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 BRUMAIRE, the name of the second month in the republican calendar which was established in France by a decree of the National Convention on the 5th of October in the year II. (1793), completed with regard to nomenclature by Fabre d’Églantine, and promulgated in its new form on the 4th of Frimaire in the year II. (the 24th of November 1793). The month of Brumaire began on the day which corresponded, according to the year, to the 22nd or to the 23rd of October of the old calendar, and ended on the 20th or 21st of November, It was divided into “decades” like the other months of the republican calendar. Its name alludes to the fogs and mists frequent at that time of the year. The most important event in French history which took place during that month was the coup d’état of the 18th Brumaire in the year VIII. (the 9th of November 1799), by which General Bonaparte overthrew the government of the Directory to replace it by the Consulate.

BRUMATH, or, a town of Germany, in the imperial territory of Alsace-Lorraine, on the Zorn and the Strassburg-Avricourt railway. Pop. 5500. It has a Roman Catholic and a Protestant church, and occupies the site of the Roman Brocomagus. Its industries comprise tanning and saw-milling, and it has some trade in wine and tobacco and hops.

BRUMMAGEM (an old local form of “Birmingham”), a name first applied to a counterfeit coin made in the city of Birmingham, England, in the 17th century, and later to the plated and imitation articles made there; hence cheap, showy or tawdry. The name was particularly used of the supporters of the Exclusion Bill in 1680, with the meaning of “sham Protestant.” Similarly the Tory opponents of the Bill were nicknamed “Anti-Birminghams” or “Brummagems.” BRUMMELL, GEORGE BRYAN (1778–1840), English man of fashion, known as “,” was born in London on the 7th of June 1778. His father was private secretary to Lord North from 1770 to 1782, and subsequently high sheriff of Berkshire; his grandfather was a shopkeeper in the parish of St James, who supplemented his income by letting lodgings to the aristocracy. From his early years George Brummell paid great attention to his dress. At Eton, where he was sent to school in 1790, and was extremely popular, he was known as Buck Brummell, and at Oxford, where he spent a brief period as an undergraduate of Oriel College, he preserved this reputation, and added to it that of a wit and good story-teller, while the fact that he was second for the Newdigate prize is evidence of his literary capacity. Before he was sixteen, however, he left Oxford, for London, where the prince of Wales (afterwards George IV.), to whom he had been presented at Eton, and who had been told that Brummell was a highly amusing fellow, gave him a commission in his own regiment (1794). Brummell soon became intimate with his patron—indeed he was so constantly in the prince’s company that he is reported not to have known his own regimental troop. In 1798, having then reached the rank of captain, he left the service, and next year succeeded to a fortune of about £30,000. Setting up a bachelor establishment in Mayfair, he became, thanks to the prince of Wales’s friendship and his own good taste in dress, the recognized arbiter elegantiarum. His social success was instant and complete, his repartees were the talk of the town, and, if not accurately speaking a wit, he had a remarkable talent for presenting the most ordinary circumstances in an amusing light. Though he always dressed well, he was no mere fop—Lord Byron is credited with the remark that there was nothing remarkable about his dress save “a certain exquisite propriety.” For a time Brummell’s sway was undisputed. But eventually gambling and extravagance exhausted his fortune, while his tongue proved too sharp for his royal patron. They quarrelled, and though for a time Brummell continued to hold his place in society, his popularity began to decline. In 1816 he fled to Calais to avoid his creditors. Here he struggled on for fourteen years, receiving help from time to time from his friends in England, but always hopelessly in debt. In 1830 the interest of these friends secured him the post of British consul at Caen, to which a moderate salary was attached, but two years later the office was abolished. In 1835 Brummell’s French creditors in Calais and Caen lost patience and he was imprisoned, but his friends once more came to the rescue, paid his debts and provided him with a small income. He had now lost all his interest in dress; his personal appearance was slovenly and dirty. In 1837, after two attacks of paralysis, shelter was found for him in the charitable asylum of Bon Sauveur, Caen, where he died on the 30th of March 1840.

BRUNCK, RICHARD FRANÇOIS PHILIPPE (1729–1803), French classical scholar, was born at Strassburg on the 30th of December 1729. He was educated at the Jesuits’ College at Paris, and took part in the Seven Years’ War as military commissary. At the age of thirty he returned to his native town and resumed his studies, paying special attention to Greek. He spent considerable sums of money in publishing editions of the Greek classics. The first work which he edited was the Anthologia Graeca or Analecta veterum Poetarum Graecorum (1772–1776), in which his innovations on the established mode of criticism startled European scholars; for wherever it seemed to him that an obscure or difficult passage might be made intelligible and easy by a change of text, he did not scruple to make the necessary alterations, whether the new reading were supported by manuscript authority or not. Other works by him are:—Editions of Anacreon (1778), several plays of the Greek tragedians, Apollonius Rhodius (1780), Aristophanes, with an excellent Latin translation (1781–1783), Gnomici poetae Graeci (1784), Sophocles (1786), with Latin translation, his best work, for which he received a pension of 2000 francs from the king. He also published editions of Virgil (1785), Plautus (1788) and Terence (1797). At the outbreak of the French Revolution, in which he took an active part, he was imprisoned at Besançon, and lost his pension, being reduced to such extremities that he was obliged to sell a portion of his library. In 1802 his pension was restored to him, but too late to prevent the sale of the remainder of his books. He died on the 12th of June 1803. BRUNDISIUM (Gr. BRUNDISIUM (Gr. , mod. Brindisi), an important harbour town of Calabria (in the ancient sense), Italy, on the E.S.E. coast. The name is said to mean “stag’s head” in the Messapian dialect, in allusion to the shape of the harbour. Tradition varies as to its founders; but we find it hostile to Tarentum, and in friendly relations with Thurii. With a fertile territory round it, it became the most important city of the Messapians, but it was developed by the Romans, into whose hands it only came after the conquest of the Sallentini in 266 They founded a colony there in 245, and the Via Appia was perhaps extended through Tarentum as far as Brundisium at this period. Pacuvius was born here about 220  After the Punic Wars it became the chief point of embarkation for Greece and the East, via Dyrrachium or Corcyra. In the Social War it received Roman citizenship, and was made a free port by Sulla. It suffered, however, from a siege conducted by Caesar in 49  (''Bell. Civ.'' i.) and was again attacked in 42 and 40 Virgil died here in 19  on his return from Greece. Trajan constructed the Via Trajana, a more direct route from Beneventum to Brundisium. The remains of ancient buildings are unimportant, though a considerable number of antiquities, especially inscriptions, have been discovered here: one column 62 ft. in height, with an ornate capital, still stands, and near it is the base of another, the column itself having been removed to Lecce. They are said to have marked the termination of the Via Appia.

BRUNE, GUILLAUME MARIE ANNE (1763–1815), marshal of France, the son of an advocate, was born at Brives-la-Gaillarde (Corrèze), on the 13th of March 1763. Before the Revolution he went to Paris to study law, and here he became a political journalist, a Jacobin and a friend of Danton. He was appointed