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

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​BOLTON ABBEY, a village in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, 22 m. N.W. from Leeds and 51/2 from Ilkley by the Midland railway. It takes its name, inaccurately, from the great foundation of Bolton Priory, the ruins of which are among the most exquisitely situated in England. They stand near the right bank of the upper Wharfe, the valley of which is beautifully wooded and closely enclosed by hills. The earliest part of the church is of transitional Norman date; the nave, which is perfect, is Early English and Decorated. The transepts and choir are ruined, and the remains of domestic buildings are slight. The manor of Bolton Abbey with the rest of the district of Craven was granted by William the Conqueror to Robert de Romili, who evidently held it in 1086, although there is no mention made of it in the Domesday survey. William de Meschines and Cicely de Romili, his wife, heiress of Robert, founded and endowed a priory at Embsay or Emmesay, near Skipton, in 1120, but it was moved here in 1151 by their daughter, Alice de Romili, wife of William FitzDuncan, who gave the manor to the monks in exchange for other lands. After the dissolution of the monasteries the manor was sold in 1542 to Henry Clifford, 2nd earl of Cumberland, whose descendants, the dukes of Devonshire, now hold it.
See J. D. Whitaker, LL.D., F.S.A., History of the District of Craven (ed. Morant, 1878); Dugdale’s Monasticon Anglicanum.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bolívar (Colombia)

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​BOLÍVAR, till 1908 a department of Colombia, bounded N. and W. by the Caribbean Sea, E. by the departments of Magdalena and Santander, S. by Antioquia and S.W. by Cauca. It has an area of 27,028 sq. m., composed in great part of low, alluvial plains, densely wooded, but slightly cultivated and unsuited for north European labour. The population, estimated at 323,097 in 1899, is composed largely of mixed races; in some localities the inhabitants of mixed race are estimated to constitute four-fifths of the population. The capital, Cartagena on the Caribbean coast, was once the principal commercial entrepôt of Colombia. Other important towns are Barranquilla and Mompox (8000), on the Magdalena river, and Corozal (9000) and Lorica (10,596 in 1902), near the western coast.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bombard

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​BOMBARD (derived through Med. Lat. and Fr. forms from Gr. βομβεῖν, to make a humming noise), a term applied in the middle ages to a sort of cannon, used chiefly in sieges, and throwing heavy stone balls; hence the later use as a verb (see Bombardment). The name, in various forms, was also given to a medieval musical instrument (“bombard,” “bumhart,” “pumhart,” “pommer”), the forerunner of the bass oboe or schalmey. At the present day a small primitive oboe called bombarde, with eight holes but no keys, is used among the Breton peasants.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bolton, Edmund

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​BOLTON (or Boulton), EDMUND (1575?–1633?), English historian and poet, was born by his own account in 1575. He was brought up a Roman Catholic, and was educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, afterwards residing in London at the Inner Temple. In 1600 he contributed to England’s Helicon. He was a retainer of the duke of Buckingham, and through his influence he secured a small place at the court of James I. Bolton formulated a scheme for the establishment of an English academy, but the project fell through after the death of the king, who had regarded it favourably. He wrote a Life of King Henry II. for Speed’s Chronicle, but his Catholic sympathies betrayed themselves in his treatment of Thomas Becket, and a life by Dr John Barcham was substituted (Wood, Ath. Oxon. ed. Bliss, iii. 36). The most important of his numerous works are Hypercritica (1618?), a short critical treatise valuable for its notices of contemporary authors, reprinted in Joseph Haslewood’s Ancient Critical Essays (vol. ii., 1815); Nero Caesar, or Monarchic Depraved (1624), with special note of British affairs. Bolton was still living in 1633, but the date of his death is unknown.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bolívar (Venezuela)

