The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 60

BATTAS, a Malay race, native to Sumatra, now much reduced in numbers, and driven into the interior.

BATTERSEA, a suburb of London, on the Surrey side of the Thames, opposite Chelsea, and connected with it by a bridge; with a park 185 acres in extent; of plain and recent growth; till lately a quite rural spot.

BATTHYA'NI, COUNT, an Hungarian patriot, who fought hard to see his country reinstated in its ancient administrative independence, but failed in his efforts; was arrested, tried for high treason by court-martial, and sentenced to be shot, to the horror, at the time, of the civilised world (1809-1849).

BATTLE, a market-town in Suss.e.x, near Hastings, so called from the battle of Senlac, in which William the Conqueror defeated Harold in 1066.

BATTLE OF THE SPURS, (_a_) an engagement at Courtrai in 1302 where the burghers of the town beat the knighthood of France, and the spurs of 4000 knights were collected after the battle; (_b_) an engagement at Guinegate, 1513, in which Henry VIII. made the French forces take to their spurs; OF THE BARRIERS (see BARRIERS); OF THE BOOKS, a satire by Swift on a literary controversy of the time; OF THE STANDARD, a battle in 1138, in which the English, with a high-mounted crucifix for a standard, beat the Scots at Northallerton.

BATTUE, method of killing game after crowding them by cries and beating them towards the sportsmen.

BAUCIS. See PHILEMON.

BAUDELAIRE, CHARLES, French poet of the romantic school, born in Paris; distinguished among his contemporaries for his originality, and his influence on others of his cla.s.s; was a charming writer of prose as well as verse, as his "Pet.i.ts Poemes" in prose bear witness. Victor Hugo once congratulated him on having "created a new shudder"; and as has been said, "this side of his genius attracted most popular attention, which, however, is but one side, and not really the most remarkable, of a singular combination of morbid but delicate a.n.a.lysis and reproduction of the remotest phases and moods of human thought and pa.s.sion" (1821-1867).

BAUDRICOURT, a French courtier whom Joan of Arc pressed to conduct her into the presence of Charles VII.

BAUDRY, PAUL, French painter, decorated the _foyer_ of the Grand Opera in Paris; is best known as the author of the "Punishment of a Vestal Virgin" and the "a.s.sa.s.sination of Marat" (1828-1886).

BAUER, BRUNO, a daring Biblical critic, and violent polemic on political as well as theological subjects; born at Saxe-Altenburg; regarded the Christian religion as overlaid and obscured by accretions foreign to it; denied the historical truth of the Gospels, and, like a true disciple of Hegel, ascribed the troubles of the 19th century to the overmastering influence of the "ENLIGHTENMENT" or the "AUFKLaRUNG" (q. v.) that characterised the 18th. His last work was ent.i.tled "Disraeli's Romantic and Bismarck's Socialistic Imperialism" (1809-1882).

BAUMGARTEN, ALEXANDER GOTTLIEB, professor of Philosophy at Frankfort-on-the-Oder; disciple of Wolf; born at Berlin; the founder of aesthetics as a department of philosophy, and inventor of the name (1714-1762).

BAUMGARTEN-CRUSIUS, a German theologian of the school of Schleiermacher; professor of Theology at Jena; born at Merseburg; an authority on the history of dogma, on which he wrote (1788-1843).

BAUR, FERDINAND CHRISTIAN, head of the Tubingen school of rationalist divines, born near Stuttgart; distinguished by his scholars.h.i.+p and his labours in Biblical criticism and dogmatic theology; his dogmatic treatises were on the Christian Gnosis, the Atonement, the Trinity, and the Incarnation, while his Biblical were on certain epistles of Paul and the canonical Gospels, which he regarded as the product of the 2nd century; regarded Christianity of the Church as Judaic in its origin, and Paul as distinctively the first apostle of pure Christianity (1792-1861).

BAUSSET, cardinal, born at Pondicherry, who wrote the Lives of Bossuet and Fenelon (1748-1824).

BAUTZEN, a town of Saxony, an old town on the Spree, where Napoleon defeated the Prussians and Russians in 1813; manufactures cotton, linen, wool, tobacco, paper, etc.

BAVARIA (5,590), next to Prussia the largest of the German States, about the size of Scotland; is separated by mountain ranges from Bohemia on the E. and the Tyrol on the S.; Wurtemburg lies on the W., Prussia, Meiningen, and Saxony on the N. The country is a tableland crossed by mountains and lies chiefly in the basin of the Danube. It is a busy agricultural state: half the soil is tilled; the other half is under gra.s.s, planted with vineyards and forests. Salt, coal, and iron are widely distributed and wrought. The chief manufactures are of beer, coa.r.s.e linen, and woollen fabrics. There are universities at Munich, Wurzburg, and Erlangen. Munich, on the Isar, is the capital; Nuremberg, where watches were invented, and Angsburg, a banking centre, the other chief towns. Formerly a dukedom, the palatinate, on the banks of the Rhine, was added to it in 1216. Napoleon I. raised the duke to the t.i.tle of king in 1805. Bavaria fought on the side of Austria in 1866, but joined Prussia in 1870-71.

