France (Paris, 1768–1778). His last work, Chronicon Paschale a mundo condito ad Heraclii imperatoris annum vigesimum (Paris, 1689), was passing through the press when Du Cange died, and consequently it was edited by Étienne Baluze, and published with an éloge of the author prefixed.
His autograph manuscripts and his large and valuable library passed to his eldest son, Philippe du Fresne, who died unmarried in 1692. They then came to his second son, François du Fresne, who sold the collection, the greater part of the manuscripts being purchased by the abbé du Champs. The abbé handed them over to a bookseller named Mariette, who resold part of them to Baron Hohendorf. The remaining part was acquired by a member of the family of Hozier, the French genealogists. The French government, however, aware of the importance of all the writings of Du Cange, succeeded, after much trouble, in collecting the greater portion of the manuscripts, which were preserved in the imperial library at Paris. Some of these were subsequently published, and the manuscripts are now found in various libraries. The works of Du Cange published after his death are: an edition of the Byzantine historian, Nicephorus Gregoras (Paris, 1702); De imperatorum Constantinopolitanorum seu inferioris aevi vel imperii uti vocant numismatibus dissertatio (Rome, 1755); Histoire de l’état de la ville d’Amiens et de ses comtes (Amiens, 1840); and a valuable work Des principautés d’outre-mer, published by E. G. Rey as Les Familles d’outre-mer (Paris, 1869).
See H. Hardouin, Essai sur la vie et sur les ouvrages de Ducange (Amiens, 1849); and L. J. Feugère, in the Journal de l’instruction publique (Paris, 1852).
DUCANGE, VICTOR HENRI JOSEPH BRAHAIN (1783–1833), French novelist and dramatist, was born on the 24th of November 1783 at the Hague, where his father was secretary to the French embassy. Dismissed from the civil service at the Restoration, Victor Ducange became one of the favourite authors of the liberal party, and owed some part of his popularity to the fact that he was fined and imprisoned more than once for his outspokenness. He was six months in prison for an article in his journal Le Diable rose, ou le petit courrier de Lucifer (1822); for Valentine (1821), in which the royalist excesses in the south of France were pilloried, he was again imprisoned; and after the publication of Hélène ou l’amour et la guerre (1823), he took refuge for some time in Belgium. Ducange wrote numerous plays and melodramas, among which the most successful were Marco Loricot, ou le petit Chouan de 1830 (1836), and Trente ans, ou la vie d’un joueur (1827), in which Fréderick Lemaître found one of his best parts. Many of his books were prohibited, ostensibly for their coarseness, but perhaps rather for their political tendencies. He died in Paris on the 15th of October 1833.
DUCAS, Dukas or Doukas, the name of a Byzantine family which supplied several rulers to the Eastern Empire. The family first came into prominence during the 9th century, but was ruined when Constantine Ducas, a son of the general Andronicus Ducas, lost his life in his effort to obtain the imperial crown in 913. Towards the end of the 10th century there appeared another family of Ducas, which was perhaps connected with the earlier family through the female line and was destined to attain to greater fortune. A member of this family became emperor as Constantine X. in 1059, and Constantine’s son Michael VII. ruled, nominally in conjunction with his younger brothers, Andronicus and Constantine, from 1071 to 1078. Michael left a son, Constantine, and, says Gibbon, “a daughter of the house of Ducas illustrated the blood, and confirmed the succession, of the Comnenian dynasty.” The family was also allied by marriage with other great Byzantine houses, and after losing the imperial dignity its members continued to take an active part in public affairs. In 1204 Alexius Ducas, called Mourzoufle, deposed the emperor Isaac Angelus and his son Alexius, and vainly tried to defend Constantinople against the attacks of the Latin crusaders. Nearly a century and a half later one Michael Ducas took a leading part in the civil war between the emperors John V. Palaeologus and John VI. Cantacuzenus, and Michael’s grandson was the historian Ducas (see below). Many of the petty sovereigns who arose after the destruction of the Eastern Empire sought to gain prestige by adding the famous name of Ducas to their own.
