Part 29

BESANCON, a city of eastern France, capital of the department of Doubs, 76 m. E. of Dijon by the Paris-Lyon railway. Pop. (1906) town, 41,760; commune, 56,168. It is situated on the left bank of the river Doubs, 820 ft. above sea-level at the foot of the western Jura, and is enclosed by hills in every direction. The Doubs almost surrounds the city proper forming a peninsula, the neck of which is occupied by a height crowned by the citadel; on the right bank lie populous industrial suburbs. The river is bordered by fine quays, and in places by the shady promenades which are a feature of Besancon. On the right bank there is a fine bathing establishment in the Mouillere quarter, supplied by the saline springs of Miserey. The cathedral of St Jean, the chief of the numerous churches of the town, was founded in the 4th century but has often undergone reconstruction and restoration; it resembles the Rhenish churches of Germany in the possession of apses at each of its extremities. Several styles are represented in its architecture which for the most part is the work of the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries; the eastern apse and the tower date from the reign of Louis XV. In the interior there are a "Madonna and Child" of Fra Bartolommeo and a number of other paintings and works of art. The archiepiscopal palace adjoining the cathedral is a building of the 18th century. The church of Ste. Madeleine belongs to the 18th and 19th centuries. The Palais de Granvelle, in the heart of the town, was built from 1534 to 1540 by Nicolas Perrenot de Granvella, chancellor of Charles V., and is the most interesting of the secular buildings. It is built round a square interior court surrounded by arcades, and is occupied by learned societies. The hotel de ville dates from the 16th century, to which period many of the old mansions of Besancon also belong. The law-court, rebuilt in recent times, preserves a Renaissance facade and a fine audience-hall of the 18th century. Some relics of old military architecture survive, among them a cylindrical tower of the 15th century near the Porte Notre-Dame, the southern gate of the city, and the Porte Rivotte, a gate of the 16th century, flanked by two round towers. The Roman remains at Besancon are of great archaeological value. Close to the cathedral there is a triumphal arch decorated with bas-reliefs known as the Porte Noire, which is generally considered to have been built in commemoration of the victories of Marcus Aurelius over the Germans in 167. It is in poor preservation and was partly rebuilt in 1820. Remains of a Roman theatre, of an amphitheatre, of an aqueduct which entered the town by the Porte Taillee, a gate cut in the rock below the citadel, and an arch of a former Roman bridge, forming part of the modern bridge, are also to be seen. Besancon has statues of Victor Hugo and of the Marquis de Jouffroy d'Abbans (b. 1751), inventor of steam-navigation.

Besancon is important as the seat of an archbishopric, a court of appeal and a court of assizes, as centre of an _academie_ (educational division), as seat of a prefect and as headquarters of the VIIth army corps. It also has tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a chamber of commerce, a board of trade-arbitrators, an exchange and a branch of the Bank of France. Its educational establishments include the university with its faculties of science and letters and a preparatory school of medicine and pharmacy, an artillery school, the lycee Victor Hugo for boys, a lycee for girls, an ecclesiastical seminary, training colleges for teachers, and schools of watch-making, art, music and dairy-work. The library contains over 130,000 volumes, and the city has good collections of pictures, antiquities and natural history. The chief industry of Besancon is watch- and clock-making, introduced from the district of Neuchatel at the end of the 18th century. It employs about 12,000 workpeople, and produces about three-fourths of the watches sold in France. Subsidiary industries, such as enamelling, are also important. The metallurgical works of the _Societe de la Franche-Comte_ are established in the city and there are saw-mills, printing-works, paper-factories, distilleries, and manufactories of boots and shoes, machinery, hosiery, leather, elastic fabric, confectionery and artificial silk. There is trade in agricultural produce, wine, metals, &c. The canal from the Rhone to the Rhine passes under the citadel by way of a tunnel, and the port of Besancon has considerable trade in coal, sand, &c.

