BALZAC, JEAN LOUIS GUEZ DE (1594-1654), French author, was born at Angoulême in 1594. At the age of eighteen he travelled in Holland with Théophile de Viaud, with whom he later exchanged bitter recriminations. He was early befriended by the duc d'Épernon and his son Louis, Cardinal de la Valette, who took him to Rome. His letters written to his acquaintances and to many who held a high position at the French court gained for him a great reputation. Compliments were showered upon him, he became an habitué of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, and his head appears to have been turned a little by his success. Richelieu was lavish of praise and promises, but never offered Balzac the preferment he expected. In 1624 a collection of his Lettres was published, and was received with great favour. From the château of Balzac, whither he had retired, he continued to correspond with Jean Chapelain, Valentin Conrart and others. In 1634 he was elected to the Academy. He died at Angoulême on the 18th of February 1654. His fame rests chiefly upon the Lettres, a second collection of which appeared in 1636. Recueil de nouvelles lettres was printed in the next year. His letters, though empty and affected in matter, show a real mastery of style, introducing a new clearness and precision into French prose and encouraging the development of the language on national lines by emphasizing its most idiomatic elements. Balzac has thus the credit of executing in French prose a reform parallel to Malherbe's in verse. In 1631 he published an eulogy of Louis XIII. entitled Le Prince; in 1652 the Socrate chrétien, the best of his longer works; Aristippe ou de la Cour in 1658; and several dissertations on style.

His Œuvres were collected (2 vols.) in 1665 by Valentine Conrart. There are numerous English translations from Balzac, dating from the 17th century.

BAM, a town of Persia in the province of Kerman, situated 115 m. S.E. of the city of Kerman at an elevation of 3600 ft. on both banks of the river Bam. Pop. about 13,000. It is the capital of the Bam-Narmashir district and has extensive groves of date-palms and gardens. Outside the town stands the famous citadel with walls 40 ft. in height. This citadel was, even as late as the beginning of the 19th century, the strongest fortified place in Persia, and owed its strength to the Afghans who took Bam in 1719 and were not finally expelled until 1801. Post and telegraph offices have been established there since 1903.

BAMBERG, a town and archiepiscopal see of Germany, in the kingdom of Bavaria. Pop. (1885) 31,521; (1905) 45,308. It lies on an open plain on the river Regnitz, 2 m. above its junction with the Main, and 39 m. north of Nuremberg by railway. The upper town is built on seven hills, each crowned by a church, while the lower, still partially surrounded by walls and ditches, is divided by the river and Ludwigskanal into three districts. The cathedral is a noble late Romanesque building with four imposing towers. It was founded in 1004 by the emperor Henry II., finished in 1012, afterwards partially burnt, and rebuilt in the 13th century. Of its many works of art may be mentioned the magnificent marble tomb of the founder and his wife, the empress Cunigunde, carved by Tilman Riemenschneider between 1499 and 1513, and an equestrian statue of the emperor Conrad III. Other noteworthy churches are the Jakobskirche, an 11th-century Romanesque basilica; the St Martinskirche; the Marienkirche or Obere Pfarrkirche (1320-1387), which has now been restored to its original pure Gothic style. The Michaelskirche, 12th-century Romanesque (restored), on the Michaelsberg, was formerly the church of a Benedictine monastery secularized in 1803, which now contains

the Bürgerspital, or alms-house, and the museum and municipal art collections. Of the bridges connecting the sections of the lower town the most interesting is the Obere Brücke, completed in 1455. Halfway across this, on an artificial island, is the Rathaus (rebuilt 1744-1756). The royal lyceum, formerly a Jesuit college, contains notable collections and the royal library of over 300,000 volumes. The picturesque Old Palace (Alte Residenz) was built in 1591 on the site of an old residence of the counts of Babenberg. The New Palace (1698-1704) was formerly occupied by the prince-bishops, and from 1864 to 1867 by the deposed King Otto of Greece. Noteworthy among the monuments of the town is the Maximilian fountain (1880), with statues of Maximilian I. of Bavaria, the emperor Henry II. and his wife, Conrad III. and St Otto, bishop of Bamberg. At a short distance from the town is the Altenburg (1266 ft.), a castle occupied from 1251 onwards by the bishops of Bamberg. It was destroyed in 1553 by Albert, margrave of Brandenburg, but has been partly restored. The schools include the lyceum for philosophy and Catholic theology (a survival of the university suppressed in 1803), a seminary, two gymnasia, a Realschule, and several technical schools, including one for porcelain-painting. The industries of the town include cotton spinning and weaving, silk spinning, the manufacture of tobacco, ropes, metal-ware, furniture, &c. The market gardens of the neighbourhood are famous, and there is a considerable shipping trade by the river and the Ludwigskanal.

Bamberg, first mentioned in 902, grew up by the castle (Babenberch) which gave its name to the Babenberg family (q.v.). On their extinction it passed to the Saxon house, and in 1007 the emperor Henry II. founded the see. From the middle of the 13th century onward the bishops were princes of the Empire. The see was secularized in 1802 and in 1803 assigned to Bavaria.

A brief history of the bishopric is given in the Catholic Encyclopaedia (London and New York, 1909), with bibliography. For general and special works on the town see Ulysse Chevalier, Topobibliographie (Montbéliard, 1894-1899), s.v.

BAMBERGER, LUDWIG (1823-1899), German economist and politician, was born of Jewish parents on the 22nd of July 1823 at Mainz. After studying at Giessen, Heidelberg and Göttingen, he entered on the practice of the law. When the revolution of 1848 broke out he took an active part as one of the leaders of the republican party in his native city, both as popular orator and as editor of one of the local papers. In 1849 he took part in the republican rising in the Palatinate and Baden; on the restoration of order he was condemned to death, but he had escaped to Switzerland. The next years he spent in exile, at first in London, then in Holland; in 1852 he went to Paris, where, by means of private connexions, he received an appointment in the bank of Bischoffheim & Goldschmidt, of which he became managing director, a post which he held till 1866. During these years he saved a competence and gained a thorough acquaintance with the theory and practice of finance. This he put to account when the amnesty of 1866 enabled him to return to Germany. He was elected a member of the Reichstag, where he joined the National Liberal party, for like many other exiles he was willing to accept the results of Bismarck's work. In 1868 he published a short life of Bismarck in French, with the object of producing a better understanding of German affairs, and in 1870, owing to his intimate acquaintance with France and with finance, he was summoned by Bismarck to Versailles to help in the discussion of terms of peace. In the German Reichstag he was the leading authority on matters of finance and economics, as well as a clear and persuasive speaker, and it was chiefly owing to him that a gold currency was adopted and that the German Imperial Bank took its present form; in his later years he wrote and spoke strongly against bimetallism. He was the leader of the free traders, and after 1878 refused to follow Bismarck in his new policy of protection, state socialism and colonial development; in a celebrated speech he declared that the day on which it was introduced was a dies nefastus for Germany. True to his free trade principles he and a number of followers left the National Liberal party and formed the so-called "Secession" in 1880. He was one of the few prominent politicians who consistently maintained the struggle against state socialism on the one hand and democratic socialism on the other. In 1892 be retired from political life and died in 1899. Bamberger was a clear and attractive writer and was a frequent contributor on political and economic questions to the Nation and other periodicals. His most important works are those on the currency, on the French war-indemnity, his criticism of socialism and his apology for the Secession.

An edition of his collected works (including the French life of Bismarck) was published in 1894 in five volumes. After his death in 1899 appeared a volume of reminiscences, which, though it does not extend beyond 1866, gives an interesting picture of his share in the revolution of 1848, and of his life in Paris.

(J. W. He.)