DUCAS (15th cent.), Byzantine historian, flourished under Constantine XIII. (XI.) Dragases, the last emperor of the East, about 1450. The dates of his birth and death are unknown. He was the grandson of Michael Ducas (see above). After the fall of Constantinople, he was employed in various diplomatic missions by Dorino and Domenico Gateluzzi, princes of Lesbos, where he had taken refuge. He was successful in securing a semi-independence for Lesbos until 1462, when it was taken and annexed to Turkey by Sultan Mahommed II. It is known that Ducas survived this event, but there is no record of his subsequent life. He was the author of a history of the period 1341–1462; his work thus continues that of Gregoras and Cantacuzene, and supplements Phrantzes and Chalcondyles. There is a preliminary chapter of chronology from Adam to John Palaeologus I. Although barbarous in style, the history of Ducas is both judicious and trustworthy, and it is the most valuable source for the closing years of the Greek empire. The account of the capture of Constantinople is of special importance. Ducas was a strong supporter of the union of the Greek and Latin churches, and is very bitter against those who rejected even the idea of appealing to the West for assistance against the Turks.
The history, preserved (without a title) in a single Paris MS., was first edited by I. Bullialdus (Bulliaud) (Paris, 1649); later editions are in the Bonn Corpus scriptorum Hist. Byz., by I. Bekker (1834) and Migne, Patrologia Graeca, clvii. The Bonn edition contains a 15th century Italian translation by an unknown author, found by Leopold Ranke in one of the libraries of Venice, and sent by him to Bekker.
DUCASSE, PIERRE EMMANUEL ALBERT, Baron (1813–1893), French historian, was born at Bourges on the 16th of November 1813. In 1849 he became aide-de-camp to Prince Jerome Bonaparte, ex-king of Westphalia, then governor of the Invalides, on whose commission he wrote Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de la campagne de 1812 en Russie (1852). Subsequently he published Mémoires du roi Joseph (1853–1855), and, as a sequel, Histoire des négociations diplomatiques relatives aux traités de Morfontaine, de Lunéville et d’Amiens, together with the unpublished correspondence of the emperor Napoleon I. with Cardinal Fesch (1855–1856). From papers in the possession of the imperial family he compiled Mémoires du prince Eugène (1858–1860) and Réfutation des mémoires du duc de Raguse (1857), part of which was inserted by authority at the end of volume ix. of the Mémoires. He was attaché to Jerome’s son, Prince Napoleon, during the Crimean War, and wrote a Précis historique des opérations militaires en Orient, de mars 1854 à octobre 1855 (1857), which was completed many years later by a volume entitled La Crimée et Sébastopol de 1853 à 1856, documents intimes et inédits, followed by the complete list of the French officers killed or wounded in that war (1892). He was also employed by Prince Napoleon on the Correspondance of Napoleon I., and afterwards published certain letters, purposely omitted there, in the Revue historique. These documents, subsequently collected in Les Rois frères de Napoléon (1883), as well as the Journal de la reine Catherine de Westphalie (1893), were edited with little care and are not entirely trustworthy, but their publication threw much light on Napoleon I. and his entourage. His Souvenirs d’un officier du 2ᵉ Zouaves, and Les Dessous du coup d’état (1891), contain many piquant anecdotes, but at times degenerate into mere tittle-tattle. Ducasse was the author of some slight novels, and from the practice of this form of literature he acquired that levity which appears even in his most serious historical publications.
DUCAT, the name of a coin, generally of gold, and of varying value, formerly in use in many European countries. It was first struck by Roger II. of Sicily as duke of Apulia, and bore an inscription “Sit tibi, Christe, datus, quem tu regis, iste ducatus” (Lord, thou rulest this duchy, to thee be it dedicated); hence, it is said, the name. Between 1280 and 1284 Venice also struck
