Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 02.djvu/57

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BISHOP BARNABY 43 BISMARCK-SCHONHAUSEN BISHOP BABNABY, the may-bug or lady-bird. BISHOP-WEED (xgopodium poda- graria), an umbelliferous plant of Eu- rope, with thrice-ternate leaves and creeping roots or underground stems, a great pest in gardens from its vigorous growth and the difficult' of getting rid of it; called also goutwort. BISMARCK, city, capital of the State of North Dakota, and county-seat of Bur • leigh CO.; on the Missouri river, and the Northern Pacific and the Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Sault Ste. Marie railroads, 194 miles W. of Fargo. It contains the State Capitol (which cost over $500,- 000), the State Penitentiary, court house, city hall, opera house, a State Hospital for the Insane, St. Paul Seminary, U. S. Indian School. The river is here spanned by a bridge that cost $1,500,000. Bis- marck has improved waterworks, elec- tric lights, several flour mills, a Na- tional bank, the State Library. The city is a supply and trade center for an extensive agricultural section. Pop. (1910) 5,443; (1920) 7,122. BISMARCK-SCHONHAUSEN (biz'- mark-shen'-houz-en), OTTO EDUARD LEOPOLD, PRINCE VON, a German statesman, born at Schonhausen, Prussian Saxony, April 1, 1815. He received his university education at Gottingen, Ber- lin, and Greifswald. Before 1847 he was little heard of, but began to attract at- tention in the new Prussian Parliament as an ultra royalist. He opposed the scheme of a German Empire as proposed by the Frankfort Parliament of 1849. His diplomatic career began in 1851, when he was appointed Prussian mem- ber of the resuscitated German Diet of Frankfort. In the Diet, he gave open expression to the long-felt discontent with the predominance of Austria, and demanded equal rights for Prussia. He remained at Frankfort till 1859, when he beheld in the approach of the Italian War an opportunity of freeing Prussia and Germany from the dominance of Austria. In the spring of 1862 King William, on the urgent advice of the Prince of HohenzoUern, transferred Bis- marck as ambassador to Paris, in order to give him an insight into the politics of the Tuileries. During his short stay at Paris Bismarck visited London, and had interviews with the leading politi- cians of the time, including Lord Pal- merston and Mr. Disraeli. In the au- tumn Bismarck was recalled, to take the portfolio of the Ministry of Foreign Af- fairs, and the presidency of the Cabinet. Not being able to pass the reorganiza- tion bill and the budget, he closed the Chambers (October, 1862), announcing to the Deputies that the King's Govern- ment would be obliged to do without their sanction. The death of the King of Denmark reopened the Schleswig-Hol- stein question, and excited a fever of national German feeling, which Bis- marck was adroit enough to work so as to aggrandize Prussia by the acquisition of the Elbe Duchies. The action of France in regard to the candidature of Prince Leopold of Hohen- zoUern for the throne of Spain gave Bis- marck the opportunity of carrying into action the intensified feeling of unity among Germans. During the War erf 1870-1871, Bismarck was the spokesman of Germany; he it was that in February, 1871, dictated the terms of peace to PRINCE OTTO VON BISMARCK France. Having been made a Count in 1866, he was now created a prince and Chancellor of the German Empire. Fol- lowing the Peace of Frankfort (May 10, 1871), the sole aim of Bismax'ck's policy, domestic and foreign, was to consolidate the young empire of his own creating. Thus, conceiving the unity of the nation and the authority of its government to be endangered by the Church of Rome, and its doctrines of Papal infallibility, he embarked on that long and bitter struggle with the Vatican, called the Kul- turkampf, in the course of which the Im- perial and Prussian Parliaments passed a series of most stringent measures (Falk or May laws) against the Cath- olic hierarchy. But Bismarck had un- derrated the resisting power of the Ro- man Church, and motives of political expediency gradually led him to modify or repeal the most oppressive of the anti-papal edicts. Otherwise his domes-