DAUN (DHAUN), LEOPOLD JOSEF, Count Von (1705-1766), prince of Thiano, Austrian field marshal, was born at Vienna on the 24th of September 1705. He was intended for the church, but his natural inclination for the army, in which his father and grandfather had been distinguished generals, proved irresistible. In 1718 he served in the campaign in Sicily, in his father’s regiment. He had already risen to the rank of colonel when he saw further active service in Italy and on the Rhine in the War of the Polish Succession (1734-35). He continued to add to his distinctions in the war against the Turks (1737-39), in which he attained the rank of a general officer. In the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-42), Daun, already a lieutenant field marshal in rank, distinguished himself by the careful leadership which was afterwards his greatest military quality. He was present at Chotusitz and Prague, and led the advanced guard of Khevenhüller’s army in the victorious Danube campaign of 1743. Field Marshal Traun, who succeeded Khevenhüller in 1744, thought equally highly of Daun, and entrusted him with the rearguard of the Austrian army when it escaped from the French to attack Frederick the Great. He held important commands in the battles of Hohenfriedberg and Soor, and in the same year (1745) was promoted to the rank of Feldzeugmeister. After this he served in the Low Countries, and was present at the battle of Val. He was highly valued by Maria Theresa, who made him commandant of Vienna and a knight of the Golden Fleece, and in 1754 he was elevated to the rank of field marshal.
During the interval of peace that preceded the Seven Years’ War he was engaged in carrying out an elaborate scheme for the reorganization of the Austrian army; and it was chiefly through his instrumentality that the military academy was established at Wiener-Neustadt in 1751. He was not actively employed in the first campaigns of the war, but in 1757 he was placed at the head of the army which was raised to relieve Prague. On the 18th of June 1757 Daun defeated Frederick for the first time in his career in the desperately fought battle of Kolin (q.v.). In commemoration of this brilliant exploit the queen immediately instituted a military order bearing her name, of which Daun was nominated first grand cross. The union of the relieving army with the forces of Prince Charles at Prague reduced Daun to the position of second in command, and as such he took part in the pursuit of the Prussians and the victory of Breslau. Frederick now reappeared and won the most brilliant victory of the age at Leuthen. Daun was present on that field, but was not held accountable for the disaster, and when Prince Charles resigned his command, Daun was appointed in his place. With the campaign of 1758 began the war of manœuvre in which Daun, if he missed, through over-caution, many opportunities of crushing the Prussians, at least maintained a steady and cool resistance to the fiery strategy of Frederick. In 1758 Major-General Loudon, acting under Daun’s instructions, forced the king to raise the siege of Olmütz, and later in the same year Daun himself surprised Frederick at Hochkirch and inflicted a severe defeat upon him (October 14th). In the following year the war of manœuvre continued, and on the 20th and 21st of November he surrounded the entire corps of General Finck at Maxen, forcing the Prussians to surrender. These successes were counterbalanced in the following year by the defeat of Loudon at Liegnitz, which was attributed to the dilatoriness of Daun, and Daun’s own defeat in the great battle of Torgau (q.v.). In this engagement Daun was so severely wounded that he had to return to Vienna to recruit.
He continued to command until the end of the war, and afterwards worked with the greatest energy at the reorganization of the imperial forces. In 1762 he had been appointed president of the Hofkriegsrath. He died on the 5th of February 1766. By the order of Maria Theresa a monument to his memory was erected in the church of the Augustinians, with an inscription styling him the “saviour of her states.” In 1888 the 56th regiment of Austrian infantry was named after him. As a general Daun has been reproached for the dilatoriness of his operations, but wariness was not misplaced in opposing a general like Frederick, who was quick and unexpected in his movements beyond all precedent. Less defence perhaps may be made for him on the score of inability to profit by a victory.
See Der deutsche Fabius Cunctator, oder Leben u. Thaten S. E. des H. Leopold Reichsgrafen v. Dhaun K.K.F.M. (Frankfort and Leipzig, 1759-1760), and works dealing with the wars of the period.
