endurable. The only drawback to the climate is the prevalence of high cold winds in winter. These winds cause temperatures as low as 36°, but the mean reading, on an average of ten years, is 73°.
In the oasis are some 200,000 fruit trees, of which about 150,000 are date-palms, the rest being olives, pomegranates and apricots. In the centre of the oasis is the old kasbah or citadel.
In 1844 the duc d’Aumale occupied this fort, and here, on the night of the 12th of May of that year, the 68 men who formed the French garrison were, with one exception, massacred by Arabs. In the fort are a few fragments of Roman work—all that remains of the Roman post Ad Piscinam.
Biskra is the capital of the Ziban (plural of Zab), a race of mixed Berber and Arab origin, whose villages extend from the southern slopes of the Aures to the Shat Melrir. These villages, built in oases dotted over the desert, nestle in groves of date-palms and fruit trees and waving fields of barley. The most interesting village is that of Sidi Okba, 12 m. south-east of Biskra. It is built of houses of one story made of sun-dried bricks. The mosque is square, with a flat roof supported on clay columns, and crowned by a minaret. In the north-west corner of the mosque is the tomb of Sidi Okba, the leader of the Arabs who in the 1st century of the Hegira conquered Africa for Islam from Egypt to Tangier. Sidi Okba was killed by the Berbers near this place in A.D. 682. On his tomb is the inscription in Cufic characters, “This is the tomb of Okba, son of Nafi. May God have mercy upon him.” No older Arabic inscription is known to exist in Africa.
BISLEY, a village of Surrey, England, 312 m. N.W. of Woking. The ranges of the National Rifle Association were transferred from Wimbledon here in 1890. (See Rifle.)
BISMARCK, OTTO EDUARD LEOPOLD VON, Prince, duke of Lauenburg (1815–1898), German statesman, was born on the 1st of April 1815, at the manor-house of Schönhausen, his father’s seat in the mark of Brandenburg. The family has, since the 14th century, belonged to the landed gentry, and many members had held high office in the kingdom of Prussia. His father (d. 1845), of whom he always spoke with much affection, was a quiet, unassuming man, who retired from the army in early life with the rank of captain of cavalry (Rittmeister). His mother, a daughter of Mencken, cabinet secretary to the king, was a woman of strong character and ability, who had been brought up at Berlin under the “Aufklärung.” Her ambition was centred in her sons, but Bismarck in his recollections of his childhood missed the influences of maternal tenderness. There were several children of the marriage, which took place in 1806, but all died in childhood except Bernhard (1810–1893), Otto, and one sister, Malvina (b. 1827), who married in 1845 Oscar von Arnim. Young Bismarck was educated in Berlin, first at a private school, then at the gymnasium of the Graue Kloster (Grey Friars). At the age of seventeen he went to the university of Göttingen, where he spent a little over a year; he joined the corps of the Hannoverana and took a leading part in the social life of the students. He completed his studies at Berlin, and in 1835 passed the examinations which admitted him to the public service. He was intended for the diplomatic service, but spent some months at Aix-la-Chapelle in administrative work, and then was transferred to Potsdam and the judicial side. He soon retired from the public service; he conceived a great distaste for it, and had shown himself defective in discipline and regularity. In 1839, after his mother’s death, he undertook, with his brother, the management of the family estates in Pomerania; at this time most of the estate attached to Schönhausen had to be sold. In 1844, after the marriage of his sister, he went to live with his father at Schönhausen. He and his brother took an active part in local affairs, and in 1846 he was appointed Deichhauptmann, an office in which he was responsible for the care of the dykes by which the country, in the neighbourhood of the Elbe, was preserved from inundation. During these years he travelled in England, France and Switzerland. The influence of his mother, and his own wide reading and critical character, made him at one time inclined to hold liberal opinions on government and religion, but he was strongly affected by the religious revival of the early years of the reign of Frederick William IV.; his opinions underwent a great change, and under the influence of the neighbouring country gentlemen he acquired those strong principles in favour of monarchical government as the expression of the Christian state, of which he was to become the most celebrated exponent. His religious convictions were strengthened by his marriage to Johanna von Puttkamer, which took place in 1847.
In the same year he entered public life, being chosen as substitute for the representative of the lower nobility of his district in the estates-general, which were in that year summoned to Berlin. He took his seat with the extreme right, and distinguished himself by the vigour and originality with Parliamentary career.which he defended the rights of the king and the Christian monarchy against the Liberals. When the revolution broke out in the following year he offered to bring the peasants of Schönhausen to Berlin in order to defend the king against the revolutionary party, and in the last meeting of the estates voted in a minority of two against the address thanking the king for granting a constitution. He did not sit in any of the assemblies summoned during the revolutionary year, but took a very active part in the formation of a union of the Conservative party, and was one of the founders of the Kreuzzeitung, which has since then been the organ of the Monarchical party in Prussia. In the new parliament which was elected at the beginning of 1849, he sat for Brandenburg, and was one of the most frequent and most incisive speakers of what was called the Junker party. He took a prominent part in the discussions on the new Prussian constitution, always defending the power of the king. His speeches of this period show great debating skill, combined with strong originality and imagination. His constant theme was, that the party disputes were a struggle for power between the forces of revolution, which derived their strength from the fighters on the barricades, and the Christian monarchy, and that between these opposed principles no compromise was possible. He took also a considerable part in the debates on the foreign policy of the Prussian government; he defended the government for not accepting the Frankfort constitution, and opposed the policy of Radowitz, on the ground that the Prussian king would be subjected to the control of a non-Prussian parliament. The only thing, he said, that had come out of the revolutionary year unharmed, and had saved Prussia from dissolution and Germany from anarchy, was the Prussian army and the Prussian civil service; and in the debates on foreign policy he opposed the numerous plans for bringing about the union of Germany, by subjecting the crown and Prussia to a common German parliament. He had a seat in the parliament of Erfurt, but only went there in order to oppose the constitution which the parliament had framed. He foresaw that the policy of the government would lead it into a position when it would have to fight against Austria on behalf of a constitution by which Prussia itself would be dissolved, and he was, therefore, one of the few prominent politicians who defended the complete change of front which followed the surrender of Olmütz.
It was probably his speeches on German policy which induced the king to appoint him Prussian representative at the restored diet of Frankfort in 1851. The appointment was a bold one, as he was entirely without diplomatic experience, but he justified the confidence placed in him. During the eight years he spent at Diplomatic career.Frankfort he acquired an unrivalled knowledge of German politics. He was often used for important missions, as in 1852, when he was sent to Vienna. He was entrusted with the negotiations by which the duke of Augustenburg was persuaded to assent to the arrangements by which he resigned his claims to Schleswig and Holstein. The period he spent at Frankfort, however, was of most importance because of the change it brought about in his own political opinions. When he went to Frankfort he was still under the influence of the extreme Prussian Conservatives, men like the Gerlachs, who regarded the maintenance of the principle of the
