167. It is in poor preservation and was partly rebuilt in 1820. Remains

of a Roman theatre, of an amphitheatre, of an aqueduct which entered the town by the Porte Taillee, a gate cut in the rock below the citadel, and an arch of a former Roman bridge, forming part of the modern bridge, are also to be seen. Besancon has statues of Victor Hugo and of the Marquis de Jouffroy d'Abbans (b. 1751), inventor of steam-navigation. Besancon is important as the seat of an archbishopric, a court of appeal and a court of assizes, as centre of an _academie_ (educational division), as seat of a prefect and as headquarters of the VIIth army corps. It also has tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a chamber of commerce, a board of trade-arbitrators, an exchange and a branch of the Bank of France. Its educational establishments include the university with its faculties of science and letters and a preparatory school of medicine and pharmacy, an artillery school, the lycee Victor Hugo for boys, a lycee for girls, an ecclesiastical seminary, training colleges for teachers, and schools of watch-making, art, music and dairy-work. The library contains over 130,000 volumes, and the city has good collections of pictures, antiquities and natural history. The chief industry of Besancon is watch- and clock-making, introduced from the district of Neuchatel at the end of the 18th century. It employs about 12,000 workpeople, and produces about three-fourths of the watches sold in France. Subsidiary industries, such as enamelling, are also important. The metallurgical works of the _Societe de la Franche-Comte_ are established in the city and there are saw-mills, printing-works, paper-factories, distilleries, and manufactories of boots and shoes, machinery, hosiery, leather, elastic fabric, confectionery and artificial silk. There is trade in agricultural produce, wine, metals, &c. The canal from the Rhone to the Rhine passes under the citadel by way of a tunnel, and the port of Besancon has considerable trade in coal, sand, &c. As a fortress Besancon forms one of a group which includes Dijon, Langres and Belfort; these are designed to secure Franche Comte and to cover a field army operating on the left flank of a German army of invasion. The citadel occupies the neck of the peninsula upon which the town stands; along the river bank in a semicircle is the town _enceinte_, and the suburb of Battant on the right bank of the Doubs is also "regularly" fortified as a bridge-head. These works, and Forts Chaudanne and Bregille overlooking the Doubs at the bend, were constructed prior to 1870. The newer works enclose an area more suited to the needs of modern warfare: the chain of detached forts along the ridges of the left bank has a total length of 7-1/2 m., and the centre of this chain is supported by numerous forts and batteries lying between it and the citadel. On the other bank Fort Chaudanne is now the innermost of several forts facing towards the south-west, and the foremost of these works connects the fortifications of the left bank with another chain of detached forts on the right bank. The latter completely encloses a large area of ground in a semicircle of which Besancon itself is the centre, and the whole of the newer works taken together form an irregular ellipse of which the major axis, lying north-east by south-west, is formed by the Doubs. Besancon is a place of great antiquity. Under the name of Vesontio it was, in the time of Julius Caesar, the chief town of the Sequani, and in 58 B.C. was occupied by that general. It was a rich and prosperous place under the Roman emperors, and Marcus Aurelius promoted it to the rank of a _colonia_ as _Colonia Victrix Sequanorum_. During the succeeding centuries it was several times destroyed and rebuilt. The archbishopric dates from the close of the 2nd century, and the archbishops gradually acquired considerable temporal power. As the capital of the free county of Burgundy, or Franche-Comte, it was united with the German kingdom when Frederick I. married Beatrix, daughter of Renaud III., count of Upper Burgundy. In 1184 Frederick made it a free imperial city, and about the same time the archbishop obtained the dignity of a prince of the Empire. It afterwards became detached from the German kingdom, and during the 14th century came into the possession of the dukes of Burgundy, from whom it passed to the emperor Maximilian I., and his grandson Charles V. Cardinal Granvella, who was a native of the city, became archbishop in 1584, and founded a university which existed until the French Revolution. After the abdication of Charles V. it came into the possession of Spain, although it remained formally a portion of the Empire until its cession at the peace of Westphalia in 1648. During the 17th century it was attacked several times by the French, to whom it was definitely ceded by the peace of Nijmwegen in 1678. It was then fortified by the engineer Vauban. Until 1789 it was the seat of a _parlement_. In 1814 it was invested and bombarded by the Austrians, and was an important position during the Franco-German War of 1870-71. See A. Castan, _Besancon et ses environs_ (Besancon, 1887); A. Guenard, _Besancon, description historique_ (Besancon, 1860). BESANT, SIR WALTER (1836-1901), English author, was born at Portsmouth, on the 14th of August 1836, third son of William Besant of that town. He was educated at King's College, London, and Christ's College, Cambridge, of which he was a scholar. He graduated in 1859 as 18th wrangler, and from 1861 to 1867 was senior professor of the Royal College, Mauritius. From 1868 to 1885 he acted as secretary to the Palestine Exploration Fund. In 1884 he was mainly instrumental in establishing the Society of Authors, a trade-union of writers designed for the protection of literary property, which has rendered great assistance to inexperienced authors by explaining the principles of literary profit. Of this society he was chairman from its foundation in 1884 till 1892. He married Mary, daughter of Mr Eustace Foster-Barham of Bridgwater, and was knighted in