BEL 



185 



BEL 



its present state they carry on so considerable a trade, both 

 internal and external, that the customs produce 15.000/. 

 per annum and upwards. The extensive manufactures for 

 which it was formerly celebrated are now reduced to a few 

 establishments, in which woollens, carpets, leather, ironware, 

 and arms, are made. In other hands than those of its 

 Turkish masters it would rapidly rise into importance : at 

 present, attractive as its outward appearance may be at a 

 distance, no spot can be more disgusting on close ex- 

 amination, for there is not a street or public place in which 

 every rule of cleanliness does not seem to be almost studi- 

 ously violated. The surrounding country is diversified with 

 gentle hills, and richly wooded ; and the public thorough- 

 fares are embellished with many traces of Turkish piety 

 the inclosed well and fountain, and the caravanserai. 



Belgrade has been the theatre of many important events. 

 It first fell under toe Hungarian sceptre in 1 086, when King 

 Solomon wrested it from the Greek empire. Three years 

 after the fall of Constantinople, in 1-156, it was besieged by 

 the Turks, but rescued from their hands by the gallant 

 Hunyady, voyvo(!e of Transylvania, who drove them back 

 with great loss. The second attempt, made by them in 1 522, 

 was met by a resolute but fruitless resistance : the Turkish 

 sultan, Solyman, succeeded in planting the crescent upon 

 its walls, and it was possessed by his successors until the 

 year 1688, when the elector of Bavaria, at the head of the 

 Austrian forces, laid siege to it, and expelled the Turks 

 from the place. Two years afterwards, Belgrade again fell 

 into their hands, under Amurath II. ; and in 1693 the Im- 

 perialists re-appeared upon the spot, but were battled in their 

 endeavour to regain it. In 1717 the celebrated Prince 

 Eugene, leading the Austrians in his second campaign 

 against Turkey, met his enemy under the walls of Belgrade 

 on the 16th of August, destroyed nearly the whole of his 

 army, entered Belgrade, and reduced the greater portion of 

 Servia under the imperial sway. The extensive scale upon 

 which the Austrians now enlarged and completed the forti- 

 fications of the place cost them at least 400, OOO/. (4,000.000 

 of guldens) ; and their possession of it was confirmed to 

 them by the sultan in the treaty of Passarovitz on the 21st 

 of July following. In 1739, about which time Belgrade 

 attained the height of its commercial splendour, the war 

 which Austria unadvisedly undertook against Turkey, in 

 conjunction with Russia, by whom she was suddenly and 

 faithlessly abandoned, terminated in the signal defeat of her 

 forces at Krotska on the Danube, the abandonment of her 

 conquests in Servia, and the restitution of Belgrade to the 

 sultan by the treaty which he dictated to her generals in a 

 moment of panic. In conformity with this treaty, all the 

 new fortifications were razed at the emperor's expense. 

 The disastrous opening of the Austrian campaign against 

 the Turks in 1 783, was counterbalanced in the succeeding 

 year by Marshal London's brilliant successes against them, 

 and the re-capture of Belgrade; but the weakness of Austria 

 forced her to restore it, with her other Servian acquisitions, 

 at the peace of Szistova in 1791. It has remained ever 

 since in the occupation of Turkey, except for a short time 

 during the Servian insurrection, which broke out under the 

 conduct of Czerny George (the Black George) in 1804. 

 The intrepid patriot laid siege to the town, and expelled the 

 Ottomans from it in 1806; he retained possession of Bel- 

 grade until the year 1813, when he was at length obliged to 

 abandon it to them, but not before the inhabitants had set 

 fire to and destroyed the suburbs, and blown up the fortifi- 

 cations. The destruction thus brought upon the town has 

 since been partially repaired, and its defences have been re- 

 stored to some extent ; but the happier consequence of the 

 spirit with which the Servians then asserted their inde- 

 pendence, has been that they have gained it ; and that, under 

 the conditions of the treaty of 1815, by which Turkey re- 

 cognizes their free institutions, Belgrade is the only spot in 

 the country where the sultan is allowed to mainta-" a gar- 

 rison. 



Belgrade is in 44 50' N. lat., and 20 39' E. long. Aoove 

 the town re three long, narrow islands in the Danube, di- 

 vided from the land by a natural canal, which forms a safe 

 harbour; and opposite the Rascian Town, near the mouth 

 of the Save, lies another islet, called the Gipsies' Island. 



BELIAL, usually Belial, more correctly Belial, BiXi'aX, 

 TJ^/3 (pronounce B'liyangal), is one of the few compound 



words in the Hebrew language. It is formed of ^2. nothing- 



ness, not, and jy utility, advantage. Hence Belial means 



a worthless fellow. A man of Belial, or a son of Belial, a 

 daughter of Belial, mean in the Bible a wicked person. 

