BAREILLY, or Bareli, a city and district of British India in the Bareilly or Rohilkhand division of the United Provinces. The city is situated on the Ramganga river, 812 m. N.W. from Calcutta by rail. Pop. (1901) 131,208. The principal buildings are two mosques built in the 17th century; a modern fort overlooking the cantonments; the railway station, which is an important junction on the Oudh and Rohilkhand line; the palace of the nawab of Rampur, and the government college. Bareilly is the headquarters of a brigade in the 7th division of the eastern army corps. The chief manufactures are furniture and upholstery. Bareilly college is a seat of upper class learning for the surrounding districts. It is conducted by an English staff, and its course includes the subjects for degrees in the Calcutta University.
The district of Bareilly has an area of 1580 sq. m. It is a level country, watered by many streams, the general slope being towards the south. The soil is fertile and highly cultivated, groves of noble trees abound, and the villages have a neat, prosperous look. A tract of forest jungle, called the tarai, stretches along the extreme north of the district, and teems with large game, such as tigers, bears, deer, wild pigs, &c. The river Sarda or Gogra forms the eastern boundary of the district and is the principal stream. Next in importance is the Ramganga, which receives as its tributaries most of the hill torrents of the Kumaon mountains. The Deoha is another great drainage artery and receives many minor streams. The Gomati or Gumti also passes through the district. The population in 1901 was 1,090,117. The Mahommedans are chiefly the descendants of Yusafzai Afghans, called the Rohilla Pathans, who settled in the country about the year 1720. The Rohillas were formerly the ruling race of the tract of country called Rohilkhand, and are men of a taller stature, a fairer complexion and a more arrogant air than the general inhabitants of the district. Bishop Heber described them as follows:—"The country is burdened with a crowd of lazy, profligate, self-called sawars (cavaliers), who, though many of them are not worth a rupee, conceive it derogatory to their gentility and Pathan blood to apply themselves to any honest industry, and obtain for the most part a precarious livelihood by sponging on the industrious tradesmen and farmers, on whom they levy a sort of blackmail, or as hangers-on to the wealthy and noble families yet remaining in the province. These men have no visible means of maintenance, and no visible occupation except that of lounging up and down with their swords and shields, like the ancient Highlanders, whom in many respects they much resemble." The Rohillas, after fifty years' precarious independence, were subjugated in 1774 by the confederacy of British troops with the nawab of Oudh's army, which formed so serious a charge against Warren Hastings. Their territory was in that year annexed to Oudh. In 1801 the nawab of Oudh ceded it to the Company in commutation of the subsidy money. During the Mutiny of 1857 the Rohillas took a very active part against the English, but since then they have been disarmed. Both before and after that year, however, the Bareilly Mahommedans have distinguished themselves by fanatical tumults against the Hindus. The district is irrigated from the Rohilkhand system of government canals. There are no manufactures except for domestic use and little external trade. Several lines of the Oudh and Rohilkhand railway pass through the district.
BARENTIN, a town of northern France, in the department of Seine-Inférieure, 11 m. N.N.W. of Rouen by rail. Pop. (1906) 5245. The town is situated in the valley of the Austreberthe, a small affluent of the Seine, here crossed at a height of 100 ft. by a fine railway viaduct 540 yds. long. The manufacture of cotton fabrics is the principal industry.
BARENTS, WILLEM (d. 1597), Dutch navigator, was born about the middle of the 16th century. In 1594 he left Amsterdam with two ships to search for a north-east passage to eastern Asia. He reached the west coast of Novaya Zemlya, and followed it northward, being finally forced to turn back when near its northern extremity. In the following year he commanded another expedition of seven ships, which made for the strait between the Asiatic coast and Vaygach Island, but was too late to find open water; while his third journey equally failed of its object and resulted in his death. On this occasion he had two ships, and on the outward journey sighted Bear Island and Spitsbergen, where the ships separated. Barents' vessel, after rounding the north of Novaya Zemlya, was beset by ice and he was compelled to winter in the north; and as his ship was not released early in 1597, his party left her in two open boats on the 13th of June and most of its members escaped. Barents himself, however, died on the 30th of June 1597. In 1871 the house in which he wintered was discovered, with many relics, which are preserved at the Hague, and in 1875 part of his journal was found.
See The Three Voyages of Barents, by Gerrit de Veer, translated by the Hakluyt Society (1876) from de Veer's text (Amsterdam, 1598).
BARENTS SEA, that part of the Arctic Ocean which is demarcated by the north coast of Europe, the islands of Novaya Zemlya, Franz Josef Land and Spitsbergen, and smaller intervening islands; it was named after the Dutch navigator. Omitting the great inlet of the White Sea in the south, it extends from about 67° to 80° N., and from 20° to 60° E. The southern part, off the Murman coast of the Kola peninsula, is sometimes called the Murman Sea.
