Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIII.djvu/289

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

PEPOLI stored Louis to his throne. His father now threatening to take Aquitania from him, he rebelled again in 832, and in 833 all the three princes marched their troops to Alsace, took the emperor prisoner through the treachery of his own troops, conveyed him to Com- glegne, and forced him to do solemn penance, ut shortly after Pepin and Louis of Bavaria, disgusted once more with their elder broth- er's behavior, released their father and again acknowledged his supremacy. Pepin II., Pe- pin's eldest son, bereft of his inheritance, which was granted to Charles the Bald, the youngest son of Louis le Debonnaire, was nevertheless acknowledged as king by the Aquitanians. In 840 he joined his uncle Lo- thaire in his contest against Charles the Bald and Louis the German, was defeated with him at Fontenay in 841, and once more, by the treaty of Verdun in 843, deprived of his king- dom. He still held his ground, forced Count William of Toulouse into submission, routed the army of Charles the Bald near Angouleme in 844, and finally in 845 obliged his uncle to grant him the best part of Aquitania as a fief. But his popularity among the Aquitanians van- ished when he allied himself with the North- men. Abandoned both by his subjects and his allies, he took refuge in Gascony, but was betrayed into the hands of Charles the Bald in 852. Imprisoned in a monastery, he escaped in 854, induced a number of Aquitanians to rise in his behalf, again procured the assis- tance of the Northmen, and in 857 obliged Charles to grant him lands. But in a last at- tempt to take Toulouse at the head of the Northmen in 864, he fell into an ambush, was sent to Pistes, where he was sentenced to death by the lords of the kingdom, and was imprisoned at Senlis, where he soon died. PEPOLI, Carlo, an Italian author, born in Bo- logna in 1801. He studied at the university of that city, and in 1831 became a member of the revolutionary provisional government. After its speedy overthrow he was captured by the Austrians on his flight to Corfu, and impris- oned, but soon banished from the country. He spent some time at Geneva with Rossi and Sismondi, wrote in Paris the libretto for Bel- lini's opera I Puritani, and was subsequently engaged on similar works. In 1837 he lectured in England on Italian history and art, and he was professor of Italian literature at the uni- versity of London from 1839 until the revolu- tion of 1848, when he joined the movement in Italy. After serving in the Venetian territory under Durando, he was elected deputy in Rome and became vice president of the assembly. After the failure of the revolution in 1849 he returned to England, where he remained until the victories in Italy in 1859. Subsequently he filled various official posts. He has pub- lished several works in prose and poetry. PEPOLI, Gioaehino, marquis, an Italian states- man, born in Bologna, Nov. 6, 1825. He is a grandson of Murat and of Caroline Bonaparte, PEPPER 279 and married a princess of Hohenzollern-Sig- maringen. He urged Pius IX. to political re- forms in 1846, and defended Bologna in 1848 against the Austrians. In 1859 he was at the head of the provisional government in the Ro- magna, and subsequently he became minister of finance and foreign affairs. In 1862 he was minister of agriculture and commerce, and af- terward ambassador in St. Petersburg. His relationship with the Bonapartes enabled him to conclude, Sept. 15, 1864, the convention with Napoleon III. which stipulated the re- moval of the Italian capital from Turin to Flor- ence, and the discontinuance of the French occupation of Rome. He has published sev- eral volumes of prose writings and of plays. His brother married the singer Alboni. PEPPER (Lat. piper), the pungent fruit of a climbing shrub, piper nigrum, a native of the forests of Malabar and Travancore, and cul- tivated in various parts of the East and in the Pepper (Piper nigrum). West Indies. The genus piper, which gives its name to a small family of apetalous, exoge- nous plants, consists mostly of climbing shrubs with alternate petioled leaves, dioecious or per- fect flowers in solitary pendulous spikes oppo- site the leaves, each supported by a bract ; sta- mens two or more ; ovary solitary, containing a single ovule, and ripening into a one-seeded fruit with a fleshy exterior; in the species yielding pepper the stem is 12 to 20 ft. long, jointed and branching in a forked manner, the broadly ovate leaves five- to seven-nerved, and the flower spikes 3 to 6 in. long with 20 to 30 berries ; the fruit, which is at first green, in ripening turns red and then yellow. Pepper was known to the ancient Greeks and Romans, two kinds having been described in the 4th century B. C., and it at one time occupied a much more important place in the world's traffic than now, it having been, before the days of cotton, coffee, and sugar, a principal article