Condorcet proposed Dupuis to Frederick the Great of Prussia as a fit person to succeed Thiébault in the professorship of literature at Berlin; and Dupuis had accepted the invitation, when the death of the king cancelled the engagement. The chair of humanity in the College of France having at the same time become vacant, it was conferred on Dupuis; and in 1788 he became a member of the Academy of Inscriptions. He now resigned his professorship at Lisieux, and was appointed by the administrators of the department of Paris one of the four commissioners of public instruction. At the outbreak of the Revolutionary troubles Dupuis sought safety at Évreux; and, having been chosen a member of the National Convention by the department of Seine-et-Oise, he distinguished himself by his moderation. In the third year of the republic he was elected secretary to the Assembly, and in the fourth he was chosen a member of the Council of Five Hundred. After Bonaparte’s coup d’état of the 18th Brumaire he was elected by the department of Seine-et-Oise a member of the Legislative Body, of which he became the president. He was proposed as a candidate for the senate, but resolved to abandon politics, devoting himself during the rest of his life to his favourite studies.
In 1795 he published the work by which he is best known, entitled Origine de tous les cultes, ou la religion universelle (3 vols. 4to, with an atlas, or 12 vols. 12mo). This work, of which an edition revised by P.R. Auguis was published in 1822 (10th ed., 1835-1836), became the subject of much bitter controversy, and the theory it propounded as to the origin of mythology in Upper Egypt led to the expedition organized by Napoleon for the exploration of that country. In 1798 Dupuis published an abridgment of his work in one volume 8vo, which met with no better success than the original. Another abridgment of the same work, executed upon a much more methodical plan, was published by M. de Tracy. The other works of Dupuis consist of two memoirs on the Pelasgi, inserted in the Memoirs of the Institute; a memoir “On the Zodiac of Tentyra,” published in the Revue philosophique for May 1806; and a Mémoire explicatif du zodiaque chronologique et mythologique, published the same year, in one volume 4to. He died on the 29th of September 1809.
DUPUY, CHARLES ALEXANDRE (1851- ), French statesman, was born at Le Puy on the 5th of November 1851, his father being a local official. After being a professor of philosophy in the provinces, he was appointed a school inspector, and thus obtained a practical acquaintance with the needs of French education. In 1885 he was elected to the chamber as an Opportunist Republican. After acting as “reporter” of the budget for public instruction, he became minister for the department, in M. Ribot’s cabinet, in 1892. In April 1893 he formed a ministry himself, taking as his office that of minister of the interior, but resigned at the end of November, and on 5th December was elected president of the chamber. During his first week of office an anarchist, Vaillant, who had managed to gain admission to the chamber, threw a bomb at the president, and M. Dupuy’s collected bearing, and his historic words: “Messieurs, la séance continue,” gained him much credit. In May 1894 he again became premier and minister of the interior; and he was by President Carnot’s side when the latter was stabbed to death at Lyons in June. He then became a candidate for the presidency, but was defeated, and his cabinet remained in office till January 1895; it was under it that Captain Dreyfus was arrested and condemned (23rd of December 1894). The progress of l’affaire then cast its shadow upon M. Dupuy, along with other French “ministrables,” but in November 1898, after M. Brisson had at last remitted the case to the judgment of the court of cassation, he formed a cabinet of Republican concentration. In view of the apparent likelihood that the judges of the criminal division of the court of cassation—who formed the ordinary tribunal for such an appeal—would decide in favour of Dreyfus, it was thought that M. Dupuy’s new cabinet would be strong enough to reconcile public opinion to such a result; but, to the surprise of outside observers, it was no sooner discovered how the judges were likely to decide than M. Dupuy proposed a law in the chamber transferring the decision to a full court of all the divisions of the court of cassation. This arbitrary act, though adopted by the chamber, was at once construed as a fresh attempt to maintain the judgment of the first court-martial; but in the interval President Faure (an anti-Dreyfusard) died, and the accession of M. Loubet doubtless had some effect in quieting public feeling. At all events, the whole court of cassation decided that there must be a new court-martial, and M. Dupuy at once resigned (June 1899). In June 1900 he was elected senator for the Haute Saône.
