of Paris. He ardently embraced the revolutionary doctrines and took an active part in the insurrection of the 10th of August 1792. Representing the department of the Oise in the Convention, he voted for the immediate death of the king. He accused the Girondists of relations with the court, then turned against Robespierre, who had him expelled from the Jacobin club for his conduct as commissioner of the Convention with the army of La Rochelle. On the 9th Thermidor he was one of the deputies delegated to aid Barras to repress the insurrection made by the commune of Paris in favour of Robespierre. Bourbon then became a violent reactionary, attacking the former members of the Mountain and supporting rigorous measures against the rioters of the 12th Germinal and the 1st Prairial of the year III. In the council of Five Hundred, Bourdon belonged to the party of “Clichyens,” composed of disguised royalists, against whom the directors made the coup d’état of the 18th Fructidor. Bourdon was arrested and deported to French Guiana, where he died soon after his arrival.
BOURG-EN-BRESSE, a town of eastern France, capital of
the department of Ain, and formerly capital of the province
of Bresse, 36 m. N.N.E. of Lyons by the Paris-Lyon railway.
Pop. (1906) town, 13,916; commune, 20,045. Bourg is situated
at the western base of the Jura, on the left bank of the Reyssouze,
a tributary of the Saône. The chief of the older buildings
is the church of Notre-Dame (16th century), of which the façade
belongs to the Renaissance; other parts of the church are Gothic.
In the interior there are stalls of the 16th century. The other
public buildings, including a handsome prefecture, are modern.
The hôtel de ville contains a library and the Lorin museum
with a collection of pictures, while another museum has a collection
of the old costumes and ornaments characteristic of Bresse.
Among the statues in the town there is one of Edgar Quinet
(1803–1875), a native of Bourg. Bourg is the seat of a prefect
and of a court of assizes, and has a tribunal of first instance, a
tribunal and a chamber of commerce, and a branch of the Bank
of France. Its educational establishments include lycées for
boys and girls, and training colleges. The manufactures consist
of iron goods, mineral waters, tallow, soap and earthenware,
and there are flour mills and breweries; and there is considerable
trade in grain, cattle and poultry. The church of Brou, a
suburb of Bourg, is of great artistic interest. Marguerite of
Bourbon, wife of Philibert II. of Savoy, had intended to found a
monastery on the spot, but died before her intention could be
carried into effect. The church was actually built early in the 16th
century by her daughter-in-law Marguerite of Austria, wife of
Philibert le Beau of Savoy, in memory of her husband. The
exterior, especially the façade, is richly ornamented, but the
chief interest lies in the works of art in the interior, which date
from 1532. The most important are the three mausoleums with
the marble effigies of Marguerite of Bourbon, Philibert le Beau,
and Marguerite of Austria. All three are remarkable for perfection
of sculpture and richness of ornamentation. The rood loft,
the oak stalls, and the reredos in the chapel of the Virgin are
masterpieces in a similar style.
Roman remains have been discovered at Bourg, but little is known of its early history. Raised to the rank of a free town in 1250, it was at the beginning of the 15th century chosen by the dukes of Savoy as the chief city of the province of Bresse. In 1535 it passed to France, but was restored to Duke Philibert Emmanuel, who later built a strong citadel, which afterwards withstood a six months’ siege by the soldiers of Henry IV. The town was finally ceded to France in 1601. In 1814 the inhabitants, in spite of the defenceless condition of their town, offered resistance to the Austrians, who put the place to pillage.
BOURGEOIS, LÉON VICTOR AUGUSTE (1851– ), French
statesman, was born at Paris on the 21st of May 1851, and was
educated for the law. After holding a subordinate office (1876)
in the department of public works, he became successively
prefect of the Tarn (1882) and the Haute-Garonne (1885), and
then returned to Paris to enter the ministry of the interior.
He became prefect of police in November 1887, at the critical
moment of President Grévy’s resignation. In the following
year he entered the chamber, being elected deputy for the Marne,
in opposition to General Boulanger, and joined the radical left.
He was under-secretary for home affairs in the Floquet ministry
of 1888, and resigned with it in 1889, being then returned to the
chamber for Reims. In the Tirard ministry, which succeeded,
he was minister of the interior, and subsequently, on the 18th
of March 1890, minister of public instruction in the cabinet
of M. de Freycinet, a post for which he had qualified himself
by the attention he had given to educational matters. In this
capacity he was responsible in 1890 for some important reforms
in secondary education. He retained his office in M. Loubet’s
cabinet in 1892, and was minister of justice under M. Ribot at
the end of that year, when the Panama scandals were making the
office one of peculiar difficulty. He energetically pressed the
Panama prosecution, so much so that he was accused of having
put wrongful pressure on the wife of one of the defendants in
order to procure evidence. To meet the charge he resigned in
March 1893, but again took office, and only retired with the rest
of the Freycinet ministry. In November 1895 he himself formed
a cabinet of a pronouncedly radical type, the main interest of
which was attached to its fall, as the result of a constitutional
crisis arising from the persistent refusal of the senate to vote
supply. The Bourgeois ministry appeared to consider that
popular opinion would enable them to override what they claimed
to be an unconstitutional action on the part of the upper house;
but the public was indifferent and the senate triumphed. The
blow was undoubtedly damaging to M. Bourgeois’s career as an
homme de gouvernement. As minister of public instruction in the
Brisson cabinet of 1898 he organized courses for adults in primary
education. After this short ministry he represented his country
with dignity and effect at the Hague peace congress, and in 1903
was nominated a member of the permanent court of arbitration.
He held somewhat aloof from the political struggles of the
Waldeck-Rousseau and Combes ministries, travelling considerably
in foreign countries. In 1902 and 1903 he was elected
president of the chamber. In 1905 he replaced the duc
d’Audiffret-Pasquier as senator for the department of Marne,
and in May 1906 became minister of foreign affairs in the
Sarrien cabinet. He was responsible for the direction of French
diplomacy in the conference at Algeciras.
BOURGEOIS, a French word, properly meaning a freeman of a
bourg or borough in France; later the term came to have the
wider significance of the whole class lying between the ouvriers
or workmen and the nobility, and is now used generally of the
trading middle-class of any country. In printing, the word
(pronounced burjoice′) is used of a type coming in size between
longprimer and brevier; the derivation is supposed to be from
the name of a French printer, otherwise unknown.
BOURGES, a city of central France, chief town of the department
of Cher, 144 m. S. of Paris on the Orléans railway between
Vierzon and Nevers. Pop. (1906) town, 34,581; commune,
44,133. Bourges is built amidst flat and marshy country on an
eminence limited on three sides by the waters of the Canal Of
Berry, the Yèvre, the Auron, and other smaller streams with
which they unite at this point. The older part of the town with
its narrow streets and old houses forms a centre, to the south and
east of which lie important engineering suburbs. Flourishing
nurseries and market-gardens are situated in the marshy ground
to the north and north-east. Bourges preserves portions of the
Roman ramparts of the 4th century, which are for the most part
built into the houses of the old quarter. They measure considerably
less in circumference than the fortifications of the 13th
century, remains of which in the shape of ruined walls and towers
are still to be seen. The summit of the rise on which the city is
built is crowned by the cathedral of St Étienne, one of the most
important in France. Begun at the end of the 12th century,
it was not completed till the 16th century, to which period
belong the northernmost of the two unfinished towers flanking
the façade and two of its five elaborately sculptured portals.
The interior, which has double aisles, the inner aisles of remarkable
height, and no transepts, contains, among many other