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​BOLÍVAR, an inland state of Venezuela, lying S. of the Orinoco and Apure, with the Yuruari territory on the E., the Caroni river forming the boundary, and the Amazonas territory and Brazil on the S. Frequent political changes in Venezuela have led to various modifications in the size and outlines of this state, which comprises large areas of uninhabited territory. It is a country of extensive plains (llanos) covered in the rainy season with nutritious grass which disappears completely in the dry season, and of great forests and numerous rivers. Its population was given in 1894 as 135,232, but its area has been largely reduced since then. The capital is Ciudad Bolívar, formerly called Angostura, which is situated on the right bank of the Orinoco about 240 m. above its mouth; pop. 11,686. Vessels of light draught easily ascend the Orinoco to this point, and a considerable trade is carried on, the exports being cocoa, sugar, cotton, hides, jerked beef and various forest products.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bomb

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​BOMB, a term formerly used for an explosive shell (see Ammunition) fired by artillery. The word is derived from the ​Gr. βόμβος, a hammering, buzzing noise, cf. “bombard” (q.v.). At the present day it is most frequently used of a shattering or incendiary grenade, or of an explosive vessel actuated by clockwork or trip mechanism, employed to destroy life or property. In naval warfare, before the introduction of the shell gun, explosive projectiles were carried principally by special vessels known as bomb-vessels, bombards or, colloquially, bombs.
In geology, the name “bomb” is given to certain masses of lava which have been hurled forth from a volcanic vent by explosive action. In shape they are spheroidal, ellipsoidal or discoidal; in structure they may be solid, hollow or more or less cavernous; whilst in size they vary from that of a walnut to masses weighing several tons. It is generally held that the form is partly due to rotation of the mass during its aerial flight, and in some cases the bomb becomes twisted by a gyratory movement. According, however, to Dr H. J. Johnston-Lavis, many of the so-called bombs of Vesuvius are not projectiles, but merely globular masses formed in a stream of lava; and in like manner Professor J. D. Dana showed that what were regarded as bombs in Hawaii are in many cases merely lava-balls that have not been hurled through the air. Certain masses of pumice ejected from Vulcano have been called by Johnston-Lavis “bread-crust bombs,” since they present a coating of obsidian which has been bent and cracked in a way suggestive of the crust of a roll. It is probable that here the acid magma was expelled in a very viscous condition, and the crust which formed on cooling was burst by the steam from the occluded water. Some of the bombs thrown out during recent eruptions of Etna consist of white granular quartz, encased in a black scoriaceous crust, the quartz representing an altered sandstone. The bombs of granular olivine, found in some of the tuffs in the Eifel, are represented in most geological collections (see Volcano).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Boma

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​BOMA (properly Mboma), a port on the north bank of the river Congo about 60 m. from its mouth, the administrative capital of Belgian Congo. Pop. about 5000. It was one of the places at which the European traders on the west coast of Africa established stations in the 16th and 17th centuries. It became the entrepôt for the commerce of the lower Congo and a well-known mart for slaves. The trade was chiefly in the hands of Dutch merchants, but British, French and Portuguese firms also had factories there. No European power exercised sovereignty, though shadowy claims were from time to time put forward by Portugal (see Africa, § 5). In 1884 the natives of Boma granted a protectorate of their country to the International Association of the Congo.
See H. M. Stanley, The Congo and the Founding of its Free State (London, 1885).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Belleau, Remy

