BEAUFORT, LOUIS DE (d. 1795), French historian, of whose life little is known. In 1738 he published at Utrecht a Dissertation sur l’incertitude des cinq premiers siècles de l’histoire romaine, in which he showed what untrustworthy guides even the historians of highest repute, such as Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, were for that period, and pointed out by what methods and by the aid of what documents truly scientific bases might be given to its history. This was an ingenious plea, bold for its time, against traditional history such as Rollin was writing at that very moment. A German, Christopher Saxius, endeavoured to refute it in a series of articles published in vols. i.-iii. of the Miscellanea Liviensia. Beaufort replied by some brief and ironical Remarques in the appendix to the second edition of his Dissertation (1750). Beaufort also wrote an Histoire de César Germanicus (Leyden, 1761), and La République romaine, ou plan général de L’ancien gouvernement de Rome (The Hague, 1766, 2 vols. quarto). Though not a scholar of the first rank, Beaufort has at least the merit of having been a pioneer in raising the question, afterwards elaborated by Niebuhr, as to the credibility of early Roman history.
BEAUFORT SCALE, a series of numbers from 0 to 12 arranged by Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort (1774-1857) in 1805, to indicate the strength of the wind from a calm, force 0, to a hurricane, force 12, with sailing directions such as “5, smacks shorten sails” for coast purposes, and “royals, &c., ‘full and by’” for the open sea. An exhaustive report was made in 1906 by the Meteorological Office on the relation between the estimates of wind-force according to Beaufort’s scale and the velocities recorded by anemometers belonging to the office, from which the following table is taken:—
| Beaufort scale. | Corresponding wind. | Limits of hourly velocity. |
| Numbers. | Miles per hour. | |
| 0 | Calm | Under 2 |
| 1-3 | Light breeze | 2-12 |
| 4-5 | Moderate wind | 13-23 |
| 6-7 | Strong wind | 24-37 |
| 8-9 | Gale | 38-55 |
| 10-11 | Storm | 56-75 |
| 12 | Hurricane | Above 75 |
BEAUFORT WEST, in Cape province, South Africa, the capital of a division of this name, 339 m. by rail N.E. of Cape Town. Pop.(1904) 5481. The largest town in the western part of the Great Karroo, it lies, at an elevation of 2792 ft., at the foot of the southern slopes of the Nieuwveld mountains. It has several fine public buildings and the streets are lined with avenues of pear trees, while an abundant supply of water, luxuriant orchards, fields and gardens give it the appearance of an oasis in the desert. It is a favourite resort of invalids. The town was founded in 1819, and in its early days was largely resorted to by Griquas and Bechuana for the sale of ivory, skins and cattle. The Beaufort West division has an area of 6374 sq. m. and a pop. (1904) of 10,762, 45% being whites. Sheep-farming is the principal industry.
BEAUGENCY, a town of central France, in the department of Loiret, 16 m. S.W. of Orleans on the Orleans railway, between that city and Blois. Pop. (1906) 2993. It is situated at the foot of vine-clad hills on the right bank of the Loire, to the left bank of which it is united by a bridge of twenty-six arches, many of them dating from the 13th century. The chief buildings are the château, mainly of the 15th century, of which the massive donjon of the 11th century known as the Tour de César is the oldest portion; and the abbey-church of Notre-Dame, a building in the Romanesque style of architecture, frequently restored. Some of the buildings of the Benedictine abbey, to which this church belonged, remain. The hôtel de ville, the façade of which is decorated with armorial bearings of Renaissance carving, and the church of St Étienne, an unblemished example of Romanesque architecture, are of interest. Several old houses, some remains of the medieval ramparts and the Tour de l’Horloge, an ancient gateway, are also preserved. The town carries on trade in grain, and has flour mills.
The lords of Beaugency attained considerable importance in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries; at the end of the 13th century the fief was sold to the crown, and afterwards passed to the house of Orleans, then to those of Dunois and Longueville and ultimately again to that of Orleans. Joan of Arc defeated the English here in 1429. In 1567 the town was sacked and burned by the Protestants. On the 8th, 9th and 10th of December 1870 the German army, commanded by the grand-duke of Mecklenburg, defeated the French army of the Loire, under General Chanzy, in the battle of Beaugency (or Villorceau-Josnes), which was fought on the left bank of the Loire to the N.W. of Beaugency.