As a fortress Besancon forms one of a group which includes Dijon, Langres and Belfort; these are designed to secure Franche Comte and to cover a field army operating on the left flank of a German army of invasion. The citadel occupies the neck of the peninsula upon which the town stands; along the river bank in a semicircle is the town _enceinte_, and the suburb of Battant on the right bank of the Doubs is also "regularly" fortified as a bridge-head. These works, and Forts Chaudanne and Bregille overlooking the Doubs at the bend, were constructed prior to 1870. The newer works enclose an area more suited to the needs of modern warfare: the chain of detached forts along the ridges of the left bank has a total length of 7-1/2 m., and the centre of this chain is supported by numerous forts and batteries lying between it and the citadel. On the other bank Fort Chaudanne is now the innermost of several forts facing towards the south-west, and the foremost of these works connects the fortifications of the left bank with another chain of detached forts on the right bank. The latter completely encloses a large area of ground in a semicircle of which Besancon itself is the centre, and the whole of the newer works taken together form an irregular ellipse of which the major axis, lying north-east by south-west, is formed by the Doubs.

Besancon is a place of great antiquity. Under the name of Vesontio it was, in the time of Julius Caesar, the chief town of the Sequani, and in 58 B.C. was occupied by that general. It was a rich and prosperous place under the Roman emperors, and Marcus Aurelius promoted it to the rank of a _colonia_ as _Colonia Victrix Sequanorum_. During the succeeding centuries it was several times destroyed and rebuilt. The archbishopric dates from the close of the 2nd century, and the archbishops gradually acquired considerable temporal power. As the capital of the free county of Burgundy, or Franche-Comte, it was united with the German kingdom when Frederick I. married Beatrix, daughter of Renaud III., count of Upper Burgundy. In 1184 Frederick made it a free imperial city, and about the same time the archbishop obtained the dignity of a prince of the Empire. It afterwards became detached from the German kingdom, and during the 14th century came into the possession of the dukes of Burgundy, from whom it passed to the emperor Maximilian I., and his grandson Charles V. Cardinal Granvella, who was a native of the city, became archbishop in 1584, and founded a university which existed until the French Revolution. After the abdication of Charles V. it came into the possession of Spain, although it remained formally a portion of the Empire until its cession at the peace of Westphalia in 1648. During the 17th century it was attacked several times by the French, to whom it was definitely ceded by the peace of Nijmwegen in 1678. It was then fortified by the engineer Vauban. Until 1789 it was the seat of a _parlement_. In 1814 it was invested and bombarded by the Austrians, and was an important position during the Franco-German War of 1870-71.

See A. Castan, _Besancon et ses environs_ (Besancon, 1887); A. Guenard, _Besancon, description historique_ (Besancon, 1860).

BESANT, SIR WALTER (1836-1901), English author, was born at Portsmouth, on the 14th of August 1836, third son of William Besant of that town. He was educated at King's College, London, and Christ's College, Cambridge, of which he was a scholar. He graduated in 1859 as 18th wrangler, and from 1861 to 1867 was senior professor of the Royal College, Mauritius. From 1868 to 1885 he acted as secretary to the Palestine Exploration Fund. In 1884 he was mainly instrumental in establishing the Society of Authors, a trade-union of writers designed for the protection of literary property, which has rendered great assistance to inexperienced authors by explaining the principles of literary profit. Of this society he was chairman from its foundation in 1884 till 1892. He married Mary, daughter of Mr Eustace Foster-Barham of Bridgwater, and was knighted in 1895. He died at Hampstead, on the 9th of June 1901. Sir Walter Besant practised many branches of literary art with success, but he is most widely known for his long succession of novels, many of which have enjoyed remarkable popularity. His first stories were written in collaboration with James Rice (q.v.). Two at least of these, _The Golden Butterfly_ (1876) and _Ready-Money Mortiboy_ (1872), are among the most vigorous and most characteristic of his works. Though not without exaggeration and eccentricity, attributable to the influence of Dickens, they are full of rich humour, shrewd observation and sound common-sense, and contain characters which have taken their place in the long gallery of British fiction. After Rice's death, Sir Walter Besant wrote alone, and in _All Sorts and Conditions of Men_ (1882) produced a stirring story of East End life in London, which set on foot the movement that culminated in the establishment of the People's Palace in the Mile End Road. Though not himself a pioneer in the effort made by Canon Barnett and others to alleviate the social evils of the East End by the personal contact of educated men and women of a superior social class, his books rendered immense service to the movement by popularizing it. His sympathy with the poor was shown in another attempt to stir public opinion, this time against the evils of the sweating system, in _The Children of Gibeon_ (1886).

