1065 



BESANCON. 



BESSARABIA. 



1060 



Account of Scotland ; Carlisle's Topographical Dictionary of Scotland ; 

 Communications from Berwickshire.) 



BESANCON, the capital formerly of Frauche-Comte', now of the 

 department of Doubs in France, stands on the river Doubs in 

 47 13' 46" N. lat., 6V 30" E. long., at a distance of 250 miles S.E. 

 from Paris : the population in 1840 was 36,461. The principal and 

 more ancient part of the town is built on a peninsula, formed by the 

 river on its left bank ; this is joined to the part on the opposite bank 

 by a stone bridge, the foundations of which are of Roman construction. 

 The isthmus of the peninsula consists of a mass of rock, on which 

 the citadel is built. The citadel of Besan9on is one of the finest 

 works of Vauban ; its walls are partly cut in the rocks. It commands 

 a fine view of the town and neighbouring country, from which it is 

 separated northward by a deep ditch cut across the rocky isthmus. 

 The floor of the chapel of the citadel is 1176 feet, that of the church 

 of St.-Pierre in the lower part of the town, 823 feet above the level 

 of the sea. The citadel commands the approaches from the north, 

 but is itself commanded by the hills on the east, south, and south- 

 west. To defend the approaches in these directions several forts 

 have been constructed, and the works altogether render Besanjon a 

 fortrfr<i of the first class, and one of the strongest military positions 

 in Europe. 



Besancon is a well-built town. Within the line of the ramparts 

 (which do not include the whole town) there are between 1400 and 

 1500 houses all built of stone, and two or three stories high. The 

 streets are wide and regular, the squares spacious and ornamented 

 with fountains. The fountains are in general decorated with sculp- 

 tures one represents the apotheosis of Charles V. ; another is 

 Surmounted by a Bacchus, a third by Neptune, and a fourth by a 

 young nymph. There is a fine promenade in the city, formed out 

 Of the gardens of the Orandvelle Palace, and another of great extent 

 called Chamars ('Campus Martius"), which runs along the Doubs. 

 The most remarkable edifices in the town are the cathedral church 

 of St.-Jean, which was built in the llth century, and is decorated with 

 paintings by the best masters, and with several fine sculptures; the 

 churches of La-Madeleine, St.-Pierre, and St.-Francois-Xavier, the 

 hospital of St.-Jacques, the palace and college built by Cardinal 

 Grandvelle and his father, the town-house, the court-house, in which 

 the parliament of Franche-Comte" formerly sat, the great barracks, the 

 theatre, the Roman triumphal arch (which formed one of the gates of 

 the ancient Vesontio), and the public library, which is adorned with 

 statues and contains 50,000 volumes, besides some valuable manu- 

 scripts. The college buildings include a handsome church, lodgings 

 for 200 students, lecture-rooms, &c. ; and in the inclosure are several 

 courts and large gardens. Among the paintings in the cathedral 

 are a fine Resurrection by Vanloo; a St. Sebastian, by Fra 

 Bartolomeo ; and a Death of Sapphira, by Piombino. A passage 

 cut through a ridge of rock extending from the citadel to the Doubs, 

 and called ' La Porto Taille"e,' is a Roman work, and formed part of 

 a canal or aqueduct by which pure water was conveyed to the town 

 from Arcier, a distance of 5i miles. 



Besancon gives title to an archbishop, whose see consists of the 

 departments of Doubs and Haute-Sa&ne, and whose province includes 

 the seea of Strasbourg, Metz, Verdun, Belley, Saint-Di^, and Nancy. 

 It is the head-quarters of the fifth military division to which the 

 departments of Doubs, Haute-Marne, C6te-d'0r, Saone-et-Loire, 

 Haute-Sadne, and Jura belong. It is also the seat of a High Court 

 of Justice and of a University Academy. In connection with the 

 Academy there are in the town a royal college, a school of medicine, 

 and a faculty of arts, and distributed over the departments named, 

 15 communal colleges, 23 boarding-schools, and 1671 primary schools. 

 The town also possesses tribunals of first instance and of commerce, 

 an ecclesiastical seminary, a museum of natural history, schools of 

 artillery and design, an institution for deaf-mutes, an academy of 

 sciences and arts, a collection of antiquities, and a nmsexim containing 

 antiques, paintings, &c., which were bequeathed by the architect 

 Paris to this his native city. 



Besancon is a place of considerable manufacturing industry; its 

 position on the Doubs, which is navigable, and on the canal which 

 unites the Rh6ne and the Rhine, makes it the centre of an important 

 trade. No railway as yet reaches Besan9on; but we believe it has 

 been proposed to connect it by a line with Mulhausen and Dijon. 

 The chief manufacture is that of the works of watches and clocks, in 

 which 2000 men are employed. Hosiery, coarse woollens and cottons, 

 carpets, room-paper, hardware, stoves, liqueurs, and artificial flowers 

 are manufactured. There are also iron-foundries, china-works, 

 tanneries, several large breweries, and establishments for bleaching 

 wax. The trade of the town consists in its industrial products, and 

 in wine, brandy, broadcloth, groceries, iron, and coaL 



Bemncon is a very ancient city : it was called by the Romans 

 Vesontio, of which the modern name is a slight corruption. Julius 

 Caesar, who occupied it B.C. 56 in order to protect the Sdquani, whose 

 capital it was, from the Germans under Ariovistus, speaks of it 

 (' Bell. Gall.' i. 38) as one of the largest and strongest cities of Gaul. 