BAVIE'CA, the famous steed of the Cid, held sacred after the hero's death.

BAVOU, ST., a soldier monk, the patron saint of Ghent.

BAXTER, RICHARD, an eminent Nonconformist divine, native of Shrops.h.i.+re, at first a conformist, and parish minister of Kidderminster for 19 years; sympathised with the Puritans, yet stopped short of going the full length with them; acted as chaplain to one of their regiments, and returned to Kidderminster; became, at the Restoration one of the king's chaplains; driven out of the Church by the Act of Uniformity, was thrown into prison at 70, let out, spent the rest of his days in peace; his popular works, "The Saint's Everlasting Rest," and his "Call to the Unconverted" (1615-1691).

BAY CITY (27), place of trade, and of importance as a great railway centre in Michigan, U.S.; the third city in it.

BAYADERE, a dancing-girl in India, dressed in loose Eastern costume.

BAYARD, a horse of remarkable swiftness belonging to the four sons of Aymon, and which they sometimes rode all at once; also a horse of Amadis de Gaul.

BAYARD, CHEVALIER DE, an ill.u.s.trious French knight, born in the Chateau Bayard, near Gren.o.ble; covered himself with glory in the wars of Charles VIII., Louis XII., and Francis I.; his bravery and generosity commanded the admiration of his enemies, and procured for him the thrice-honourable cognomen of "The Knight _sans peur et sans reproche_"; one of his most brilliant feats was his defence, single-handed, of the bridge over the Garigliano, in the face of a large body of Spaniards; was mortally wounded defending a pa.s.s at Abblategra.s.so; fell with his face to the foe, who carried off his body, but restored it straightway afterwards for due burial by his friends (1476-1524).

BAYEUX (7), an ancient Norman city in the dep. of Calvados, France; manufactures lace, hosiery, &c.; is a bishop's seat; has a very old Gothic cathedral.

BAYEUX TAPESTRY, representations in tapestry of events connected with the Norman invasion of England, commencing with Harold's visit to the Norman court, and ending with his death at the battle of Hastings; still preserved in the public library of Bayeux; is so called because originally found there; it is 214 ft. long by 20 in. wide, divided into 72 scenes, and contains a variety of figures. It is a question whose work it was.

BAYLE, PIERRE, a native of Languedoc; first Protestant (as the son of a Calvinist minister), then Catholic, then sceptic; Professor of Philosophy at Padua, then at Rotterdam, and finally retired to the Boompjes in the latter city; known chiefly as the author of the famous _Dictionnaire Historique et Critique_, to the composition of which he consecrated his energies with a zeal worthy of a religious devotee, and which became the fountain-head of the sceptical philosophy that flooded France on the eve of the Revolution; p.r.o.nounced by a competent judge in these matters, a mere "imbroglio of historical, philosophical, and anti-theological marine stores" (1647-1700).

BAYLEN, a town in the province of Jaen, Spain, where General Castanos defeated Dupont, and compelled him to sign a capitulation, in 1808.

BAYLEY, SIR JOHN, a learned English judge; author of a standard work "On the Law of Bills of Exchange"; _d_. 1841.

BAYONNE (24), a fortified French town, trading and manufacturing, in the dep. of Ba.s.ses-Pyrenees, at the confluence of the Adour and Nive, 4 m. from the Bay of Biscay; noted for its strong citadel, constructed by Vauban, and one of his _chef-d'oeuvres_, and its 12th-century cathedral church; it belonged to the English from 1152 to 1451.

BAZAINE, FRANcOIS ACHILLE, a marshal of France, born at Versailles; distinguished himself in Algiers, the Crimea, and Mexico; did good service, as commander of the army of the Rhine, in the Franco-German war, but after the surrender at Sedan was shut up in Metz, surrounded by the Germans, and obliged to surrender, with all his generals, officers, and men; was tried by court-martial, and condemned to death, but was imprisoned instead; made good his escape one evening to Madrid, where he lived to write a justification of his conduct, the sale of the book being prohibited in France (1811-1888).

BAZARD, SAINT-AMAND, a French socialist, founder of the _Charbonnerie Francaise_; a zealous but unsuccessful propagator of St.

Simonianism, in a.s.sociation with ENFANTIN (q. v.), from whom he at last separated (1791-1832).

BAZOCHE, a guild of clerks of the parliament of Paris, under a mock king, with the privilege of performing religious plays, which they abused.