Other popular novels by him were _Dorothy Forster_ (1884), _Armorel of Lyonesse_ (1890), and _Beyond the Dreams of Avarice_ (1895). He also wrote critical and biographical works, including _The French Humorists_ (1873), _Rabelais_ (1879), and lives of Coligny, Whittington, Captain Cook and Richard Jefferies. Besant undertook a series of important historical and archaeological volumes, dealing with the associations and development of the various districts of London--of which the most important was _A Survey of London_, unfortunately left unfinished, which was intended to do for modern London what Stow did for the Elizabethan city. Other books on _London_ (1892), _Westminster_ (1895) and _South London_ (1899) showed that his mind was full of his subject. No man of his time evinced a keener interest in the professional side of literary work, and the improved conditions of the literary career in England were largely due to his energetic and capable exposition of the commercial value of authorship and to the unselfish efforts which Sir Walter constantly made on behalf of his fellow-workers in the field of letters.

See also _Autobiography of Sir Walter Besant_ (1902), with a prefatory note by S.S. Sprigge; the preface to the library edition (1887) of _Ready-Money Mortiboy_ contains a history of the literary partnership of Besant and Rice.

BESENVAL DE BRONSTATT, PIERRE VICTOR, BARON DE (1722-1794), French soldier, was born at Soleure. He was the son of Jean Victor Besenval, colonel of the regiment of Swiss guards in the pay of France, who was charged in 1707 by Louis XIV. with a mission to Sweden, to reconcile Charles XII. with the tsar Peter the Great, and to unite them in alliance with France against England. Pierre Victor served at first as aide-de-camp to Marshal Broglie during the campaign of 1748 in Bohemia, then as aide-de-camp to the duke of Orleans during the Seven Years' War. He then became commander of the Swiss Guards. When the Revolution began Besenval remained firmly attached to the court, and he was given command of the troops which the king had concentrated on Paris in July 1789--a movement which led to the taking of the Bastille on the 14th of July. Besenval showed incompetence in the crisis, and attempted to flee. He was arrested, tried by the tribunal of the Chatelet, but acquitted. He then fell into obscurity and died in Paris in 1794. Besenval de Bronstatt is principally known as the author of _Memoires_, which were published in 1805-1807 by the vicomte T.A. de Segur, in which are reported many scandalous tales, true or false, of the court of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette. The authenticity of these memoirs is not absolutely established.

BESKOW, BERNHARD VON, BARON (1796-1868), Swedish dramatist and historian, son of a Stockholm merchant, was born on the 19th of April 1796. His vocation for literature was assisted by his tutor, the poet Johan Magnus Stjernstolpe (1777-1831), whose works he edited. He entered the civil service in 1814, was ennobled in 1826 and received the title of baron in 1843. He held high appointments at court, and was, from 1834 onwards, perpetual secretary of the Swedish academy, using his great influence with tact and generosity. His poetry is over-decorated, and his plays are grandiose historical poems in dramatic form. Among them are "Erik XIV." (2 parts, 1826); and four pieces collected (1836-1838) as _Dramatiska Studier_, the most famous of which is the tragedy of "Thorkel Knutsson." His works include many academical memoirs, volumes of poems, philosophy and a valuable historical study, _Om Gustav den Tredje sasom konung och menniska_ (5 vols. 1860-1869, "Gustavus III. as king and man"), printed in the transactions of the Swedish Academy (vols. 32, 34, 37, 42, 44). He died on the 17th of October 1868.

See also a notice by C. D. af Wirsen in his _Lefnadsteckningar_ (Stockholm, 1901).

BESNARD, PAUL ALBERT (1849- ), French painter, was born in Paris and studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, winning the _Prix de Rome_ in 1874. Until about 1880 he followed the academic tradition, but then broke away completely, and devoted himself to the study of colour and light as conceived by the impressionists. The realism of this group never appealed to his bold imagination, but he applied their technical method to ideological and decorative works on a large scale, such as his frescoes at the Sorbonne, the Ecole de Pharmacie, the Salle des Sciences at the hotel de ville, the mairie of the first arrondissement, and the chapel of Berck hospital, for which he painted twelve "Stations of the Cross" in an entirely modern spirit. A great virtuoso, he achieved brilliant successes alike in water-colour, pastel, oil and etching, both in portraiture, in landscape and in decoration. A good example of his daring unconventionality is his portrait of Madame Rejane; and his close analysis of light can be studied in his picture "Femme qui se chauffe" at the Luxembourg in Paris.