BARÈRE DE VIEUZAC, BERTRAND (1755-1841), one of the most notorious members of the French National Convention, was born at Tarbes in Gascony on the 10th of September 1755. The name of Barère de Vieuzac, by which he continued to call himself long after the renunciation of feudal rights on the famous 4th of August, was assumed from a small fief belonging to his father, a lawyer at Vieuzac. He began to practise as an advocate at the parlement of Toulouse in 1770, and soon earned a considerable reputation as an orator; while his brilliant and flowing style as a writer of essays led to his election as a member of the Academy of Floral Games of Toulouse in 1788. At the age of thirty he married. Four years later, in 1789, he was elected deputy by the estates of Bigorre to the states-general, which met in May. He had made his first visit to Paris in the preceding year. His personal appearance, his manners, social qualities and liberal opinions, gave him a good standing among the multitude of provincial deputies then thronging into Paris. He
attached himself at first to the constitutional party; but he was less known as a speaker in the Assembly than as a journalist. His paper, however, the Point du Jour, according to Aulard, owes its reputation not so much to its own qualities as to the fact that the painter David, in his famous picture of the "Oath in the Tennis Court," has represented Barère kneeling in the corner and writing a report of the proceedings as though for posterity. The reports of the debates of the National Assembly in the Point du Jour, though not inaccurate, are as a matter of fact very incomplete and very dry. After the flight of the king to Varennes, Barère passed over to the republican party, though he continued to keep in touch with the duke of Orleans, to whose natural daughter, Paméla, he was tutor. Barère, however, appears to have been wholly free from any guiding principle; conscience he had none, and his conduct was regulated only by the determination to be on the side of the strongest. After the close of the National Assembly he was nominated one of the judges of the newly instituted court of cassation from October 1791 to September 1792. In 1792 he was elected deputy to the National Convention for the department of the Hautes-Pyrénées. At first he voted with the Girondists, attacked Robespierre, "a pygmy who should not be set on a pedestal," and at the trial of the king voted with the Mountain for the king's death "without appeal and without delay." He closed his speech with a sentence which became memorable: "the tree of liberty could not grow were it not watered with the blood of kings." Appointed member of the Committee of Public Safety on the 7th of April 1793, he busied himself with foreign affairs; then, joining the party of Robespierre, whose resentment he had averted by timely flatteries, he played an important part in the second Committee of Public Safety—after the 17th of July 1793—and voted for the death of the Girondists. He was thoroughly unscrupulous, stopping at nothing to maintain the supremacy of the Mountain, and rendered it great service by his rapid work, by the telling phases of his oratory, and by his clear expositions of the problems of the day. On the 9th Thermidor (July 27th, 1794) Barère hesitated, then he drew up the report outlawing Robespierre. In spite of this, in Germinal of the year III. (the 21st of March to the 4th of April 1795), the Thermidorians decreed the accusation of Barère and his colleagues of the Terror, Collot d'Herbois and Billaud-Varenne, and he was sent to the Isle of Oléron. He was removed to Saintes, and thence escaped to Bordeaux, where he lived in concealment for several years. In 1795 he was elected member of the Council of Five Hundred, but was not allowed to take his seat. Later he was used as a secret agent by Napoleon I., for whom he carried on a diplomatic correspondence. On the fall of Napoleon, Barère played the part of royalist, but on the final restoration of the Bourbons in 1815 he was banished for life from France as a regicide, and then withdrew to Brussels and temporary oblivion. After the revolution of July 1830 he reappeared in France, was reduced by a series of lawsuits to extreme indigence, accepted a small pension assigned him by Louis Philippe (on whom he had heaped abuse and railing), and died, the last survivor of the Committee of Public Safety, on the 13th of January 1841. (See also French Revolution.)
The Mémoires de B. Barère ... publiés par MM. H. Carnot ... et David (d'Angers) ... précédés d'une notice historique (Paris, 1824-1844) are false, but contain valuable information; Carnot's Notice, which is very good, was published separately in 1842. See F. A. Aulard, Les Orateurs de la Constituante (Paris, 1882); Les Orateurs de la Convention (2nd ed., Paris, 1905). Macaulay's essay on Barère, (Edinburgh Review, vol. 79) is eloquent, but incorrect.
BARETTI, GIUSEPPE MARC' ANTONIO (1719-1789), Italian critic, was born at Turin in 1719. He was intended by his father for the profession of law, but at the age of sixteen fled from Turin and went to Guastalla, where he was for some time employed in a mercantile house. His leisure hours he devoted to literature and criticism, in which he became expert. For many years he led a wandering life, supporting himself chiefly by his writings. At length he arrived in London, where he remained for a considerable time. He obtained an appointment as secretary to the Royal Academy of Painting, and became acquainted with Johnson, Garrick and others of that society. He was a frequent visitor at the Thrales'; and his name occurs repeatedly in Boswell's Life. In 1769 he was tried for murder, having had the misfortune to inflict a mortal wound with his fruit knife on a man who had assaulted him on the street. Johnson among others gave evidence in his favour at the trial, which resulted in Baretti's acquittal. He died in May 1789. His first work of any importance was the Italian Library (London, 1757), a useful catalogue of the lives and works of many Italian authors. The Lettere famigliari, giving an account of his travels through Spain, Portugal and France during the years 1761-1765, were well received, and when afterwards published in English (4 vols., 1770), were highly commended by Johnson. While in Italy on his travels Baretti set on foot a journal of literary criticism, to which he gave the title of Frusta letteraria, the literary scourge. It was published under considerable difficulties and was soon discontinued. The criticisms on contemporary writers were sometimes just, but are frequently disfigured by undue vehemence and coarseness. Among his other numerous works may be mentioned a useful Dictionary and Grammar of the Italian Language, and a dissertation on Shakespeare and Voltaire. His collected works were published at Milan in 1838.