 Belial, if emphatically used, or :ar' t?ox>jv in preference, 

 means the worst of spirits. Thus in the passage, 'What 

 concord hath ChrUt with Belial ?' 2 Cor. vi. 15. Compare 

 Milton's Paradise Regained, book ii. v. 147-152 : 



So spake the old serpent doubting, anil from all 

 \Vit h clamor was assur'cl their utmost aid 

 At his command ; when from amidst them rose 

 Hclial, the clissolutest spirit that fell, 

 The sensuallest, ami, after Asmodai, 

 The fleshliest incubus, and thus advised.' 



Others have endeavoured to derive the word from 

 to act, so that Belial should be a not acting one, an id 

 fellow : others from TUty to rise, so that Belial should be 

 one who should finally be cut down, not to rise again. The 

 Talmudists in Sanhedrin, fol. 1 1 1, derive the word from 7iy 

 or *?y yoke. According to them, Belial is without a yoke, 

 without restraint and discipline. Compare Pfeiffer's Opera, 

 Ultraject., 1704, torn. i. p. 503. 



BELIDOR, BERNARD FOREST DE, was born in 

 Catalonia, in 1697 or 1698. He was the son of a French 

 officer, and his father and mother dying very shortly after 

 his birth, he was adopted by another officer, who brought 

 him to France. The brother of his protector was an officer 

 of engineers, and under his care, Belidor, who had studied 

 the elements of mathematics with attention, saw the sieges 

 of Bouchain and Quesnoy before he was sixteen years old. 

 He was shortly afterwards an assistant of Cassini and 

 Lahire, in their continuation of the measure of the degree ; 

 and was afterwards appointed professor at the school of ar- 

 tillery of La Fere, founded by the Regent Duke of Orleans. 

 He was afterwards raised to the rank of oaptain, much to 

 the dissatisfaction of his new comrades, who could not bear 

 to see a professor in uniform ; but, says our account, a repri- 

 mand and a few days' imprisonment reconciled them to the 

 innovation. 



Before 1742 M. Belidor lost his place of professor, on ac- 

 count of his discovering that some of the powder in the 

 charge then used was useless, not being set on fire before 

 the ball had left the gun. The originality of the-discovery 

 was contested ; and it is also said, that his dismissal was 

 owing to his having communicated it to Cardinal Flcury, 

 instead of the head of his department. In 1742 Belidor 

 was aide-de-camp to General de Segur in Bavaria and Bo- 

 hemia, and was made prisoner at Lintz. He was soon ex- 

 changed, and was made a lieutenant-colonel. He served 

 under the Prince de Conti, in the campaigns of 1744 and 

 1746, the first in Italy, the second in Flanders. In the 

 first he distinguished himself by blowing up in six hours, 

 and in the face of the enemy, a chateau which it was im- 

 portant to destroy, and which by ordinary methods it would 

 have taken several days to dismantle. In the second, he 

 reduced the town of Charleroi, by entrusting as a secret to 

 a clergyman in its neighbourhood his intention to serve 

 that place in the same way. This communication soon got 

 wind, and, with some covered carts which were seen on 

 their way to some coal-pits in the neighbourhood, so fright- 

 ened the inhabitants, that they forced the governor to sur- 

 render. For this service he was made colonel ; he was also 

 member of the academy in 1 756, inspector of arsenals in 

 1758, and brigadier and inspector-general of mines in 1759. 

 He died at Paris in 1761. 



The works of M. Belidor are even now in credit among 

 military engineers, and he advanced every branch of their 

 science, particularly mining. The common notion on this 

 subject was, that the effect of a mine took place mostly in 

 the direction of least resistance, and that the effect of a very 

 powerful charge would be to blow upwards the cylinder of 

 earth immediately above it. The experiments of M. Beli- 

 dor showed that the effect is nearly equal in all directions 

 in which there can be any effect at all, that is, that lateral as 

 well as superincumbent earth is blown away, leaving a sort 

 of hemispherical void. Thus he showed how to effect a 

 lateral entrance into the counter-mine of a besieged place. 



The works of Belidor are as follows : 1 725, Nouveau 

 Cours de Mathimaiique, which went through a large num- 

 ber of editions: 1729, La Science des Ingenieurs : 1731, 

 Bombardier Francais, containing some of the earliest tables 

 of the relation between the elevation and the range : 1 737 

 and 1739, the two first volumes of the Architecture Hy- 

 di'itultque, a work which has not yet been superseded by 

 any other of equal extent and merit ; the two latter vo- 



NO. 228. 



[THE PENNY CYCLOPAEDIA.] 



VOL. IV.-2 B 