BESOM (Old Eng. _besema_, a rod), originally a bundle of rods or twigs, used for sweeping, &c.; a stiff broom.

BESSARABIA, a government of south-west Russia, separated on the W. and S. from Moldavia and Walachia by the Pruth, and on the E. and N. from the Russian governments of Podolia and Kherson by the Dniester; on the S.E. it is washed by the Black Sea. Area, 17,614 sq. m. The northern districts are invaded by offshoots of the Carpathians, which reach altitudes of 800 to 1150 ft., and are cut up by numerous ravines and river valleys. Here, however, agriculture is the prevailing occupation, the soil being the fertile black earth. The crops principally raised are wheat and maize, though here, as well as in other parts of the government, barley, flax, tobacco, water-melons, gourds, fruit, wine, saffron and madder are grown. The middle of the government is also hilly (850-1000 ft.), and is heavily timbered, chiefly with beech, oak and mountain-ash, and, though to a smaller extent, with birch. The districts south of the old Roman earthworks which link the Dniester with the Pruth along the line of the Botna, just south of Bender, consist of level pasture-land known as the Budjak steppes. Here stock-breeding is the predominant calling, the people owning large numbers of sheep, cattle and horses, also goats, pigs and buffaloes. Lagoons fringe the lower course of the Pruth and the coast of the Black Sea, and marshy ground exists beside the Reuth and other tributaries of the Dniester. The climate is rather subject to extremes, the mean temperature for the year, at Kishinev, being 50 deg. Fahr., of January 27 deg., and of July 72 deg. The rainfall amounts to over 25 in. annually. Salt, saltpetre and marble are the principal mineral products. Manufacturing industry is only just beginning, wine-making (17,000,000 gallons annually), cloth-mills, iron-works, soap-works and tanneries being the principal branches. Both the Dniester and the Pruth are important waterways commercially, the former being navigable up to Mogilev and the latter to Leovo (46 deg. 30' N. lat.). Down the Dniester come timber and wooden wares from Galicia, and grain and wool from Bessarabia itself. Three branches of the railway from Odessa to Poland penetrate the government and proceed towards the Carpathians. The population numbered 988,431 in 1860 and 1,938,326 in 1897, of whom only 302,852 were urban, while 942,179 were women. In 1906 it was estimated at 2,262,400. It consists of various races, nearly one-half (920,919 in 1897) being Moldavians, the others Little Russians, Jews (37% in the towns and 12% in the rural districts), Bulgarians (103,225), Germans (60,206), with some Gypsies (Zigani), Greeks, Armenians, Tatars and Albanians. The Germans, who form some thirty prosperous colonies in the Budjak steppes west from Akkerman, have been settled there since about 1814. The government is divided into eight districts, the chief towns of which are Akkerman (pop. 32,470 in 1900), Bender (33,741 in 1900), Byeltsi (18,526 in 1897), Izmail (33,607 in 1900), Khotin (18,126), Kishinev (125,787 in 1900), Orgeyev (13,356), and Soroki (25,523 in 1900). The capital is Kishinev. Kagul, on the Pruth, and Reni on the Danube (the place to which Alexander of Bulgaria was carried when kidnapped by the Russians in 1886), are small, but lively, river-ports.