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​BELLEAU, REMY (c. 1527–1577), French poet, and member of the Pléiade (see Daurat), was born at Nogent-le-Rotrou about 1527. He studied with Ronsard and others under Jean Daurat at the Collège de Coqueret. He was attached to Renè de Lorraine, marquis d’Elbœuf, in the expedition against Naples in 1557, where he did good military service. On his return he was made tutor to the young Charles, marquis d’Elbœuf, who, under Belleau’s training became a great patron of the muses. Belleau was an enthusiast for the new learning and joined the group of young poets with ardour. In 1556 he published the first translation of Anacreon which had appeared in French. In the next year he published his first collection of poems, the Petites inventions, in which he describes stones, insects and flowers. The Amours et nouveaux échanges des pierres précieuses . . . . (1576) contains perhaps his most characteristic work. Its title is quoted in the lines of Ronsard’s epitaph on his tomb:—
* “Luy mesme a basti son tombeau Dedans ses Pierres Précieuses.”
He wrote commentaries to Ronsard’s Amours in 1560, notes which evinced delicate taste and prodigious learning. Like Ronsard and Joachim Du Bellay, he was extremely deaf. His days passed peacefully in the midst of his books and friends, and he died on the 6th of March 1577. He was buried in the nave of the Grands Augustins at Paris, and was borne to the tomb on the pious shoulders of four poets, Ronsard, J. A. de Baïf, Philippe Desportes and Amadis Jamyn. His most considerable work is La Bergerie (1565–1572), a pastoral in prose and verse, written in imitation of Sannazaro. The lines on April in the Bergerie are well known to all readers of French poetry. Belleau was the French Herrick, full of picturesqueness, warmth and colour. His skies drop flowers and all his air is perfumed, and this voluptuous sweetness degenerates sometimes into licence. Extremely popular in his own age, he shared the fate of his friends, and was undeservedly forgotten in the next. Regnier said: “Belleau ne parle pas comme on parle à la ville”; and his lyrical beauty was lost on the trim 17th century. His complete works were collected in 1578, and contain, besides the works already mentioned, a comedy entitled La Reconnue, in short rhymed lines, which is not without humour and life, and a comic masterpiece, a macaronic poem on the religious wars, Dictamen metrificum de bello huguenotico et reistrorum  piglamine ad sodales (Paris, no date).
The Œuvres complètes (3 vols., 1867) of Remy Belleau were edited by A. Gouverneur; and his Œuvres poétiques (2 vols., 1879) by M. Ch. Marty-Laveaux in his Pléiade française; see also C. A. Sainte-Beuve, Tableau historique et critique de la poésie française au XVIᵉ siècle (ed. 1876), i. pp. 155-160, and ii. pp. 296 seq.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bellecour

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​BELLECOUR (1725–1778), French actor, whose real name was Jean Claude Gilles Colson, was born on the 16th of January 1725, the son of a portrait-painter. He showed decided artistic talent, but soon deserted the brush for the stage under the name of Bellecour. After playing in the provinces he was called to the Comédie Française, but his début, on the 21st of December 1750, as Achilles in Iphigénie was not a great success. He soon turned to more congenial comedy rôles, which for thirty years he filled with great credit. He was a very natural player, and his willingness to give others on the stage an opportunity to show their talents made him extremely popular. He wrote a successful play, Fausses apparences (1761), and was very useful to the Comédie Française in editing and adapting the plays of others. He died on the 19th of November 1778.
His wife, Rose Perrine le Roy de la Corbinaye, was born at Lamballe on the 20th of December 1730, the daughter of an artillery officer. Under the stage name of Beaumenard she made her first Paris appearance in 1743 as Gogo in Favart’s Le Coq du village. After a year at the Opéra Comique she played in several companies, including that of Marshal Saxe, who is said to have been not insensible to her charms. In 1749 she made her début at the Comédie Française as Dorine in Tartuffe, and her success was immediate. She retired in 1756, but after an absence of five years, during which she married, she reappeared as Madame Bellecour, and continued her successes in soubrette parts in the plays of Molière and de Regnard. She retired finally at the age of sixty, but troublous times had put an end to the pension which she received from Louis XVI. and from the theatre, and she died in abject poverty on the 5th of August 1799. There is a charming portrait of her owned by the Théâtre Français.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bellenden, John

