marshal enjoyed a brief immunity, he was in 1873 brought to trial before a military court. He was found guilty of negotiating with and capitulating to the enemy before doing all that was prescribed by duty and honour, and sentenced to degradation and death, but very strongly recommended to mercy. His sentence was commuted to twenty years’ seclusion, and the humiliating ceremonies attending degradation were dispensed with. He was incarcerated in the Ile Sainte-Marguérite and treated rather as an exile than as a convict; thence he escaped in 1874 to Italy. He finally took up his abode in Madrid, where he was treated with marked respect by the government of Alfonso XII. He died there on the 23rd of September 1888. He published Épisodes de la guerre de 1870 (Madrid, 1883). He also wrote L’Armée du Rhin (Paris, 1872).
See the bibliography appended to the article Franco-German War; also memoir by C. Pelletan in La Grande Encyclopédie; for Bazaine’s conduct see Bazaine et l’armée du Rhin (1873); J. Valfrey, Le Maréchal et l’armée du Rhin (1873); Count A. de la Guerronière, L’Homme de Metz (1871); Rossel, Les Derniers Jours de Metz (1871). See also the article Bourbaki for the curious Regnier episode connected with the surrender of Metz.
BAZALGETTE, SIR JOSEPH WILLIAM (1819–1891), English engineer, was born at Enfield on the 28th of March 1819. At the age of seventeen he was articled to an engineer, and a few years later he began to practise successfully on his own account. His name is best known for the engineering works he carried out in London, especially for the construction of the main drainage system and the Thames embankment. In 1848 the control of London drainage, which had hitherto been divided among eight distinct municipal bodies, was consolidated under twelve commissioners, who were in 1849 superseded by a second commission. Under the latter Bazalgette accepted an appointment which he continued to hold under the three successive commissions which in the course of a year or two followed the second one, and when finally in 1855 these bodies were replaced by the Metropolitan Board of Works, he was at once appointed its chief engineer. His plans were ready, but the work was delayed by official obstruction and formality until 1858. Once begun, however, it was vigorously pushed on, and in 1865 the system was formally opened. It consisted of 83 m. of large intercepting sewers, draining more than 100 sq. m. of buildings, and calculated to deal with 420 million gallons a day. The cost was £4,600,000. Almost simultaneously Bazalgette was engaged on the plans for the Thames embankment. The section between Westminster and Vauxhall on the Surrey side was built between 1860 and 1869, and the length between Westminster and Blackfriars was declared open by the prince of Wales in 1870. The Chelsea embankment followed in 1871–1874, and in 1876 Northumberland Avenue was formed. The total outlay on the scheme exceeded £2,000,000. Bazalgette was also responsible for various other engineering works in the metropolitan area, designing, for example, new bridges at Putney and Battersea, and the steam ferry between north and south Woolwich. He also prepared plans for a bridge over the river near the Tower and for a tunnel under it at Blackwall, but did not live to see either of these projects carried out. He died on the 15th of March 1891 at Wimbledon.
BAZARD, AMAND (1791–1832), French socialist, the founder of a secret society in France corresponding to the Carbonari of Italy, was born at Paris. He took part in the defence of Paris in 1815, and afterwards occupied a subordinate situation in the prefecture of the Seine. About 1820 he united some patriotic friends into a society, called Amis de la vérité. From this was developed a complete system of Carbonarism, the peculiar principles of which were introduced from Italy by two of Bazard’s friends. Bazard himself was at the head of the central body, and, while taking a general lead, contributed extensively to the Carbonarist journal, L’Aristarque. An unsuccessful outbreak at Belfort ruined the society, and the leaders were compelled to conceal themselves. Bazard, after remaining for some time in obscurity in Paris, came to the conclusion that the ends of those who wished well to the people would be most easily attained, not through political agitation, but by effecting a radical change in their social condition. This train of thinking naturally drew him towards the socialist philosophers of the school of Saint-Simon, whom he joined. He contributed to their journal, Le Producteur; and in 1828 began to give public lectures on the principles of the school (see Saint-Simon). His opposition to the emancipation of women brought about a quarrel with Enfantin (q.v.) in 1831, and Bazard found himself almost deserted by the members of the society. He attacked Enfantin violently, and in a warm discussion between them he was struck down by apoplexy. After lingering for a few months he died on the 29th of July 1832.
BAZAS, a town of south-western France, in the department of Gironde, 3812 m. S.S.E. of Bordeaux by rail. Pop. (1906) town, 2505; commune, 4684. The town, which was the seat of a bishop from at least the beginning of the 6th century till 1790, has a Gothic church (formerly the cathedral) dating from the 13th to the 16th centuries. There are remains of ramparts (15th and 16th centuries) and several old houses of the 16th century. The vineyards of the vicinity produce white wine. The town is capital of an arrondissement, and carries on tanning, &c., and trade in the well-known Bazadais cattle.
Bazas (Cossio) was capital of the ancient tribe of the Vasates, and under the Romans one of the twelve cities of Novempopuluna. In later times it was capital of the district of Bazadais. It was the scene of much bloodshed during the religious wars of the 16th century.
BAZIGARS, a nomad gipsy-folk of India, found throughout the peninsula, and variously known as Bazigars, Panchpiri, Nats, Bediyas, &c. They live a life apart from the surrounding Hindu population, and still preserve a certain ethnical identity, scarcely justified by any indications given by their physique. They make a living as jugglers, dancers, basket-weavers and fortune-tellers; and in true European gipsy fashion each clan has its king.
BAZIN, RENÉ (1853–), French novelist and man of letters, was born at Angers on the 26th of December 1853. He studied law in Paris, and on his return to Angers became professor of law in the Catholic university there. He contributed to Parisian journals a series of sketches of provincial life and descriptions of travel, but he made his reputation by Une Tache d’encre (1888), which received a prize from the Academy. Other novels of great charm and delicacy followed: La Sarcelle bleue (1892); Madame Corentine (1893); Humble Amour (1894); De toute son âme (1897); La Terre qui meurt (1899); Les Oberlé (1901), an Alsatian story which was dramatized and acted in the following year; L’Âme alsacienne (1903); Donatienne (1903); L’Isolée (1905); Le Blé qui lève (1907); Mémoires d’une vieille fille (1908). La Terre qui meurt, a picture of the decay of peasant farming and a story of La Vendée, is an indirect plea for the development of provincial France. A volume of Questions littéraires et sociales appeared in 1906. René Bazin was admitted to the Academy on the 28th of April 1904.
BAZIRE, CLAUDE (1764–1794), French revolutionist, was deputy for the Côte d’Or in the Legislative Assembly, and made himself prominent by denouncing the court and the “Austrian committee” of the Tuileries. On the 20th of June 1792 he spoke in favour of the deposition of the king. In the Convention he sat with the Mountain, opposed adjourning the trial of Louis XVI., and voted for his death. He joined in the attack upon the Girondists, but, as member of the committee of general security, he condemned the system of the Terror. He was implicated by François Chabot in the falsification of a decree relative to the East India Company, and though his share seems to have been simply that he did not reveal the plot, of which he knew but part, he was accused before the Revolutionary Tribunal at the same time as Danton and Camille Desmoulins, and was executed on the 5th of April 1794.
BDELLIUM (βδέλλιον, used by Pliny and Dioscorides as the name of a plant which exuded a fragrant gum), a name applied to several gums or gum-resins that simulate and are sometimes found as adulterants of true myrrh (q.v.).