The original inhabitants were Cimmerians, and after them came Scythians. During the early centuries of the Christian era Bessarabia, being the key to one of the approaches towards the Byzantine empire, was invaded by many successive races. In the 2nd century it was occupied by the Getae, a Thracian tribe, whom the Roman emperor Trajan conquered in 106; he then incorporated the region in the province of Dacia. In the following century the Goths poured into this quarter of the empire, and in the 5th century it was overrun one after the other by the Huns, the Avars and the Bulgarians. Then followed in the 7th century the Bessi, a Thracian tribe, who gave their name to the region, and in the 9th the Ugrians, that is to say the ancestors of the present Magyars of Hungary, the country being then known as Atel-kuzu. The Ugrians were forced farther west by the Turkish tribe of the Petchenegs in the 10th century, and these were succeeded in the 11th century by the Kumans (Comani) or Polovtsians, a kindred Turkish stock or federation. In the 13th century Bessarabia was overrun by the irresistible Mongols under the leadership of Batu, grandson of Jenghiz Khan. In this century also the Genoese founded trading factories on the banks of the Dniester. In 1367 Bessarabia was subdued and annexed by the ruling prince of Moldavia. During the 16th century it was in the possession alternately of the Turks and the Nogais or Crimean Tatars. From early in the 18th century it was a bone of contention between the Ottoman Turks and the Russians, the latter capturing it five times between 1711 and 1812. In the latter year it was definitely annexed to Russia, and in 1829 its frontier was pushed southwards so as to include the delta of the Danube. After the Crimean War, however, Russia ceded to Moldavia not only this later addition, but also certain districts in the south of the existing government, amounting altogether to an area of 4250 sq. m. and a population of 180,000. By the treaty of Berlin (1878) Russia recovered of this 3580 sq. m., with a population of 127,000.

See Nakko, _History of Bessarabia_, in Russian (1873). (P. A. K.; J. T. Be.)

BESSARION, JOHANNES, or BASILIUS (c. 1395-1472), titular patriarch of Constantinople, and one of the illustrious Greek scholars who contributed to the great revival of letters in the 15th century, was born at Trebizond, the year of his birth being variously given as 1389, 1395 or 1403. He was educated at Constantinople, and in 1423 went to the Peloponnese to hear Gemistus Pletho expound the philosophy of Plato. On entering the order of St Basil, he adopted the name of an old Egyptian anchorite Bessarion, whose story he has related. In 1437 he was made archbishop of Nicaea by John VII. Palacologus, whom he accompanied to Italy in order to bring about a union between the Greek and Latin churches with the object of obtaining help from the West against the Turks. The Greeks had bitterly resented his attachment to the party which saw no difficulty in a reconciliation of the two churches. At the councils held in Ferrara and Florence Bessarion supported the Roman church, and gained the favour of Pope Eugenius IV., who invested him with the rank of cardinal. From that time he resided permanently in Italy, doing much, by his patronage of learned men, by his collection of books and manuscripts, and by his own writings, to spread abroad the new learning. He held in succession the archbishopric of Siponto and the bishoprics of Sabina and Frascati. In 1463 he received the title of Latin patriarch of Constantinople; and it was only on account of his Greek birth that he was not elevated to the papal chair. For five years (1450-1455) he was legate at Bologna, and he was engaged on embassies to many foreign princes, among others to Louis XI. of France in 1471. Vexation at an insult offered him by Louis is said to have hastened his death, which took place on the 19th of November 1472, at Ravenna. Bessarion was one of the most learned scholars of his time. Besides his translations of Aristotle's _Metaphysics_ and Xenophon's _Memorabilia_, his most important work is a treatise directed against George of Trebizond, a violent Aristotelian, entitled _In Calumniatorem Platonis_. Bessarion, though a Platonist, is not so thoroughgoing in his admiration as Gemistus Pletho, and rather strives after a reconciliation of the two philosophies. His work, by opening up the relations of Platonism to the main questions of religion, contributed greatly to the extension of speculative thought in the department of theology. His library, which contained a very extensive collection of Greek MSS., was presented by him to the senate of Venice, and formed the nucleus of the famous library of St Mark.

See A.M. Bandini, _De Vita et Rebus Gestis Bessarionis_ (1777); H. Vast, _Le Cardinal Bessarion_ (1878); E. Legrand, _Bibliographie Hellenique_ (1885); G. Voigt, _Die Wiederbelebung des klassischen Altertums_, ii. (1893); on Bessarion at the councils of Ferrara and Florence, A. Sadov, _Bessarion de Nicee_ (1883); on his philosophy, monograph by A. Kandelos (in Greek: Athens, 1888); most of his works are in Migne, _Patrologia Graeca_, clxi.