DUROC, GÉRAUD CHRISTOPHE MICHEL, duc de Frioul (1772-1813), French general, was born at Pont à Mousson (Meurthe et Moselle) on the 25th of October 1772. The son of an officer, he was educated at the military schools of his native town and of Châlons. He was gazetted second lieutenant (artillery) in the 4th regiment in 1793, and advanced steadily in the service. Captain Duroc became aide-de-camp to Napoleon in 1796, and distinguished himself at Isonzo, Brenta and Gradisca in the Italian campaigns of 1796-97. He served in Egypt, and was seriously wounded at Aboukir. His devotion to Napoleon was rewarded by complete confidence. He became first aide-de-camp (1798), general of brigade (1800), and governor of the Tuileries. After the battle of Marengo he was sent on missions to Vienna, St Petersburg, Stockholm and Copenhagen. As grand marshal of the Tuileries he was responsible for the measures taken to secure Napoleon’s personal safety whether in France or on his campaigns, and he directed the minutest details of the imperial household. After Austerlitz, where he commanded the grenadiers in the absence of General Oudinot, he was employed in a series of important negotiations with Frederick William of Prussia, with the elector of Saxony (December 1806), in the incorporation of certain states in the Confederation of the Rhine, and in the conclusion of the armistice of Znaim (July 1808). In 1808 he was created duke of Friuli, and after the Russian campaign he became senator (1813). He was in attendance on Napoleon at the battle of Bautzen (20th-21st May 1813) in Saxony, when he was mortally wounded, and died in a farmhouse near the battlefield on the 23rd of May. Napoleon bought the farm and erected a monument to his memory. Duroc was buried in the Invalides.
The chief source for Duroc’s biography is the Moniteur (31st of May 1797, 24th of October 1798, 30th of May 1813, &c.).
DUROCHER, JOSEPH MARIE ELISABETH (1817-1858), French geologist, was born at Rennes on the 31st of May 1817. Educated at the École Polytechnique and École des Mines in Paris, he qualified as a mining engineer. Early in his career he travelled in the northern parts of Europe to study the metalliferous deposits, and he contributed the articles on geology, mineralogy, metallurgy and chemistry to Paul Gaimard’s Voyages de la Commission scientifique du nord, en Scandinavie, en Laponie, au Spitzberg et aux Feröe, pendant les années 1838-1840. In 1844 he became professor of geology and mineralogy at Rennes. His attention was now largely directed to the study of the artificial production of minerals, to the metamorphism of rocks, and to the genesis of igneous rocks. In 1857 he published his famous Essai de pétrologie comparée, in which he expressed the view that the igneous rocks have been derived from two magmas which coexist beneath the solid crust, and are respectively acid and basic. He died at Rennes on the 3rd of December 1858.
DURRA (also written dourah, dhura, &c.; Arabic for a pearl, hence a grain of corn), a cereal grass, Sorghum vulgare, extensively cultivated in tropical and semi-tropical countries, where the grain, made into bread, forms an important article of diet. In non-Arabic-speaking countries it is known by other names, such as Indian or African millet, pearl millet, Guinea corn and Kaffir corn. In India it is called jowari, jowaree, jawari, &c. (Hindī, jawārī).
DURUY, JEAN VICTOR (1811-1894), French historian and statesman, was born in Paris on the 11th of September 1811. The son of a workman at the factory of the Gobelins, he was at first intended for his father’s trade, but succeeded in passing brilliantly through the École Normale Supérieure, where he studied under Michelet, whom he accompanied as secretary in his travels through France, supplying for him at the École Normale in 1836, when only twenty-four. Ill-health forced him to resign, and poverty drove him to undertake that extensive series of school textbooks which first brought him into public notice. He devoted himself with ardour to secondary school education, holding his chair in the Collège Henri IV. at Paris for over a quarter of a century. Already known as a historian by his Histoire des Romains et des peuples soumis à leur domination (2 vols., 1843-1844), he was chosen by Napoleon III. to assist him in his life of Julius Caesar, and his abilities being thus brought under the emperor’s notice, he was in 1863 appointed minister of education. In this position he displayed incessant activity, and a desire for broad and liberal reform which aroused the bitter hostility of the clerical party. Among his measures may be cited his organization of higher education (“enseignement spécial”), his foundation of the “conférences publiques,” which have now become universal throughout France, and of a course of secondary education for girls by lay teachers, and his introduction of modern history and modern languages into the curriculum both of the lycées and of the colleges. He greatly improved the state of primary education in France, and proposed to make it compulsory and gratuitous, but was not supported in this project by the emperor. In the new cabinet that followed the elections of 1869, Duruy was replaced by Louis Olivier Bourbeau, and was made a senator. After the fall of the Empire he took no part in politics, except for an unsuccessful candidature for the senate in 1876. From 1881 to 1886 he served as a member of the Conseil Supérieur de l’Instruction Publique. In 1884 he was elected to the Academy in succession to Mignet. He died in Paris on the 25th of November 1894.
As a historian Duruy aimed in his earlier works at a graphic and picturesque narrative which should make his subject popular. His fame, however, rests mainly on the revised edition of his Roman history, which appeared in a greatly enlarged form in 7 vols. under the title of Histoire des Romains depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’à la mort de Théodose (1879-1885), a really great work; a magnificent illustrated edition was published from 1879 to 1885 (English translation by W.J. Clarke, in 6 vols., 1883-1886). His Histoire des Grecs, similarly illustrated, appeared in 3 vols. from 1886 to 1891 (English translation in 4 vols., 1892). He was the editor, from its commencement in 1846, of the Histoire universelle, publiée par une société de professeurs et de savants, for which he himself wrote a “Histoire sainte d’après la Bible,” “Histoire grecque,” “Histoire romaine,” “Histoire du moyen âge,” “Histoire des temps modernes,” and “Abrégé de l’histoire de France.” His other works include Atlas historique de la France accompagné d’un volume de texte (1849); Histoire de France de 1453 à 1815 (1856), of which an expanded and illustrated edition appeared as Histoire de France depuis l’invasion des barbares dans la Gaule romaine jusqu’à nos jours (1892); Histoire populaire de la France (1862-1863); Histoire populaire contemporaine de la France (1864-1866); Causeries de voyage (1864); and Introduction générale à l’histoire de France (1865).
A memoir by Ernest Lavisse appeared in 1895 under the title of Un Ministre: Victor Duruy. See also the notice by Jules Simon (1895), and Portraits et souvenirs by S. Monod (1897).