DUPERRON, JACQUES DAVY (1556-1618), French cardinal, was born at St Lô, in Normandy, on the 15th of November 1556. His father was a physician, who on embracing the doctrines of the Reformation became a Protestant minister, and to escape persecution settled at Bern, in Switzerland. Here Jacques Davy received his education, being taught Latin and mathematics by his father, and learning Greek and Hebrew and the philosophy then in vogue. Returning to Normandy he was presented to the king by Jacques of Matignon; after he had abjured Protestantism, being again presented by Philip Desportes, abbot of Tiron, as a young man without equal for knowledge and talent, he was appointed reader to the king. He was commanded to preach before the king at the convent of Vincennes, when the success of his sermon on the love of God, and of a funeral oration on the poet Ronsard, induced him to take orders. On the death of Mary queen of Scots he was chosen to pronounce her eulogy. On the death of Henry III., after having supported for some time the cardinal de Bourbon, the head of the league against the king, Duperron became a faithful servant of Henry IV., and in 1591 was created by him bishop of Evreux. He instructed Henry in the Catholic religion; and in 1594 was sent to Rome, where with Cardinal d’Ossat (1536-1604) he obtained Henry’s absolution. On his return to his diocese, his zeal and eloquence were largely instrumental in withstanding the progress of Calvinism, and among others he converted Henry Sponde, who became bishop of Pamiers, and the Swiss general Sancy. At the conference at Fontainebleau in 1600 he argued with much eloquence and ingenuity against Du Plessis Mornay (1549-1623). In 1604 he was sent to Rome as chargé d’affaires de France; when Clement VIII. died, he largely contributed by his eloquence to the election of Leo XI. to the papal throne, and, on the death of Leo twenty-four days after, to the election of Paul V. While still at Rome he was made a cardinal, and in 1606 became archbishop of Sens. After the death of Henry IV. he took an active part in the states-general of 1614, when he vigorously upheld the ultramontane doctrines against the Third Estate. He died in Paris on the 6th of September 1618.
See Les Diverses Œuvres de l’illustrissime cardinal Duperron (Paris, 1622); Pierre Féret, Le Cardinal Duperron (Paris, 1877).
DUPIN, ANDRÉ MARIE JEAN JACQUES (1783-1865), commonly called Dupin the Elder, French advocate, president of the chamber of deputies and of the Legislative Assembly, was born at Varzy, in Nièvre, on the 1st of February 1783. He was educated by his father, who was a lawyer of eminence, and at an early age he became principal clerk of an attorney at Paris. On the establishment of the Académie de Législation he entered it as pupil from Nièvre. In 1800 he was made advocate, and in 1802, when the schools of law were opened, he received successively the degrees of licentiate and doctor from the new faculty. He was in 1810 an unsuccessful candidate for the chair of law at Paris, and in 1811 he also failed to obtain the office of advocate-general at the court of cassation. About this time he was added to the commission charged with the classification of the laws of the empire, and, after the interruption caused by the events of 1814 and 1815, was charged with the sole care of that great work. When he entered the chamber of deputies in 1815 he at once took an active part in the debates as a member of the Liberal Opposition, and strenuously opposed the election of the son of Napoleon as emperor after his father’s abdication. At the election after the second restoration Dupin was not re-elected. He defended with great intrepidity the principal political victims of the reaction, among others, in conjunction with Nicolas Berryer, Marshal Ney; and in October 1815 boldly published a tractate entitled Libre Défense des accusés. In 1827 he was again elected a member of the chamber of deputies and in 1830 he voted the address of the 221, and on the 28th of February he was in the streets exhorting the citizens to resistance. At the end of 1832 he became president of the chamber, which office he held successively for eight years. On Louis Philippe’s abdication in 1848 Dupin introduced the young count of Paris into the chamber, and proposed him as king with the duchess of Orleans as regent. This attempt failed, but Dupin submitted to circumstances, and, retaining the office of procureur-général, his first act was to decide that justice should henceforth be rendered to the “name of the French people.” In 1849 he was elected a member of the Assembly, and became president of the principal committee—that on legislation. After the coup d’état of the 2nd of December 1851 he still retained his office of procureur-général, and did not resign it until effect was given to the decrees confiscating the property of the house of Orleans. In 1857 he was offered his old office by the emperor, and accepted it, explaining his acceptance in a discourse, a sentence of which may be employed to describe his whole political career. “I have always,” he said, “belonged to France and never to parties.” He died on the 8th of November 1865. Among Dupin’s works, which are numerous, may be mentioned Principia Juris Civilis, 5 vols. (1806); Mémoires et plaidoyers de 1806 au 1er Janvier 1830, in 20 vols.; and Mémoires ou souvenirs du barreau, in 4 vols. (1855-1857).