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​BELLENDEN (Ballantyne or Bannatyne), JOHN (fl. 1533–1587), Scottish writer, was born about the end of the 15th century, in the south-east of Scotland, perhaps in East Lothian. He appears to have been educated, first at the university of St Andrews and then at that of Paris, where he took, the degree of doctor. From his own statement, in one of his poems, we learn that he had been in the service of James V. from the king’s earliest years, and that the post he held was clerk of accounts. At the request of James he undertook translations of Boece’s Historia Scotorum, which had appeared at Paris in 1527, and the first five books of Livy. As a reward for his versions, which he finished in 1533, he was appointed archdeacon of Moray and a canon of Ross. He was a strenuous opponent of the Reformation and was compelled to go into exile. He is said by some authorities to have died at Rome in 1550; by others to have been still living in 1587. His translation of Boece, entitled The History and Chronicles of Scotland, is a remarkable specimen of Scottish prose, distinguished by its freedom and vigour of expression. It was published in 1536; and was reprinted in 2 vols., edited by Maitland, in 1821. The translation of Livy was not printed till 1822 (also in 2 vols.). Two MSS. of the latter are extant, one, the older, in the Advocates’ library, Edinburgh (which was the basis of the normalized text of 1822), the other (c. 1550) in the possession of Mr Ogilvie Forbes of Boyndlie. An edition of the work was edited for the Scottish Text Society by Mr W. A. Craigie (2 vols. 1901, 1903). The second volume of this edition contains also a complete reprint of the portions of the holograph first draft which were discovered in the British Museum in 1902. Two poems by Bellenden—The Proheme to the Cosmographe and the Proheme of the History—appeared in the 1536 edition of the History of Scotland. Others, bearing his name in the well-known Bannatyne MS. collection, made by his namesake George Bannatyne (q.v.), may or may not be his. Sir David Lyndsay, in his prologue to the Papyngo, speaks vaguely of:
* “Ane cunnyng Clark quhilk wrythith craftelie Ane plant of poetis callit Ballendyne, Quhose ornat workis my wit can nocht defyne.”
The chief sources of information regarding Belleriden’s life are the Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, his own works and the ecclesiastical records.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Belleville (Illinois)

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​BELLEVILLE, a city and the county-seat of St Clair county, Illinois, U.S.A., in the S.W. part of the state 14 m. S.E. of St Louis, Missouri. Pop. (1890) 15,361; (1900) 17,484, of whom 2750 were foreign-born; (1910) 21,122. Belleville is served by the Illinois Central, the Louisville & Nashville, and the Southern railways, also by extensive interurban electric systems; and a belt line to O’Fallon, Illinois, connects Belleville with the Baltimore & Ohio South Western railway. A large element of the population is of German descent or German birth, and two newspapers are published in German, besides three dailies, three weeklies and a semi-weekly in English. Among the industrial establishments of the city are stove and range factories, flour mills, rolling mills, distilleries, breweries, shoe factories, copper refining works, nail and tack factories, glass works and agricultural implement factories. The value of the city’s factory products increased from $2,873,334 in 1900 to $4,356,615 in 1905 or 51·6%. Belleville is in a rich agricultural region, and in the vicinity there are valuable coal mines, the first of which was sunk in 1852; from this dates the industrial development of the city. Belleville was first settled in 1813, was incorporated as a city in 1850, and was re-incorporated in 1876.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bellegarde, Heinrich Joseph Johannes

