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

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​EPERJES, a town of Hungary, capital of the county of Sáros, 190 m. N.E. of Budapest by rail. Pop. (1900) 13,098. It is situated on the left bank of the river Tarcza, an affluent of the Theiss, and has been almost completely rebuilt since a great fire in 1887. Eperjes is one of the oldest towns of Hungary, and is still partly surrounded by its old walls. It is the seat of a Greek-Catholic bishop, and possesses a beautiful cathedral built in the 18th century in late Gothic style. It possesses manufactures of cloth, table-linen and earthenware, and has an active trade in wine, linen, cattle and grain. About 2 m. to the south is Sóvár with important salt-works.
In the same county, 28 m. by rail N. of Eperjes, is situated the old town of Bártfa (pop. 6098), which possesses a Gothic church from the 14th century, and an interesting town-hall, dating from the 15th century, and containing very valuable archives. In its neighbourhood, surrounded by pine forests, are the baths of Bártfa, with twelve mineral springs—iodate, ferruginous and alkaline—used for bathing and drinking.
About 6 m. N.W. of Eperjes is situated the village of Vörösvágás, which contains the only opal mine in Europe. The opal was mined here 800 years ago, and the largest piece hitherto found, weighing 2940 carats and estimated to have a value of £175,000, is preserved in the Court Museum at Vienna.
Eperjes was founded about the middle of the 12th century by a German colony, and was elevated to the rank of a royal free town in 1347 by Louis I. (the Great). It was afterwards fortified and received special privileges. The Reformation found many early adherents here, and the town played an important part during the religious wars of the 17th century. It became famous by the so-called “butchery of Eperjes,” a tribunal instituted by the Austrian general Caraffa in 1687, which condemned to death and confiscated the property of a great number of citizens accused of Protestantism. During the 16th and the 17th centuries its German educational establishments enjoyed a wide reputation.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gondophares

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​GONDOPHARES, or Gondophernes, an Indo-Parthian king who ruled over the Kabul valley and the Punjab. By means of his coins his accession may be dated with practical certainty at A.D. 21, and his reign lasted for some thirty years. He is notable for his association with St Thomas in early Christian tradition. The legend is that India fell to St Thomas, who showed unwillingness to start until Christ appeared in a vision and ordered him to serve King Gondophares and build him a palace. St Thomas accordingly went to India and suffered martyrdom there. This legend is not incompatible with what is known of the chronology of Gondophares’ reign.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gong

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​GONG (Chinese, gong-gong or tam-tam), a sonorous or musical instrument of Chinese origin and manufacture, made in the form of a broad thin disk with a deep rim. Gongs vary in diameter from about 20 to 40 in., and they are made of bronze containing a maximum of 22 parts of tin to 78 of copper; but in many cases the proportion of tin is considerably less. Such an alloy, when cast and allowed to cool slowly, is excessively brittle, but it can be tempered and annealed in a peculiar manner. If suddenly cooled from a cherry-red heat, the alloy becomes so soft that it can be hammered and worked on the lathe, and afterwards it may be hardened by re-heating and cooling it slowly. In these properties it will be observed, the alloy behaves in a manner exactly opposite to steel, and the Chinese avail themselves of the known peculiarities for preparing the thin sheets of which gongs are made. They cool their castings of bronze in water, and after hammering out the alloy in the soft state, harden the finished gongs by heating them to a cherry-red and allowing them to cool slowly. These properties of the alloy long remained a secret, said to have been first discovered in Europe by Jean Pierre Joseph d’Arcet at the beginning of the 19th century. Riche and Champion are said to have succeeded in producing tam-tams having all the qualities and timbre of the Chinese instruments. The composition of the alloy of bronze used for making gongs is stated to be as follows: Copper, 76.52; Tin, 22.43; Lead, 0.62; Zinc, 0.23; Iron, 0.18. The gong is beaten with a round, hard, leather-covered pad, fitted on a short stick or handle. It emits a peculiarly sonorous sound, its complex vibrations bursting into a wave-like succession of tones, sometimes shrill, sometimes deep. In China and Japan it is used in religious ceremonies, state processions, marriages and other festivals; and it is said that the Chinese can modify its tone variously by particular ways of striking the disk.
The gong has been effectively used in the orchestra to intensify the impression of fear and horror in melodramatic scenes. The tam-tam was first introduced into a western orchestra by François Joseph Gossec in the funeral march composed at the death of Mirabeau in 1791. Gaspard Spontini used it in La Vestale (1807), in the finale of act II., an impressive scene in which the high pontiff pronounces the anathema on the faithless vestal. It was also used in the funeral music played when the remains of Napoleon the Great were brought back to France in 1840. Meyerbeer made use of the instrument in the scene of the resurrection of the three nuns in Robert le diable. Four tam-tams are now used at Bayreuth in Parsifal to reinforce the bell instruments, although there is no indication given in the score (see Parsifal). The tam-tam has been treated from its ethnographical side by Franz Heger. (K. S.)
* ↑ See La grande Encyclopédie, vol. viii. (Paris), “Bronze,” p. 146a.
* ↑ Alte Metalltrommeln aus Südost-Asien (Leipzig, 1902), Bd. i., Text; Bd. ii., Tafeln.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gondal