His brother, François Pierre Charles Dupin (1784-1873), wrote several geometrical works, treating of descriptive geometry after the manner of Monge, and of the theory of curves.
DU PIN, LOUIS ELLIES (1657-1719), French ecclesiastical historian, came of a noble family of Normandy, and was born at Paris on the 17th of June 1657. When ten years old he entered the college of Harcourt, where he graduated M.A. in 1672. He afterwards became a pupil of the Sorbonne, and received the degree of B.D. in 1680 and that of D.D. in 1684. About this time he conceived the idea of his Bibliothèque universelle de tous les auteurs ecclésiastiques, the first volume of which appeared in 1686. The liberty with which he there treated the doctrines of the Fathers aroused ecclesiastical prejudice, and the archbishop of Paris condemned the work. Although Du Pin consented to a retractation, the book was suppressed in 1693; he was, however, allowed again to continue it on changing its title by substituting nouvelle for universelle. He was subsequently exiled to Châtellerault as a Jansenist, but the sentence of banishment was repealed on a new retractation. In 1718 he entered into a correspondence with William Wake, archbishop of Canterbury, with a view to a union of the English and Gallican churches; being suspected of projecting a change in the dogmas of the church, his papers were seized in February 1719, but nothing incriminating was found. The same zeal for union induced him, during the residence of Peter the Great in France, and at that monarch’s request, to draw up a plan for uniting the Greek and Roman churches. He died at Paris on the 6th of June 1719.
Du Pin was a voluminous author. Besides his great work (Paris, 1686-1704, 58 vols. 8vo; Amsterdam, 19 vols. 4to; in the last of which he gives much autobiographical information), mention may be made of Bibliothèque universelle des historiens (2 vols., 1707); L’Histoire de l’église en abrégé (1712); and L’Histoire profane depuis le commencement du monde jusqu’à présent (4 vols., 1712).
DUPLEIX, JOSEPH FRANÇOIS (1697-1763), governor-general of the French establishment in India, the great rival of Clive (q.v.), was born at Landrecies, France, on the 1st of January 1697. His father, François Dupleix, a wealthy farmer-general, wished to bring him up as a merchant, and, in order to distract him from his taste for science, sent him on a voyage to India in 1715 on one of the French East India Company’s vessels. He made several voyages to America and India, and in 1720 was named a member of the superior council at Pondicherry. He displayed great business aptitude, and, in addition to his official duties, made large ventures on his own account, and acquired a fortune. In 1730 he was made superintendent of French affairs in Chandernagore, the town prospering under his energetic administration and growing into great importance. His reputation procured him in 1742 the appointment of governor-general of all French establishments in India. His ambition now was to acquire for France vast territories in India; and for this purpose he entered into relations with the native princes, and adopted a style of oriental splendour in his dress and surroundings. The British took the alarm. But the danger to their settlements and power was partly averted by the bitter mutual jealousy which existed between Dupleix and La Bourdonnais, French governor of the isle of Bourbon. When Madras capitulated to the French in 1764, Dupleix opposed the restoration of the town to the British, thus violating the treaty signed by La Bourdonnais. He then sent an expedition against Fort St David (1747), which was defeated on its march by the nawab of Arcot, the ally of the British. Dupleix succeeded in gaining over the nawab, and again attempted the capture of Fort St David, but unsuccessfully. A midnight attack on Cuddalore was repulsed with great loss. In 1748 Pondicherry was besieged by the British; but in the course of the operations news arrived of the peace concluded between the French and the British at Aix-la-Chapelle. Dupleix next entered into negotiations which had for their object the subjugation of southern India, and he sent a large body of troops to the aid of two claimants of the sovereignty of the Carnatic and the Deccan. The British were engaged on the side of their rivals. After temporary successes the scheme failed. Dupleix was a great organizer, but did not possess the genius for command in the field that was shown by Clive. The conflicts between the French and the British in India continued till 1754, when the French government, anxious to make peace, sent out to India a special commissioner with orders to supersede Dupleix and, if necessary, to arrest him. These orders were carried out with needless harshness, what survived of Dupleix’s work was ruined at a blow, and he himself was compelled to embark for France on the 12th of October 1754. He had spent his private fortune in the prosecution of his public policy; the company refused to acknowledge the obligation; and the government would do nothing for a man whom they persisted in regarding as an ambitious and greedy adventurer. The greatest of French colonial governors died in obscurity and want on the 10th of November 1763. In 1741 he had married Jeanne Albert, widow of one of the councillors of the company, a woman of strong character and intellect, known to the Hindus as Joanna Begum, who proved of great use to her husband in his negotiations with the native princes. She died in 1756, and two years later he married again.