the revolutionary war, the French fleet, under
Villaret de Joyeuse, was as thoroughly beaten in the same place by the
English admiral Howe.

BREST-LITOVSK (Polish _Brzesc-Litevski_; and in the Chron. _Berestie_ and
_Berestov_), a strongly fortified town of Russia, in the government of
Grodno, 137 m. by rail S. from the city of Grodno, in 52 deg. 5' N. lat. and
23 deg. 39' E. long., at the junction of the navigable river Mukhovets with the
Bug, and at the intersection of railways from Warsaw, Kiev, Moscow and East
Prussia. Pop. (1867) 22,493; (1901) 42,812, of whom more than one-half were
Jews. It contains a Jewish synagogue, which was regarded in the 16th
century as the first in Europe, and is the seat of an Armenian and of a
Greek Catholic bishop; the former has authority over the Armenians
throughout the whole country. The town carries on an extensive trade in
grain, flax, hemp, wood, tar and leather. First mentioned in the beginning
of the 11th century, Brest-Litovsk was in 1241 laid waste by the Mongols
and was not rebuilt till 1275; its suburbs were burned by the Teutonic
Knights in 1379; and in the end of the 15th century the whole town met a
similar fate at the hands of the khan of the Crimea. In the reign of the
Polish king Sigismund III. diets were held there; and in 1594 and 1596 it
was the meeting-place of two remarkable councils of the bishops of western
Russia. In 1657, and again in 1706, the town was captured by the Swedes; in
1794 it was the scene of Suvarov's victory over the Polish general
Sierakowski; in 1795 it was added to the Russian empire. The Brest-Litovsk
or King's canal (50 m. long), utilizing the Mukhovets-Bug rivers, forms a
link in the waterways that connect the Dnieper with the Vistula.

BRETEUIL, LOUIS CHARLES AUGUSTE LE TONNELIER, BARON DE (1730-1807), French
diplomatist, was born at the chateau of Azay-le-Feron (Indre) on the 7th of
March 1730. He was only twenty-eight when he was appointed by Louis XV.
ambassador to the elector of Cologne, and two years later he was sent to St
Petersburg. He arranged to be temporarily absent from his post at the time
of the palace revolution by which Catherine II. was placed on the throne.
In 1769 he was sent to Stockholm, and subsequently represented his
government at Vienna, Naples, and again at Vienna until 1783, when he was
recalled to become minister of the king's household. In this capacity he
introduced considerable reforms in prison administrati