DAUNOU, PIERRE CLAUDE FRANÇOIS (1761-1840), French statesman and historian, was born at Boulogne-sur-Mer, and after a brilliant career in the school of the Oratorians there, joined the order in Paris in 1777. He was professor in various seminaries from 1780 till 1787, when he was ordained priest. He was already known in literary circles by several essays and poems, when the revolution opened a wider career. He threw himself with ardour into the struggle for liberty, and refused to be silenced in his advocacy of the civil constitution of the clergy by the offer of high office in the church. Elected to the Convention by Pas-le-Calais, he associated himself with the Girondists, but strongly opposed the death sentence on the king. He took little part in the struggle against the Mountain, but was involved in the overthrow of his friends, and was imprisoned for a year. In December 1794 he returned to the Convention, and was the principal author of the constitution of the year III. It seems to have been due to his Girondist ideas that the Ancients were given the right of convoking the corps législatif outside Paris, an expedient which made possible Napoleon’s coup d’état of the 18th and 19th Brumaire. The creation of the Institute was also due to Daunou, who drew up the plan for its organization. His energy was largely responsible for the suppression of the royalist insurrection of the 13th Vendémiaire, and the important place he occupied at the beginning of the Directory is indicated by the fact that he was elected by twenty-seven departments as member of the Council of Five Hundred, and became its first president. He had himself set the age qualification of the directors at forty, and thus debarred himself as candidate, as he was only thirty-four. The direction of affairs having passed into the hands of Talleyrand and his associates, Daunou turned once more to literature, but in 1798 he was sent to Rome to organize the republic there, and again, almost against his will, he lent his aid to Napoleon in the preparation of the constitution of the year VIII. His attitude towards Napoleon was not lacking in independence, but in this controversy with the pope, the emperor was able again to secure from him the learned treatise Sur la puissance temporelle du Pape (1809). Still he took little part in the new régime, with which at heart he had no sympathy, and turned more and more to literature. At the Restoration he was deprived of the post of archivist of the empire, which he had held from 1807, but from 1819 to 1830 (when he again became archivist of the kingdom) he held the chair of history and ethics at the Collège de France, and his courses were among the most famous of that age of public lectures. During the reign of Louis Philippe he received many honours. In 1839 he was made a peer. He died in 1840.
In politics Daunou was a Girondist without combativeness; a confirmed republican, who lent himself always to the policy of conciliation, but whose probity remained unchallenged. He belonged essentially to the centre, and lacked both the genius and the temperament which would secure for him a commanding place in a revolutionary era. As an historian his breadth of view is remarkable for his time; for although thoroughly imbued with the classical spirit of the 18th century, he was able to do justice to the middle ages. His Discours sur l’état des lettres au XIIIe siècle, in the sixteenth volume of the Histoire littéraire de France, is a remarkable contribution to that vast collection, especially as coming from an author so profoundly learned in the ancient classics. Daunou’s lectures at the Collège de France, collected and published after his death, fill twenty volumes (Cours d’études historiques, 1842-1846). They treat principally of the criticism of sources and the proper method of writing history, and occupy an important place in the evolution of the scientific study of history in France. All his works were written in the most elegant style and chaste diction; but apart from his share in the editing of the Historiens de la France, they were mostly in the form of separate articles on literary and historical subjects. Personally Daunou was reserved and somewhat austere, preserving in his habits a strange mixture of bourgeois and monk. His indefatigable work as archivist in the time when Napoleon was transferring so many treasures to Paris is not his least claim to the gratitude of scholars.
See Mignet, Notice historique sur la vie et les travaux de Daunou (Paris, 1843); Taillandier, Documents bibliographiques sur Daunou (Paris, 1847), including a full list of his works; Sainte-Beuve, Daunou in his Portraits Contemporains, t. iii. (unfavourable and somewhat unfair).
DAUPHIN (Lat. Delphinus), an ancient feudal title in France, borne only by the counts and dauphins of Vienne, the dauphins of Auvergne, and from 1364 by the eldest sons of the kings of France. The origin of this curious title is obscure and has been the subject of much ingenious controversy; but it now seems clear that it was in the first instance a proper name. Among the Norsemen, and in the countries colonized by them, the name Dolphin or Dolfin (dolfr, “a wound”) was fairly common, e.g. in the north of England; thus a Dolfin is mentioned among the tenants-in-chief in Domesday Book, and there was a Dolphin, lord of Carlisle, towards the end of the 11th century. It has thus been conjectured by some that the dauphins of Vienne derived their title from Teutonic sources through Germany. But in the south, too, the name—not necessarily derived from the same root—was not unknown, though exceedingly rare, and was moreover illustrated by two conspicuous figures in the Catholic martyrology: St Delphinus, bishop of Bordeaux from 380 to 404, and St Annemundus, surnamed Dalfinus, bishop of Lyons from c. 650 to 657. Whatever its origin, this name was borne by Guigo, or Guigue IV. (d. 1142), count of Albon and Grenoble, as an additional name, during the lifetime of his father, and was also adopted by his son Guigue V. Beatrice, daughter and heiress of Guigue V., whose second husband was Hugh III., duke of Burgundy, bestowed the name on their son André, to recall his descent from the ancient house of the counts of Albon, and in the charters he is called sometimes Andreas Dalphinus, sometimes Dalphinus simply, but his style is still “count of Albon and Vienne.” His successors Guigue VI. (d. 1270) and John I. (d. 1282) call themselves sometimes Delphinus, sometimes Delphini, the name being obviously treated as a patronymic, and in the latter form it was borne by the sons of the reigning “dauphin.” But even under Guigue VI. foreigners had begun to confuse the name with a title of dignity, an imperial diploma of 1248 describing Guigue as “Guigo Dalphinus Viennensis.”