execution by drowning in Switzerland was in 1652, in Austria 1776, in Iceland 1777; while in France during the Revolution the penalty was revived in the terrible Noyades carried out by the terrorist Jean Baptiste Carrier at Nantes. It was abolished in Russia at the beginning of the 18th century.
DROYSEN, JOHANN GUSTAV (1808–1884), German historian, was born on the 6th of July 1808 at Treptow in Pomerania. His father, Johann Christoph Droysen, was an army chaplain, in which capacity he was present at the celebrated siege of Kolberg in 1806–7. As a child young Droysen witnessed some of the military operations during the War of Liberation, for his father was pastor at Greifenhagen, in the immediate neighbourhood of Stettin, which was held by the French during the greater part of 1813. The impressions of these early years laid the foundation of the ardent attachment to Prussia which distinguished him, like so many other historians of his generation. He was educated at the gymnasium of Stettin and at the university of Berlin; in 1829 he became a master at the Graue Kloster (or Grey Friars), one of the oldest schools in Berlin; besides his work there he gave lectures at the university, from 1833 as privat-dozent, and from 1835 as professor, without a salary. During these years he was occupied with classical antiquity; he published a translation of Aeschylus and a paraphrase of Aristophanes, but the work by which he made himself known as a historian was his Geschichte Alexanders des Grossen (Berlin, 1833, and other editions), a book which still remains probably the best work on the subject. It was in some ways the herald of a new school of German historical thought, for it shows that idealization of power and success which he had learnt from the teaching of Hegel. It was followed by other volumes dealing with the successors of Alexander, published under the title of Geschichte des Hellenismus (Hamburg, 1836–1843). A new and revised edition of the whole work was published in 1885; it has been translated into French, but not into English.
In 1840 Droysen was appointed professor of history at Kiel. He was at once attracted into the political movement for the defence of the rights of the Elbe duchies, of which Kiel was the centre. Like his predecessor F. C. Dahlmann, he placed his historical learning at the service of the estates of Schleswig-Holstein and composed the address of 1844, in which the estates protested against the claim of the king of Denmark to alter the law of succession in the duchies. In 1848 he was elected a member of the Frankfort parliament, and acted as secretary to the committee for drawing up the constitution. He was a determined supporter of Prussian ascendancy, and was one of the first members to retire after the king of Prussia refused the imperial crown in 1849. During the next two years he continued to support the cause of the duchies, and in 1850, with Carl Samwer, he published a history of the dealings of Denmark with Schleswig-Holstein, Die Herzogthümer Schleswig-Holstein und das Königreich Dänemark seit dem Jahre 1806 (Hamburg, 1850). A translation was published in London in the same year under the title The Policy of Denmark towards the Duchies of Schleswig-Holstein. The work was one of great political importance, and had much to do with the formation of German public opinion on the rights of the duchies in their struggle with Denmark.
After 1851 it was impossible for him to remain at Kiel, and he was appointed to a professorship at Jena; in 1859 he was called to Berlin, where he remained till his death. In his later years he was almost entirely occupied with Prussian history. In 1851 he brought out a life of Count Yorck von Wartenburg (Berlin, 1851–1852, and many later editions), one of the best biographies in the German language, and then began his great work on the Geschichte der preussischen Politik (Berlin, 1855–1886). Seven volumes were published, the last not till after his death. It forms a complete history of the growth of the Prussian monarchy down to the year 1756. This, like all Droysen’s work, shows a strongly marked individuality, and a great power of tracing the manner in which important dynamic forces worked themselves out in history. It was this characteristic quality of comprehensiveness that also gave him so much influence as a teacher.
Droysen, who was twice married, died in Berlin on the 19th of June 1884. His eldest son, Gustav, is the author of several well-known historical works, namely, Gustav Adolf (Leipzig, 1869–1870); Herzog Bernhard von Weimar (Leipzig, 1885); an admirable Historischer Handatlas (Leipzig, 1885), and several writings on various events of the Thirty Years’ War. Another son, Hans Droysen, is the author of some works on Greek history and antiquities.
See M. Duncker, Johann Gustav Droysen, ein Nachruf (Berlin, 1885); and Dahlmann-Waitz, Quellenkunde der deutschen Geschichte (Leipzig, 1906). (J. W. He.)
DROZ, ANTOINE GUSTAVE (1832–1895), French man of letters, son of the sculptor J. A. Droz (1807–1872), was born in Paris on the 9th of June 1832. He was educated as an artist, and began to exhibit in the Salon of 1857. A series of sketches dealing gaily and lightly with the intimacies of family life, published in the Vie parisienne and issued in book form as Monsieur, Madame et Bébé (1866), won for the author an immediate and great success. Entre nous (1867) was built on a similar plan, and was followed by some psychological novels: Le Cahier bleu de Mlle Cibot (1868); Autour d’une source (1869); Un Paquet de lettres (1870); Babolein (1872); Les Étangs (1875); L’Enfant (1885). His Tristesses et sourires (1884) is a delicate analysis of the niceties of family intercourse and its difficulties. Droz’s first book was translated into English under the title of Papa, Mamma and Baby (1887). Un Été à la campagne, a book which caused considerable scandal, was erroneously attributed to him. He died on the 22nd of October 1895.
DROZ, FRANÇOIS-XAVIER JOSEPH (1773–1850), French writer on ethics and political science, was born on the 31st of October 1773 at Besançon, where his family had furnished men of considerable mark to the legal profession. His own legal studies led him to Paris in 1792; he arrived on the very day after the dethronement of the king, and was present during the massacres of September; on the declaration of war he joined the volunteer bataillon of the Doubs, and for the next three years served in the Army of the Rhine. Receiving his discharge on the score of ill-health, he obtained a much more congenial post in the newly-founded école centrale of Besançon; and in 1799 he made his first appearance as an author by an Essai sur l’art oratoire (Paris, Fructidor, An VII.), in which he acknowledges his indebtedness more especially to Hugh Blair. Removing to Paris in 1803, he became intimate not only with the like-minded Ducis, but also with the sceptical Cabanis; and it was on this philosopher’s advice that, in order to catch the public ear, he produced the romance of Lina, which Sainte-Beuve has characterized as a mingled echo of Florian and Werther. Like several other literary men of the time, he obtained a post in the revenue office known as the Droits réunis; but from 1814 he devoted himself exclusively to literature and became a contributor to various journals. Already favourably known by his Essai sur l’art d’être heureux (Paris, 1806), his Éloge de Montaigne (1812), and his Essai sur le beau dans les arts (1815), he not only gained the Monthyon prize in 1823 by his work De la philosophie morale ou des différents systèmes sur la science de la vie, but also in 1824 obtained admission to the Académie Française. The main doctrine inculcated in this last treatise is that society will never be in a proper state till men have been educated to think of their duties and not of their rights. It was followed in 1825 by Application de la morale à la philosophie et à la politique, and in 1829 by Économie politique, ou principes de la science des richesses, a methodical and clearly written treatise, which was edited by Michel Chevalier in 1854. His next and greatest work was a Histoire du règne de Louis XVI (3 vols., Paris, 1839–1842). As he advanced in life Droz became more and more decidedly religious, and the last work of his prolific pen was Pensées du Christianisme (1842). Few have left so blameless a reputation: in the words of Sainte-Beuve, he was born and he remained all his life of the race of the good and the just.
See Guizot, Discours académiques; Montalembert, “Discours de réception,” in Mémoires de l’Académie française; Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, t. iii.; Michel Chevalier, Notice prefixed to the Économie politique.
