unabula. The city is well supplied with
water, and has no less than seventy-two public fountains. Brescia has
considerable factories of iron ware, particularly fire-arms and weapons
(one of the government small arms factories being situated here), also of
woollens, linens and silks, matches, candles, &c. The stone quarries of
Mazzano, 8 m. east of Brescia, supplied material for the monument to Victor
Emmanuel II. and other buildings in Rome. Brescia is situated on the main
railway line between Milan and Verona, and has branch railways to Iseo,
Parma, Cremona and (via Rovato) to Bergamo, and steam tramways to Mantua,
Soncino, Ponte Toscolano and Cardone Valtrompia.

The ancient Celtic Brixia, a town of the Cenomani, became Roman in 225
B.C., when the Cenomani submitted to Rome. Augustus founded a civil (not a
military) colony here in 27 B.C., and he and Tiberius constructed an
aqueduct to supply it. In 452 it was plundered by Attila, but was the seat
of a duchy in the Lombard period. From 1167 it was one of the most active
members of the Lombard League. In 1258 it fell into the hands of Eccelino
of Verona, and belonged to the Scaligers (della Scala) until 1421, when it
came under the Visconti of Milan, and in 1426 under Venice. Early in the
16th century it was one of the wealthiest cities of Lombardy, but has never
recovered from its sack by the French under Gaston de Foix in 1512. It
belonged to Venice until 1797, when it came under Austrian dominion; it
revolted in 1848, and again in 1849, being the only Lombard town to rally
to Charles Albert in the latter year, but was taken after ten days'
obstinate street fighting by the Austrians under Haynau.

See _Museo Bresciano Illustrato_ (Brescia, 1838).

(T. AS.)

BRESLAU (Polish _Wraclaw_), a city of Germany, capital of the Prussian
province of Silesia, and an episcopal see, situated in a wide and fertile
plain on both banks of the navigable Oder, 350 m. from its mouth, at the
influx of the Ohle, and 202 m. from Berlin on the railway to Vienna. Pop.
(1867) 171,926; (1880) 272,912; (1885) 299,640; (1890) 335,186; (1905)
470,751, about 60% being Protestants, 35% Roman Catholics and nearly 5%
Jews. The Oder, which here breaks into several arms, divides the city into
two unequal halves, crossed by numerous bridges. The larger portion, on the
left bank, includes the old or inner town, surrounded by beautiful
promenades, on the site of the ramparts, dismantled after 1813, from