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Brioude, the ancient Brinas, was formerly a place of considerable importance. It was in turn besieged and captured by the Goths (532), the Burgundians, the Saracens (732) and the Normans. In 1181 the viscount of Polignac, who had sacked the town two years previously, made public apology in front of the church, and established a body of twenty-five knights to defend the relics of St Julian. For some time after 1361 the town was the headquarters of Bérenger, lord of Castelnau, who was at the head of one of the bands of military adventurers which then devastated France. The knights (or canons, as they afterwards became) of St Julian bore the title of counts of Brioude, and for a long time opposed themselves to the civic liberties of the inhabitants.
BRIQUEMAULT (or Briquemaut), FRANÇOIS DE BEAUVAIS, Seigneur de (c. 1502-1572), leader of the Huguenots during the first religious wars, was the son of Adrien de Briquemault and Alexane de Sainte Ville, and was born about 1502. His first campaign was under the count of Brissac in the Piedmontese wars. On his return to France in 1554 he joined Admiral Coligny. Charged with the defence of Rouen, in 1562, he resigned in favour of Montgomery, to whom the prince of Condé had entrusted the task, and went over to England, where he concluded the treaty of Hampton Court on the 20th of September. He then returned to France, and took Dieppe from the Catholics before the conclusion of peace. If his share in the second religious war was less important, he played a very active part in the third. He fought at Jarnac, Roche-Abeille and Montcontour, assisted in the siege of Poitiers, was nearly captured by the Catholics at Bourg-Dieu, re-victualled Vézelay, and almost surprised Bourges. In 1570, being charged by Coligny to stop the army of the princes in its ascent of the Rhone valley, he crossed Burgundy and effected his junction with the admiral at St. Étienne in May. On the 21st of the following June he assisted in achieving the victory of Arnay-le-Duc, and was then employed to negotiate a marriage between the prince of Navarre and Elizabeth of England. Being in Paris on the night of St Bartholomew he took refuge in the house of the English ambassador, but was arrested there. With his friend Arnaud da Cavagnes he was delivered over to the parlement, and failed in courage when confronted with his judges, seeking to escape death by unworthy means. He was condemned, nevertheless, on the 27th of October 1572, to the last penalty and to the confiscation of his property, and on the 29th of October he and Cavagnes were executed.
See Histoire ecclésiastique des Églises réformées au royaume de France (new edition, 1884), vol. ii.; La France protestante (2nd edition), vol. ii., article "Beauvais."
BRIQUETTE (diminutive of Fr. brique, brick), a form of fuel, known also as "patent fuel," consisting of small coal compressed into solid blocks by the aid of some binding material. For making briquettes the small coal, if previously washed, is dried to reduce the moisture to at most 4%, and if necessary crushed in a disintegrator. It is then incorporated in a pug mill with from 8 to 10% of gas pitch, and softened by heating to between 70° and 90° C. to a plastic mass, which is moulded into blocks and compacted by a pressure of ½ to 2 tons per sq. in. in a machine with a rotating die-plate somewhat like that used in making semi-plastic clay bricks. When cold, the briquettes, which usually weigh from 7 to 20 lb each, although smaller sizes are made for domestic use, become quite hard, and can be handled with less breakage than the original coal. Their principal use is as fuel for marine and locomotive boilers, the evaporative value being about the same as, or somewhat greater than, that of coal. The principal seat of the manufacture in Great Britain is in South Wales, where the dust and smalls resulting from the handling of the best steam coals (which are very brittle) are obtainable in large quantities and find no other use. Some varieties of lignite, when crushed and pressed at a steam heat, soften sufficiently to furnish compact briquettes without requiring any cementing material. Briquettes of this kind are made to a large extent from the tertiary lignites in the vicinity of Cologne; they are used mainly for house fuel on the lower Rhine and in Holland, and occasionally come to London.
BRISBANE, SIR THOMAS MAKDOUGALL (1773-1860), Scottish soldier and astronomer, was born on the 23rd of July 1773 at Brisbane House, near Largs, in Ayrshire. He entered the army in 1789, and served in Flanders, the West Indies and the Peninsula. In 1814 he was sent to North America; on the return of Napoleon from Elba he was recalled, but did not arrive in time to take part in the battle of Waterloo. In 1821 he was appointed governor of New South
