nearly exterminated during the period of Dervish ascendancy (1884–1898) in the eastern Sudan. Settled among them are Arab communities governed by their own sheiks, while the meks or rulers of the Bertat speak Arabic, and show traces of foreign blood. (See Fazogli.)
See Koettlitz, “The Bertat,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxiii. 51; Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, edited by Count Gleichen (London, 1905).
BERTAUT, JEAN (1552–1611), French poet, was born at Caen in 1552. He figures with Desportes in the disdainful couplet of Boileau on Ronsard:—
“Ce poète orgueilleux, trébuché de si haut,
Rendit plus retenus Desportes et Bertaut.”
He wrote light verse to celebrate the incidents of court life in the manner of Desportes, but his verse is more fantastic and fuller of conceits than his master’s. He early entered the church, and had a share in the conversion of Henry IV., a circumstance which assured his career. He was successively councillor of the parlement of Grenoble, secretary to the king, almoner to Marie de’ Medici, abbot of Aulnay and finally, in 1606, bishop of Sées. After his elevation to the bishopric he ceased to produce the light verse in which he excelled, though his scruples did not prevent him from preparing a new edition of his Recueil de quelques vers amoureux (1602) in 1606. The serious poems in which he celebrated the public events of his later years are dull and lifeless. Bertaut died at Sées on the 8th of June 1611. His works were edited by M. Ad. Chenevières in 1891.
BERTH, originally a nautical term, probably connected with the verb “to bear,” first found in literature at the end of the 16th century, with the alternative spelling “birth.” Its primary meaning is “sea-room,” whether on the high seas or at anchor. Hence the phrase “to give a wide berth to,” meaning “to keep at a safe distance from,” both in its literal and its metaphorical use. From meaning sea-room for a ship at anchor, “berth” comes to mean also the position of a ship at her moorings (“to berth a ship”). The word further means any place on a ship allotted for a special purpose, where the men mess or sleep, or an office or appointment on board, whence the word has passed into colloquial use with the meaning of a situation or employment. From the Icelandic byrdi, a board, is also derived the ship-building term “berth,” meaning to board, put up bulk-heads, etc.
BERTHELOT, MARCELLIN PIERRE EUGÈNE (1827–1907), French chemist and politician, was born at Paris on the 29th of October 1827, being the son of a doctor. After distinguishing himself at school in history and philosophy, he turned to the study of science. In 1851 he became a member of the staff of the Collège de France as assistant to A. J. Balard, his former master, and about the same time he began his life-long friendship with Ernest Renan. In 1854 he made his reputation by his doctoral thesis, Sur les combinaisons de la glycérine avec les acides, which described a series of beautiful researches in continuation and amplification of M. E. Chevreul’s classical work. In 1859 he was appointed professor of organic chemistry at the École Supérieure de Pharmacie, and in 1865 he accepted the new chair of organic chemistry, which was specially created for his benefit at the Collège de France. He became a member of the Academy of Medicine in 1863, and ten years afterwards entered the Academy of Sciences, of which he became perpetual secretary in 1889 in succession to Louis Pasteur. He was appointed inspector general of higher education in 1876, and after his election as life senator in 1881 he continued to take an active interest in educational questions, especially as affected by compulsory military service. In the Goblet ministry of 1886–1887 he was minister of public instruction, and in the Bourgeois cabinet of 1895–1896 he held the portfolio for foreign affairs. His scientific jubilee was celebrated in Paris in 1901. He died suddenly, immediately after the death of his wife, on the 18th of March 1907, at Paris, and with her was buried in the Panthéon.
The fundamental conception that underlay all Berthelot’s chemical work was that all chemical phenomena depend on the action of physical forces which can be determined and measured. When he began his active career it was generally believed that, although some instances of the synthetical production of organic substances had been observed, on the whole organic chemistry must remain an analytical science and could not become a constructive one, because the formation of the substances with which it deals required the intervention of vital activity in some shape. To this attitude he offered uncompromising opposition, and by the synthetical production of numerous hydrocarbons, natural fats, sugars and other bodies he proved that organic compounds can be formed by ordinary methods of chemical manipulation and obey the same laws as inorganic substances, thus exhibiting the “creative character in virtue of which chemistry actually realizes the abstract conceptions of its theories and classifications—a prerogative so far possessed neither by the natural nor by the historical sciences.” His investigations on the synthesis of organic compounds were published in numerous papers and books, including Chimie organique fondée sur la synthèse (1860) and Les Carbures d’hydrogéne (1901). Again he held that chemical phenomena are not governed by any peculiar laws special to themselves, but are explicable in terms of the general laws of mechanics that are in operation throughout the universe; and this view he developed, with the aid of thousands of experiments, in his Mécanique chimique (1878) and his Thermochimie (1897). This branch of study naturally conducted him to the investigation of explosives, and on the theoretical side led to the results published in his work Sur la force de la poudre et des matières explosives (1872), while on the practical side it enabled him to render important services to his country as president of the scientific defence committee during the siege of Paris in 1870–71 and subsequently as chief of the French explosives committee. In the later years of his life he turned to the study of the earlier phases of the science which he did so much to advance, and students of chemical history are greatly indebted to him for his book on Les Origines de l’alchimie (1885) and his Introduction à l’étude de la chimie des anciens et du moyen âge (1889), as well as for publishing translations of various old Greek, Syriac and Arabic treatises on alchemy and chemistry (Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs, 1887–1888, and La Chimie au moyen âge, 1893). He was also the author of Science et philosophie (1886), which contains a well-known letter to Renan on “La Science idéale et la science positive,” of La Révolution chimique, Lavoisier (1890), of Science et morale (1897), and of numerous articles in La Grande Encyclopédie, which he helped to establish.
BERTHIER, LOUIS ALEXANDRE, prince of Neuchâtel (1753–1815), marshal of France and chief of the staff under Napoleon I., was born at Versailles on the 20th of February 1753. As a boy he was instructed in the military art by his father, an officer of the Corps de génie, and at the age of seventeen he entered the army, serving successively in the staff, the engineers and the prince de Lambesq’s dragoons. In 1780 he went to North America with Rochambeau, and on his return, having attained the rank of colonel, he was employed in various staff posts and in a military mission to Prussia. During the Revolution, as chief of staff of the Versailles national guard, he protected the aunts of Louis XVI. from popular violence, and aided their escape (1791). In the war of 1792 he was at once made chief of staff to Marshal Lückner, and he bore a distinguished part in the Argonne campaign of Dumouriez and Kellermann. He served with great credit in the Vendéan War of 1793–95, and was in the next year made a general of division and chief of staff (Major-Général) to the army of Italy, which Bonaparte had recently been appointed to command. His power of work, accuracy and quick comprehension, combined with his long and varied experience and his complete mastery of detail, made him the ideal chief of staff to a great soldier; and in this capacity he was Napoleon’s most valued assistant for the rest of his career. He accompanied Napoleon throughout the brilliant campaign of 1796, and was left in charge of the army after the peace of Campo Formio. In this post he organized the Roman republic (1798), after which he joined his chief in Egypt, serving there until Napoleon’s return. He assisted in the coup d’état of 18th Brumaire, afterwards becoming minister of war for
