ legion in Holland, and in 1791 was on the staff of the Army of the North under Dillon. He distinguished himself at Valmy, and in the fighting around Menin in 1793 he forced an Austrian regiment to surrender. Promoted general of brigade for this feat, he soon received further advancement from Carnot, who recognized his abilities. In 1797 he became general of division. The rise of Napoleon, whom he warmly supported in the coup d’état of 18th Brumaire, brought him further opportunities. In the campaign of 1800 he was chief of the staff to Berthier, the nominal commander of the “Army of Reserve of the Alps”, ​which won the battle of Marengo. After the battle he sustained a brilliant combat, against greatly superior forces, at Pozzolo. In the campaign on the Danube in 1805, as the leader of one of Ney’s divisions, he earned further distinction, especially at the action of Albeck-Haslach, in which he prevented the escape of the Austrians from Ulm, and so contributed most effectively to the isolation and subsequent capture of Mack and his whole army (see Napoleonic Campaigns). At Friedland he won further fame. With a record such as but few of Napoleon’s divisional commanders possessed, he entered Spain in 1808 at the head of a corps. After the occupation of Madrid, Dupont, newly created count by Napoleon, was sent to subdue Andalusia. After a few initial successes he had to retire on the passes of the Sierra Morena. Pursued and cut off by the Spanish army under Castaños, his corps was defeated and he felt himself constrained to capitulate (Baylen, 19th-23rd July; see Peninsular War). The disgrace which fell upon the general was not entirely merited. His troops were for the most part raw levies, and ill-luck contributed materially to the catastrophe, but, after his return to France, Dupont was sent before a court-martial, deprived of his rank and title, and imprisoned from 1812 to 1814. Released only by the fall of Napoleon, he was employed by Louis XVIII. in a military command, which he lost on the return of Napoleon. But the Second Restoration saw him restored to the army, and appointed a member of the conseil privé of Louis XVIII. From 1815 to 1830 he was deputy for the Charente. He lived in retirement from 1832 till his death in 1840. Amongst the writings Dupont left are some poems, including L’Art de la guerre (1838), and verse translations from Horace (1836), and the following military works: Opinion sur le nouveau mode de recrutement (1818), Lettres sur l’Espagne en 1808 (1823), Lettre sur la campagne d’Autriche (1826). At the time of his death he was on the point of publishing his memoirs.
See Lieut.-Col. Titeux, Le Général Dupont: une erreur historique (Paris, 1903).