 The city was greatly improved under the emperor Aurelian, in whose 

 honour a triumphal arch was erected, which is still in good preser- 

 vation. Whilut, under the Roman dominion, Besaugon was the seat of 

 one of the moat famous schools in Gaul. After being many times 



besieged, stormed, demolished, and rebuilt from the time of Attila 

 till the loth century, the city then fell to Austria, by which power it 

 was ceded to Spain at the treaty of Miinster. Louis XIV. captured 

 it in 1660, and since then it has belonged to France. The allies made 

 an unsuccessful attempt upon Besanjon in 1814. In the vicinity of 

 Besangon are the magnificent ruins of the castle of Montfaucon. 



(Dictionnaire de la France.) 



BESITTUN. [BisuiUN.] 



BESSARA'BIA, the most south-western province of the Russian 

 empire, consists of the territory that lies between the Dniester, the 

 Pruth, the Lower Danube, and the Black Sea, together with the islands 

 formed by the mouths of the Danube. This 'territory was wrested 

 from the Turks in 1812 ; it previously formed the north-eastern part 

 of Moldavia and the Budjak, or Bessarabia Proper. By the treaty of 

 Adrianople in 1829 the right of establishing and maintaining a quaran- 

 tine station on the Sulina mouth of the Danube was conferred upon 

 Russia, which thus gained a direct influence over the whole trade of 

 the Danube, as the Sulina is the only one of its mouths that is navi- 

 gable for vessels of considerable burden. The Danube then and its 

 Sulina mouth form the boundary here between the Russian and Turkish 

 empires ; but Russia, imder pretence of sanitary regulations, has 

 exercised sovereign rights also over the island of St. George, which 

 lies to the south of the Sulina mouth of the Danube. [DANUBE.] 

 The Pruth separates Bessarabia from Moldavia on the west, the 

 Dniester from Podolia and Kherson. On the north-west the pro- 

 vince borders for about 30 miles on the Austrian territory of the 

 Buckowine. 



Bessarabia Proper, also called the ' Steppe of the Budjak,' is sepa- 

 rated from the Russian part of Moldavia by the Via Trajana, the 

 most eastern of the Roman roads in this quarter of Europe, which 

 commences at Koszinsko on the Danube, near the mouth of the Sereth, 

 strikes the Pruth above Falga, and terminates on the right bank of 

 the Dniester, between Bender and Leontieff, a village not far from 

 Kopanka. Both these subdivisions of Bessarabia composed the 

 eastern districts of the Roman province of Dacia. 



The Russian province of Bessarabia contains an area of about 

 18,535 square miles; it extends between 44 45' nnd 48 40' N. lat., 

 26 35' and 30 30' E. long., and the population in 1846 was 792,000. 



If Bessarabia were properly cultivated, there are few countries 

 which would surpass it in productivenes. The larger portion of it, 

 which lies to the north, and once composed part of Moldavia, io 

 traversed by the low and here subsiding range of the Transsylvaniau 

 branch of the Carpathian Mountains : its surface presents a delightful 

 succession of hills and dales, the loftier hills being richly wooded, and 

 the less elevated covered with vineyards, while the lowlands are 

 characterised by an extremely fertile sandy loam, which is coated with 

 a deep layer of vegetable mould, in many parts improved by the 

 admixture of saltpetre. The Budjak, on the other hand, which lies 

 to the south of this district, though it is comparatively high and 

 incloses several lakes in the vicinity of the Black Sea and the Danube, 

 consists of flat monotonous steppes, unrelieved by wood or forest, and 

 is liable to frequent inundations in its southern districts. Its soil is 

 a mixture of sand and clay, peculiarly fitted for agricultural purposes ; 

 these districts however for want of roads and other facilities of 

 transport, have been hitherto chiefly restricted to grazing and the culti- 

 vation of fruit. The reed-grounds, which line every lake and cover the 

 extensive morasses in this part of Bessarabia, supply, in conjunction 

 with dried animal manure and the ' burian,' or jungle-grass, which 

 springs up in the uncultivated lands, a substitxite for fuel. 



Ilydrograpliy. The principal river in Bessarabia is the DANUBE, 

 which borders it on the south, from the mouth of the Pruth to the 

 Black Sea. About 40 miles from the Black Sea the Danube divides 

 into three large arms the Jfilia, which runs north-east past the town of 

 Ismail, and discharges itself into the sea by seven mouths, one of which 

 is navigated by Russian steamers up to Ismail : the Sulina, which 

 runs on from the Danube in an eastern direction, forming, with the 

 Kilia and a cross channel between the two arms, the deltoid islands of 

 Lete and Chatel or Tchetal : and the Glieoryhievskoi, or St. George's 

 branch, which runs to the south-east and forms with the Sulina 

 branch the large island of St. George. The Suliua channel is the only 

 one of the three which is practicable throughout for shipping. Across 

 the mouth of tho channel there is a bar of mud 200 yards in length, 

 formed by the deposit left by the stream ; and in order to keep a 

 passage clear nothing more is required than to stir up the mud, which 

 is then carried off by the current, as there is no tide in the Black Sea 

 to drive it back. Before 1821* the Turks maintained a uniform depth 

 of 16 feet on the bar by means of heavy iron rakes, which they 

 obliged all vessels to drag after them during their passage out, of the 

 Danube. By a special convention with Austria in 1840 Russia agreed 

 to maintain deep water on the bar in consideration of a toll on all 

 vessels crossing it ; but although all vessels that enter the river pay 

 toll, no measures have been taken by Russia to keep a proper depth 

 of water on the bar. The consequence is that there are seldom more 

 than 9 feet water on the bar, although a Spanish dollar per mast is 

 paid by every vessel that crosses it for the precise object of maintaining 

 a proper depth. Add to this the enormous expense for lighterage 

 (amounting to 3001. in case of large vessels) which such a state of 

 things imposes upon shipmasters, and it will be evident that tho 



