DÜPPEL, a village of Germany, in the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein, opposite the town of Sonderburg (on the island of Alsen). (Pop. 600.) The position of Düppel, forming as it does a bridge-head for the defenders of the island of Alsen, played a conspicuous part in the wars between Denmark and the Germans. On the 28th of May 1848 the German federal troops were there defeated by the Danes under General Hedemann, and a second battle was fought on the 6th of June 1848. On the 13th of April 1849 an indecisive battle was fought between the federal troops under von Prittwitz and the Danes under von Bulow. The most important event in the military history of Düppel was, however, the siege by the Prussians of the Danish position in 1864. The flanks of the defenders’ line rested upon the Alsen Sund and the sea, and it was strengthened by ten redoubts. A second line of trenches with lunettes at intervals was constructed behind the front attacked, and a small réduit opposite Sonderburg to cover the bridges between Alsen and the mainland. The Prussian siege corps was commanded by Prince Frederick Charles (headquarters, Düppel village), and after three weeks’ skirmishing a regular siege was begun, the batteries being opened on the 15th of March. The first parallel was completed fifteen days later, the front of attack being redoubts II. to VI., forming the centre of the Danish entrenchments on the road Düppel-Sonderburg. The siege was pushed rapidly from the first parallel and the assault delivered on the 18th of April, against the redoubts I. to VI., each redoubt being attacked by a separate column. The whole line was carried after a brief but severe conflict, and the Prussians had penetrated to and captured the réduit opposite Sonderburg by 2 P.M. The loss of the Danes, half of whose forces were not engaged, included 1800 killed and wounded and 3400 prisoners. This operation was followed by the daring passage of the Alsen Sund, effected by the Prussians in boats almost under the guns of the Danish war-ships, and resulting in the capture of the whole island of Alsen (June 29th, 1864). After being still further strengthened and linked with similar defences at Sonderburg, the Düppel entrenchments were abandoned in 1881 in favour of landward fortifications around Kiel.
See R. Neumann, Über den Angriff der Düppeler Schanzen in der Zeit vom 15. März bis 18. April 1864 (Berlin, 1865); and Der deutschdänische Krieg 1864, published by the Prussian General Staff (Berlin, 1887).
DU PRAT, ANTOINE (1463-1535), chancellor of France and cardinal, was born at Issoire on the 17th of January 1463. He began life as a lawyer, and rose rapidly in the legal hierarchy owing to the influence of his cousin Antoine Bohier, cardinal archbishop of Bourges. The first office which he held was that of lieutenant-general in the bailliage of Montferrand; in 1507 he became first president of the parlement of Paris. Louise of Savoy had employed him as her adviser in her affairs, and had made him tutor to her son. When Francis I. ascended the throne he made Du Prat chancellor of France, in which capacity he played an important part in the government. It was he who negotiated with Leo X. concerning the abolition of the Pragmatic Sanction and the establishment of a concordat. After the meeting of the Field of the Cloth of Gold (1520) he was engaged in unsuccessful negotiations with Wolsey. During the regency of Louise of Savoy he, together with Florimond Robertet, was at the head of affairs. He took an active part in the suit brought by Louise of Savoy against the Constable de Bourbon, and in 1532 completed the work of uniting Brittany to France. After the death of his wife in 1507 Du Prat had taken orders; he received the bishoprics of Valence, Die, Meaux and Albi, and the archbishopric of Sens (1525); in 1527 he became cardinal, and in 1530 papal legate. He was a determined adversary of the Reformation. He died on the 9th of July 1535.
See the marquis Du Prat, Vie d’Antoine Du Prat (Paris, 1857).
DUPRÉ, JULES (1812-1889), French painter, was one of the chief members of the Barbizon group of romantic landscape painters. If Corot stands for the lyric and Rousseau for the epic aspect of the poetry of nature, Dupré is the exponent of her tragic and dramatic aspects. He was the son of a porcelain manufacturer, and started his career in his father’s works, whence he went to his uncle’s china factory at Sèvres. After studying for some time under Diébold, a painter of clock faces, he had to pass through a short period of privation, until he attracted the attention of a wealthy patron, who came to his studio and bought all the studies on the walls at the price demanded by the artist—20 francs apiece. Dupré exhibited first at the Salon in 1831, and three years later was awarded a second-class medal. In the same year he came to England, where he was deeply impressed by the genius of Constable. From him he learnt how to express movement in nature; and the district of Southampton and Plymouth, with its wide, unbroken expanses of water, sky and ground, gave him good opportunities for studying the tempestuous motion of storm-clouds and the movement of foliage driven by the wind. He received the cross of the Legion of Honour in 1848. Dupré’s colour is sonorous and resonant; the subjects for which he showed marked preference are dramatic sunset effects and stormy skies and seas. Late in life he changed his style and gained appreciably in largeness of handling and arrived at greater simplicity in his colour harmonies. Among his chief works are the “Morning” and “Evening” at the Louvre, and the early “Crossing the Bridge” in the Wallace Collection.
DUPUIS, CHARLES FRANÇOIS (1742-1809), French scientific writer and politician, was born of poor parents at Trye-Château, between Gisors and Chaumont, on the 26th of October 1742. His father, who was a teacher, instructed him in mathematics and land-surveying. While he was engaged in measuring a tower by a geometrical method, the duc de la Rochefoucauld met him and was so taken by the lad’s intelligence that he gave him a bursary in the college of Harcourt. Dupuis made such rapid progress that, at the age of twenty-four, he was appointed professor of rhetoric at the college of Lisieux, where he had previously passed as a licentiate of theology. In his hours of leisure he studied law, and in 1770 he abandoned the clerical career and became an advocate. Two university discourses which he delivered in Latin were printed, and laid the foundation of his literary fame. His chief attention, however, was devoted to mathematics, the object of his early studies; and for some years he attended the astronomical lectures of Lalande, with whom he formed an intimate friendship. In 1778 he constructed a telegraph on the principle suggested by Guillaume Amontons (q.v.), and employed it in keeping up a correspondence with his friend Jean Fortin in the neighbouring village of Bagneux, until the Revolution made it necessary to destroy his machine to avoid suspicion. About the same time Dupuis formed his theory as to the origin of the Greek months. He endeavoured to account for the want of any resemblance between the groups of stars and the names by which they are known, by supposing that the zodiac was, for the people who invented it, a sort of calendar at once astronomical and rural, and that the figures chosen for the constellations were such as would naturally suggest the agricultural operations of the season. It seemed only necessary, therefore, to discover the clime and the period in which the constellation of Capricorn must have arisen with the sun on the day of the summer solstice, and the vernal equinox must have occurred under Libra. It appeared to Dupuis that this clime was Upper Egypt, and that the perfect correspondence between the signs and their significations had existed in that country at a period of between fifteen and sixteen thousand years before the present time; that it had existed only there; and that this harmony had been disturbed by the effect of the precession of the equinoxes. He therefore ascribed the invention of the signs of the zodiac to the people who then inhabited Upper Egypt or Ethiopia. This was the basis on which Dupuis established his mythological system, and endeavoured to explain fabulous history and the whole system of the theogony and theology of the ancients. Dupuis published several detached parts of his system in the Journal des savants for 1777 and 1781. These he afterwards collected and published, first in Lalande’s Astronomy, and then in a separate volume in 4to, 1781, under the title of Mémoire sur l’origine des constellations et sur l’explication de la fable par l’astronomie. The theory propounded in this memoir was refuted by J.S. Bailly in his Histoire de l’astronomie, but, at the same time, with a just acknowledgment of the erudition and ingenuity exhibited by the author.