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​GONDAL, a native state of India, in the Kathiawar political agency of Bombay, situated in the centre of the peninsula of Kathiawar. Its area is 1024 sq. m.; pop. (1901) 162,859. The estimated gross revenue is about £100,000, and the tribute £7000. Grain and cotton are the chief products. The chief, whose title is Thakur Sahib, is a Jadeja Rajput, of the same clan as the Rao of Cutch. The Thakur Sahib, Sir Bhagvat Sinhji (b. 1865), was educated at the Rajkot college, and afterwards graduated in arts and medicine at the university of Edinburgh. He published (in English) a Journal of a Visit to England and A Short History of Aryan Medical Science. In 1892 he received the honorary degree of D.C.L. of Oxford University. He was created K.C.I.E. in 1887 and G.C.I.E. in 1897. The state has long been conspicuous for its progressive administration. It is traversed by a railway connecting it with Bhaunagar, Rajkot and the sea-board. The town of Gondal is 23 m. by rail S. of Rajkot; pop. (1901) 19,592.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gonfalon

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​GONFALON (the late French and Italian form, also found in other Romanic languages, of gonfanon, which is derived from the O.H. Ger. gundfano, gund, war, and fano, flag, cf. Mod. Ger. Fahne, and English “vane”), a banner or standard of the middle ages. It took the form of a small pennon attached below the head of a knight’s lance, or when used in religious processions and ceremonies, or as the banner of a city or state or military order, it became a many-streamered rectangular ensign, frequently swinging from a cross-bar attached to a pole. This is the most frequent use of the word. The title of “gonfalonier,” the bearer of the gonfalon, was in the middle ages both military and civil. It was borne by the counts of Vexin, as leaders of the men of Saint Denis, and when the Vexin was incorporated in the kingdom of France the title of Gonfalonier de Sant Denis passed to the kings of France, who thus became the bearers of the “oriflamme,” as the banner of St Denis was called. “Gonfalonier” was the title of civic magistrates of various degrees of authority in many of the city republics of Italy, notably of Florence, Sienna and Lucca. At Florence the functions of the office varied. At first the gonfaloniers were the leaders of the various military divisions of the inhabitants. In 1293 was created the office of gonfalonier of justice, who carried out the orders of the signiory. By the end of the 14th century the gonfalonier was the chief of the signiory. At Lucca he was the chief magistrate of the republic. At Rome two gonfaloniers must be distinguished, that of the church and that of the Roman people; both offices were conferred by the pope. The first was usually granted to sovereigns, who were bound to defend the church and lead her armies. The second bore a standard with the letters S.P.Q.R. on any enterprise undertaken in the name of the church and the people of Rome, and also at ceremonies, processions, &c. This was granted by the pope to distinguished families. Thus the Cesarini held the office till the end of the 17th century. The Pamphili held it from 1686 till 1764.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gondwana

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​GONDWANA, the historical name for a large tract of hilly country in India which roughly corresponds with the greater part of the present Central Provinces. It is derived from the aboriginal tribe of Gonds, who still form the largest element in the population and who were at one time the ruling power. From the 12th to as late as the 18th century three or four Gond dynasties reigned over this region with a degree of civilization that seems surprising when compared with the existing condition of the people. They built large walled cities, and accumulated immense treasures of gold and silver and jewels. On the whole, they maintained their independence fairly well against the Mahommedans, being subject only to a nominal submission and occasional payment of tribute. But when the Mahratta invaders appeared, soon after the beginning of the 18th century, the Gond kingdoms offered but a feeble resistance and the aboriginal population fled for safety to the hills. Gondwana was thus included in the dominions of the Bhonsla raja of Nagpur, from whom it finally passed to the British in 1853.
The Gonds, who call themselves Koitur or “highlanders,” are the most numerous tribe of Dravidian race in India. Their total number in 1901 was 2,286,913, of whom nearly two millions were enumerated in the Central Provinces, where they form 20% of the population. They have a language of their own, with many dialects, which is intermediate between the two great Dravidian languages, Tamil and Telugu. It is unwritten and has no literature, except a little provided by the missionaries. More than half the Gonds in the Central Provinces have now abandoned their own dialects, and have adopted Aryan forms of speech. This indicates the extent to which they have become Hinduized. The higher class among them, called Raj Gonds, have been definitely admitted into Hinduism as a pure cultivating caste; but the great majority still retain the animistic beliefs, ceremonial observances and impure customs of food which are common to most of the aboriginal tribes of India.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gontaut, Marie Joséphine Louise, Duchesse de

