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 XIII e 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.”
It was not until the third dynasty, founded by the marriage of Anne, heiress of John I., with Humbert, lord of La Tour du Pin, that “dauphin” became definitely established as a title. Humbert not only assumed the name of Delphinus, but styled himself regularly Dauphin of the Viennois (Dalphinus Viennensis), and in a treaty concluded in 1285 between Humbert and Robert, duke of Burgundy, the word delphinatus (Dauphiné) appears for the first time, as a synonym for comitatus (county). In 1349 Humbert II., the last of his race, sold Dauphiné to Charles of Valois, who, when he became king of France in 1364, transferred it to his eldest son. From that time the eldest sons of the kings of France were always either actual or titular dauphins of the Viennois. The “canting arms” of a dolphin, which they quartered with the royal fleurs de lys, were originally assumed by Dauphin, count of Clermont, instead of the arms of Auvergne (the earliest extant example is appended to a deed of 1199), and from him they were borrowed by the counts of the Viennois. Guigue VI. used this device on his secret seal from his accession, the earliest extant example dating from 1237, but, though no specimens have survived, M. Prudhomme thinks it probable that the dolphin was also borne by André Dauphin. It was also assumed by Guigue V., count of Forez (1203–1241), a descendant of Guigue Raymond of the Viennois, count of Forez, in right of his wife Ida Raymonde. It is thus abundantly clear that the name of Dauphin was not assumed from the armorial device, but vice versa.
The eldest son of the French king was sometimes called “the king dauphin” (le roy daulphin), to distinguish him from the dauphin of Auvergne, who was known, since Auvergne became an appanage of the royal house, as “the prince dauphin.” The dauphinate of Auvergne, which is to be distinguished from the county, dates from 1155, when William VII., count of Auvergne, was deposed by his uncle William VIII. “the Old.” William VII. had married a daughter of Guigue IV. Dauphin, after whom their son was named Dauphin (Delphinus). The name continued, as in Viennois, as a patronymic, and was not used as a title until 1281, when Robert II., count of Clermont, in his will, styles himself for the first time Dauphin of Auvergne (Alvernie delphinus) for the portion of the county of Auvergne left to his house. In 1428 Jeanne, heiress of the dauphin Béraud III., married Louis de Bourbon, count of Montpensier (d. 1486), thus bringing the