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​BELLEGARDE, HEINRICH JOSEPH JOHANNES, Count von (1756–1845), Austrian soldier and statesman, was born at Dresden on the 29th of August 1756, and for a short time served in the Saxon army. Transferring his services to Austria in 1771 he distinguished himself greatly as colonel of dragoons in the Turkish War of 1788–1789, and served as a major-general in the Netherlands campaigns of 1793–1794. In the campaign of 1796 in Germany, as a lieutenant field marshal, he served on the staff of the archduke Charles, whom he accompanied to Italy in the following year. He was also employed in the congress of Rastatt. In 1799 he commanded a corps in eastern Switzerland, connecting the armies of the archduke and Suvarov, and finally joined the latter in north Italy. He conducted the siege of the citadel of Alessandria, and was present at the decisive battle of Novi. He served again in the latter part of the Marengo campaign of 1800 in the rank of general of cavalry. In 1805, when the archduke Charles left to take command in Italy, Bellegarde became president ad interim of the council of war. He was, however, soon employed in the field, and at the sanguinary battle of Caldiero he commanded the Austrian right. In the war of 1809 he commanded the extreme right wing of the main army (see Napoleonic Campaigns). Cut off from Charles as the result of the battle of Eckmühl, he retreated into Bohemia, but managed to rejoin before the great battles near Vienna (Aspern and Wagram). From 1809 to 1813 Bellegarde, now field marshal, was governor-general of Galicia, but was often called to preside over the meetings of the Aulic Council, especially in 1810 in connexion with the reorganization of the Austrian army. In 1813, 1814 and 1815 he led the Austrian armies in Italy. His successes in these campaigns were diplomatic as well as military, and he ended them by crushing the last attempt of Murat in 1815. From 1816 to 1825 (when he had to retire owing to failing eyesight) he held various distinguished civil and military posts. He died in 1845.
See Smola, Das Leben des F. M. von Bellegarde (Vienna, 1847).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bellenden, William

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​BELLENDEN, WILLIAM, Scottish classical scholar. Hardly anything is known of him. He lived in the reign of James I. (VI. of Scotland), who appointed him magister libellorum supplicum or master of requests. King James is also said to have provided Bellenden with the means of living independently at Paris, where he became professor at the university, and advocate in the parliament. The date of his birth cannot be fixed, and it can only be said that he died later than 1625. The first of the works by which he is known was published anonymously in 1608, with the title Ciceronis Princeps, a laborious compilation of all Cicero’s remarks on the origin and principles of regal government, digested and systematically arranged. In 1612 there appeared a similar work, devoted to the consideration of consular authority and the Roman senate, Ciceronis Consul, Senator, Senatusque Romanus. His third work, De Statu Prisci Orbis, 1615, is a good outline of general history. All three works were combined in a single large volume, entitled De Statu Libri Tres, 1615, which was first brought into due notice by Dr Samuel Parr, who, in 1787, published an edition with a preface, famous for the elegance of its Latinity, in which he eulogized Burke, Fox and Lord North as the “three English luminaries.” The greatest of Bellenden’s works is the extensive treatise De Tribus Luminibus Romanorum, printed and published posthumously at Paris in 1633. The book is unfinished, and treats only of the first luminary, Cicero; the others intended were apparently Seneca and Pliny. It contains a most elaborate history of Rome and its institutions, drawn from Cicero, and thus forms a storehouse of all the historical notices contained in that voluminous author. It is said that nearly all the copies were lost on the passage to England. One of the few that survived was placed in the university library at Cambridge, and freely drawn upon by Conyers Middieton, the librarian, in his History of the Life of Cicero. Both Joseph Warton and Dr Parr accused Middleton of deliberate plagiarism, which was the more likely to have escaped detection owing to the small number of existing copies of Bellenden’s work.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Belles-Lettres

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​BELLES-LETTRES (Fr. for “fine literature”), a term used to designate the more artistic and imaginative forms of literature, as poetry or romance, as opposed to more pedestrian and exact studies. The term appears to have been first used in English by Swift (1710).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bellefontaine

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​BELLEFONTAINE, a city and the county-seat of Logan county, Ohio, U.S.A., about 45 m. N.W. of Columbus. Pop. (1890) 4245; (1900) 6649 (267 foreign-born); (1910) 8238. It is served by the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis (which has large shops here) and the Ohio Central railways; also by the Dayton, Springfield & Urbana electric railway. It is built on the south-west slope of a hill having an elevation of about 1500 ft. above sea-level and at the foot of which are several springs of clear water which suggested the city’s name. Among the city’s manufactures are iron bridges, carriage-bodies, flour and cement. The municipality owns and operates its water-works system and its gas and electric-lighting plants. Bellefontaine was first settled about 1818, was laid out as a town and made the county-seat in 1820 and was incorporated in 1835.