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​GONTAUT, MARIE JOSÉPHINE LOUISE, Duchesse de (1773–1857), was born in Paris on the 3rd of August 1773, daughter of Augustin François, comte de Montaut-Navailles, who had been governor of Louis XVI. and his two brothers when children. The count of Provence (afterwards Louis XVIII.) and his wife stood sponsors to Joséphine de Montaut, and she shared the lessons given by Madame de Genlis to the Orleans family, with whom her mother broke off relations after the outbreak of the Revolution. Mother and daughter emigrated to Coblenz in 1792; thence they went to Rotterdam, and finally to England, where Joséphine married the marquis Charles Michel de Gontaut-Saint-Blacard. They returned to France at the Restoration, and resumed their place at court. Madame de Gontaut became lady-in-waiting to Caroline, duchess of Berry, and, on the birth of the princess Louise (Mlle d’Artois, afterwards duchess of Parma), governess to the children of France. Next year the birth of Henry, duke of Bordeaux (afterwards known as the comte de Chambord), added to her charge the heir of the Bourbons. She remained faithful to his cause all her life. Her husband died in 1822, and in 1827 she was created duchesse de Gontaut. She followed the exiled royal family in 1830 to Holyrood Palace, and then to Prague, but in 1834, owing to differences with Pierre Louis, duc de Blacas, who thought her comparatively liberal views dangerous for the prince and princess, she received a brusque congé from Charles X. Her twin daughters, Joséphine (1796–1844) and Charlotte (1796–1818), married respectively Ferdinand de Chabot, prince de Léon and afterwards duc de Rohan, and François, comte de Bourbon-Busset. She herself wrote in her old age some naïve memoirs, which throw an odd light on the pretensions of the “governess of the children of France.” She died in Paris in 1857.
See her Memoirs (Eng. ed., 2 vols., 1894), and Lettres inédites (1895).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gondokoro

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​GONDOKORO, a government station and trading-place on the east bank of the upper Nile, in 4° 54′ N., 31° 43′ E. It is the headquarters of the Northern Province of the (British) Uganda protectorate, is 1070 m. by river S. of Khartum and 350 m. N.N.W. in a direct line of Entebbe on Victoria Nyanza. The station, which is very unhealthy, is at the top of a cliff 25 ft. above the river-level. Besides houses for the civil and military authorities and the lines for the troops, there are a few huts inhabited by Bari, the natives of this part of the Nile. The importance of Gondokoro lies in the fact that it is within a few miles of the limit of navigability of the Nile from Khartum up stream. From this point the journey to Uganda is continued overland.
Gondokoro was first visited by Europeans in 1841–1842, when expeditions sent out by Mehemet Ali, pasha of Egypt, ascended the Nile as far as the foot of the rapids above Gondokoro. It soon became an ivory and slave-trading centre. In 1851 an Austrian Roman Catholic mission was established here, but it was abandoned in 1859. It was at Gondokoro that J. H. Speke and J. A. Grant, descending the Nile after their discovery of its source, met, on the 15th of February 1863, Mr (afterwards Sir) Samuel Baker and his wife who were journeying up the river. In 1871 Baker, then governor-general of the equatorial provinces of Egypt, established a military post at Gondokoro which he named Ismailia, after the then khedive. Baker made this post his headquarters, but Colonel (afterwards General) C. G. Gordon, who succeeded him in 1874, abandoned the station on account of its unhealthy site, removing to Lado. Gondokoro, however, remained a trading-station. It fell into the hands of the Mahdists in 1885. After the destruction of the Mahdist power in 1898 Gondokoro was occupied by British troops and has since formed the northernmost post on the Nile of the Uganda protectorate (see Sudan; Nile; and Uganda).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Cowley, Charles Wellesley