DUPUY, PIERRE (1582-1651), French scholar, otherwise known as Puteanus, was born at Agen (Lot-et-Garonne) on the 27th of November 1582. In 1615 he was commissioned by Mathieu Molé, first president of the parlement of Paris, to draw up an inventory of the documents which constituted what at that time was known as the Trésor des chartes. This work occupied eleven years. His MS. inventory is preserved in the original and in copy in the Bibliothèque Nationale, and transcriptions are in the national archives in Paris, at the record office in London, and elsewhere. Dupuy’s classification is still regarded with respect, but the inventory has been partially replaced by the publication of the Layettes du trésor (four volumes, coming down to 1270; 1863-1902). Dupuy also published, with his brother Jacques, and their friend Nicolas Rigault, the History of Aug. de Thou (1620, 1626). The two brothers then bought from Rigault the post of keeper of the king’s library, and drew up a catalogue of the library (Nos. 9352-9354 and 10366-10367 of the Latin collection in the Bibliothèque Nationale). In the course of this work, Dupuy became acquainted with and copied an enormous mass of unpublished documents, which furnished him with the material for some excellent works: Traité des droits et des libertés de l’église gallicane, avec les preuves (1639), Histoire de l’ordre militaire des Templiers (1654), Histoire générale du schisme qui a été dans l’église depuis 1378 jusqu’à 1428 (1654), and Histoire du différend entre le pape Boniface VIII et le roi Philippe le Bel (1655). These works, especially the last, are important contributions to the history of the relations of church and state in the middle ages. They were written from the Gallican standpoint, i.e. in favour of the rights of the crown in temporal and political matters, and this explains the delay in their publication until after Dupuy’s death. He wrote also Traité des régences et des majorités des rois de France (1655) and Recueil des droits du roi (1658). Dupuy’s papers, preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale, were inventoried by Léon Dorez (Catalogue de la collection Dupuy, 1899). See also L. Delisle’s Le Cabinet des manuscrits de la bibliothèque impériale. Dupuy died in Paris on the 14th of December 1651.
DUPUY DE LÔME, STANISLAS CHARLES HENRI LAURENT (1816-1885), French naval architect, the son of a retired naval officer, was born at Ploemeur, near Lorient, on the 15th of October 1816. He entered the École Polytechnique in 1835, and in 1842 was sent to England to study and report on iron shipbuilding. Acting on his report, which was published in 1844, the government built their first iron vessels under his supervision. He planned and built the steam line-of-battle ship “Napoleon” (1848-1852), and devised the method of altering sailing ships of the line into steamers, which was afterwards extensively practised in both France and England. He also showed the practicability of armouring the sides of a ship, and the frigate “Gloire” gave a very clear demonstration of his views. It was the beginning of the great change in the construction of ships of war which has been going on ever since. In 1857 Dupuy de Lôme was appointed “chef de la direction du matériel,” at Paris; and in 1861, “inspecteur général du matériel de la marine.” In 1866 he was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences. At the beginning of the Franco-German War he was appointed a member of the committee of defence, and during the siege of Paris occupied himself with planning a steerable balloon, for carrying out which he was given a credit of 40,000 fr.; but the balloon was not ready till a few days before the capitulation. The experiments that were afterwards made with it did not prove entirely satisfactory. In 1875 he was busy over a scheme for embarking a railway train at Calais, and exhibited plans of the improved harbour and models of the “bateaux porte-trains” to the Academy of Sciences in July. In 1877 he was elected a senator for life. He received the cross of the Legion of Honour in 1845, was made a commander in 1858, and grand officer in December 1863. He died at Paris on the 1st of February 1885.
DUPUYTREN, GUILLAUME, Baron (1777-1835), French anatomist and surgeon, was born on the 6th of October 1777 at Pierre Buffière (Haute Vienne). He studied medicine in Paris at the newly established École de Médecine, and was appointed by competition prosector when only eighteen years of age. His early studies were directed chiefly to morbid anatomy. In 1803 he was appointed assistant-surgeon at the Hôtel-Dieu, and in 1811 professor of operative surgery in succession to R.B. Sabatier (1732-1811). In 1815 he was appointed to the chair of clinical surgery, and became head surgeon at the Hôtel-Dieu. Dupuytren’s energy and industry were alike remarkable. He visited the Hôtel-Dieu morning and evening, performing at each time several operations, lectured to vast throngs of students, gave advice to his outdoor patients, and fulfilled the duties consequent upon one of the largest practices of modern times. By his indefatigable activity he amassed a fortune of £300,000, the bulk of which he bequeathed to his daughter, with the deduction of considerable sums for the endowment of the anatomical chair in the École de Médecine, and the establishment of a benevolent institution for distressed medical men. The most important of Dupuytren’s writings is his Treatise on Artificial Anus, in which he applied the principles laid down by John Hunter. In his operations he was remarkable for his skill and dexterity, and for his great readiness of resource. He died in Paris on the 8th of February 1835.