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​COWLEY, HENRY RICHARD CHARLES WELLESLEY, 1st Earl (1804–1884), British diplomatist, was the eldest son of Henry Wellesley, 1st Baron Cowley (1773–1847), and Charlotte, daughter of Charles, 1st Earl Cadogan, and was consequently a nephew of the duke of Wellington and of the marquess Wellesley. Born on the 17th of June 1804, he entered the diplomatic service in 1824, receiving his first important appointment in 1848, when he became minister plenipotentiary to the Swiss cantons; and in the same year he was sent to Frankfort to watch the proceedings of the German parliament. This was followed by his appointment as envoy extraordinary to the new Germanic confederation, a position which he only held for a short time, as he was chosen in 1852 to succeed the 1st marquess of Normanby as the British ambassador in Paris. Baron Cowley, as Wellesley had been since his father’s death in 1847, held this important post for fifteen years, and the story of his diplomatic life in Paris cannot be separated from the general history of England and France. As minister during the greater part of the reign of Napoleon III., he conducted the delicate negotiations between the two countries during the time of those eastern complications which preceded and followed the Crimean War, and also during the excitement and unrest produced by the attempt made in 1858 by Felice Orsini to assassinate the emperor of the French; while his diplomatic skill was no less in evidence during the war between France and Austria and the subsequent course of events in Italy. In 1857 he had been created Earl Cowley and Viscount Dangan; in 1866 he was made a knight of the Garter; and having assisted Richard Cobden to conclude the commercial treaty between Great Britain and France in 1860, he retired in 1867 from a position which he had filled with distinction to himself and with benefit to his country. In 1863 Cowley had inherited the estate of Draycot in Wiltshire from his kinsman the 5th earl of Mornington, and he lived in retirement until his death on the 15th of July 1884. He had married in 1833 Olivia Cecilia (d. 1885), daughter of Charlotte, baroness de Ros and Lord Henry Fitzgerald, by whom he had three sons and two daughters, and was succeeded in his titles by his eldest son, William Henry, 2nd Earl Cowley (1834–1895), father of Henry Arthur Mornington, 3rd earl (b. 1866).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Cowpens

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​COWPENS, a town of Spartanburg county, South Carolina, U.S.A., in the N. part of the state. Pop. (1900) 692; (1910) 1101. It is served by the Southern railway. In colonial days cattle were rounded up and branded here—whence the name. Seven miles N. of the town is the field of the battle of Cowpens, fought on the 17th of January 1781, during the War of American Independence, between the Americans under Gen. Daniel Morgan and the British under Gen. Banastre Tarleton, the British being defeated. A monument was erected on the battlefield in 1859, but was much defaced during the Civil War. The town of Cowpens was founded in 1876, and was incorporated in 1880.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Cowes

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​COWES, a seaport and watering-place in the Isle of Wight, England, 12 m. S.S.E. of Southampton. West Cowes is separated from East Cowes by the picturesque estuary of the river Medina, the two towns (each of which is an urban district) lying on opposite sides of its mouth at the apex of the northern coast of the island. Pop. (1901) West Cowes, 8652; East Cowes, 3196. The port between them is the chief on the island, and is the headquarters of the Royal Yacht Squadron (founded in 1812); it is in regular steamship communication with Southampton and Portsmouth. West Cowes is served by the Isle of Wight Central railway. A steam ferry and a floating bridge across the Medina, here 600 yds. broad, unite the towns. Behind the harbour the houses rise picturesquely on gentle wooded slopes, and numerous villas adorn the vicinity. The towns owe their origin to two forts or castles, built on each side of the mouth of the Medina by Henry VIII. in 1540, for the defence of the coast; the eastern one has disappeared, but the west castle remains and is used as the club-house of the Yacht Squadron. The marine parade of West Cowes, and the public promenade called the Green, are close to the castle. The industrial population is chiefly employed in the shipbuilding yards, in the manufacture of ships’ fittings, and in engineering works. The harbour is under an elective body of commissioners. On the opposite side of the Medina a broad carriageway leads to East Cowes Castle, a handsome edifice built by John Nash, the favourite architect of George IV., in 1798, and immediately beyond it are the grounds surrounding ​Osborne House (see Osborne), built in 1845 after the property had been purchased by Queen Victoria, the church of St Mildred, Whippingham, lying a mile to the south.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Cowley Fathers

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​COWLEY FATHERS, the name commonly given to the members of the Society of Mission Priests of St John the Evangelist, an Anglican religious community, the headquarters of which are in England, at Cowley St John, close to Oxford. The society was founded in 1865 by the Rev. R. M. Benson “for the cultivation of a life dedicated to God according to the principles of poverty, chastity and obedience.” The society, which is occupied both with educational and missionary work, has a house in London and branch houses at Bombay and Poona in India, at Cape Town and at St Cuthbert’s, Kaffraria, in South Africa; and at Boston in the United States of America. The costume of the Cowley Fathers consists of a black frock or cassock confined by a black cord and a long black cloak.