Badenoch, the Comyns, the Douglases (to whom it gave the title of baron in the 15th century), the Stuarts and the Duffs. The new castle, an uninteresting building, was erected in 1724 by the earl of Fife, and though untenanted is maintained in repair. Two miles to the S.E. of Dufftown is the ruined castle of Auchindown, finely situated on a limestone crag, 200 ft. high, of which three sides are washed by the Fiddich and the fourth was protected by a moat. It dates from the 11th century, and once belonged to the Ogilvies, from whom it passed in 1535 to the Gordons. The Gothic hall with rows of fluted pillars is in fair preservation. Ben Rinnes (2755 ft.) and several other hills of lesser altitude all lie within a few miles of Dufftown. About 4 m. to the N.W. is Craigellachie—Gaelic for “the rock of alarm”—(pop. 454), on the confines of Elginshire. It is situated on the Spey amidst scenery of surpassing loveliness. The slogan of the Grants is “Stand fast Craigellachie!” The place has become an important junction of the Great North of Scotland railway system.
DUFFY, SIR CHARLES GAVAN (1816–1903), Irish and colonial politician, was born in Monaghan, Ireland, on the 12th of April 1816. At an early age he became connected with the press, and was one of the founders (1842) of the Nation, a Dublin weekly which was remarkable for its talent, for its seditious tendencies, and for the fire and spirit of its political poetry. In 1844 Duffy was included in the same indictment with O’Connell, and shared his conviction in Dublin and his acquittal by the House of Lords upon a point of law. His ideas, nevertheless, were too revolutionary for O’Connell; a schism took place in 1846, and Duffy united himself to the “Young Ireland” party. He was tried for treason-felony in 1848, but the jury were unable to agree. Duffy continued to agitate in the press and in parliament, to which he was elected in 1852, but his failure to bring about an alliance between Catholics and Protestants upon the land question determined him in 1856 to emigrate to Victoria. There he became in 1857 minister of public works, and after an active political career, in the course of which he was prime minister from 1871 to 1873, when he was knighted, he was elected speaker of the House of Assembly in 1877, being made K.C.M.G. in the same year. In 1880 he resigned and returned to Europe, residing mostly in the south of France. He published The Ballad Poetry of Ireland (1845), several works on Irish history, Conversations with Carlyle (1892), Memoirs (1898), &c. In 1891 he became first president of the Irish Literary Society. He was married three times, his third wife dying in 1889. He died on the 9th of February 1903.
DUFOUR, WILHELM HEINRICH [Guillaume Henri] (1787–1875), Swiss general, was born at Constance of Genevese parents temporarily in exile, on the 15th of September 1787. In 1807 he went to the École Polytechnique at Paris, Switzerland being then under French rule, taking the 140th place only in his entrance examination. By two years’ close study he so greatly improved his position that he was ranked fifth in the exit examination. Immediately on leaving the school he received a commission in the engineers, and was sent to serve in Corfu, which was blockaded by the English. During the Hundred Days he attained the rank of captain, and was employed in raising fortifications at Grenoble. After the peace that followed Waterloo he resumed his status as a Swiss citizen, and devoted himself to the military service of his native land. From 1819 to 1830 he was chief instructor in the military school of Thun, which had been founded mainly through his instrumentality. Among other distinguished foreign pupils he instructed Louis Napoleon, afterwards emperor of the French. In 1827 he was raised to the rank of colonel, and commanded the Federal army in a series of field manœuvres. In 1831 he became chief of the staff, and soon afterwards he was appointed quartermaster-general. Two years later the diet commissioned him to superintend the execution of a complete trigonometrical survey of Switzerland. He had already made a cadastral survey of the canton of Geneva, and published a map of the canton on the scale of 125000. The larger work occupied thirty-two years, and was accomplished with complete success. The map in 25 sheets on the scale of 1100000 was published at intervals between 1842 and 1865, and is an admirable specimen of cartography. In recognition of the ability with which Dufour had carried out his task, the Federal Council in 1868 ordered the highest peak of Monte Rosa to be named Dufour Spitze. In 1847 Dufour was made general of the Federal Army, which was employed in reducing the revolted Catholic cantons. The quickness and thoroughness with which he performed the painful task, and the wise moderation with which he treated his vanquished fellow-countrymen, were acknowledged by a gift of 60,000 francs from the diet and various honours from different cities and cantons of the confederation. In politics he belonged to the moderate conservative party, and he consequently lost a good deal of his popularity in 1848. In 1864 he presided over the international conference which framed the Geneva Convention as to the treatment of the wounded in time of war, &c. He died on the 14th of July 1875. His De la fortification permanente (1850) is an important and original contribution to the science of fortification, and he was also the author of a Mémoire sur l’artillerie des anciens et sur celle du moyen âge (1840), Manuel de tactique pour les officiers de toutes armes (1842), and various other works in military science. His memoir, La Campagne du Sonderbund (Paris, 1876), is prefaced by a biographical notice. An equestrian statue of General Dufour was erected after his death at Geneva by national subscription.
DUFRÉNOY, OURS PIERRE ARMAND PETIT (1792–1857), French geologist and mineralogist, was born at Sevran, in the department of Seine-et-Oise, in France, on the 5th of September 1792. After leaving the Imperial Lyceum, in 1811, he studied till 1813 at the École Polytechnique, and then entered the Corps des Mines. He subsequently assisted in the management of the École des Mines, of which he was professor of mineralogy and afterwards director. He was also professor of geology at the École des Ponts et Chaussés. In conjunction with Élie de Beaumont he in 1841 published a great geological map of France, the result of investigations carried on during thirteen years (1823–1836). Five years (1836–1841) were spent in writing the text to accompany the map, the publication of the work with two quarto vols. of text extending from 1841–1848; a third volume was issued in 1873. The two authors had already together published Voyage métallurgique en Angleterre (1827, 2nd ed. 1837–1839), Mémoires pour servir à une description géologique de la France, in four vols. (1830–1838), and a Mémoire on Cantal and Mont-Dore (1833). Other literary productions of Dufrénoy are an account of the iron mines of the eastern Pyrenees (1834), and a treatise on mineralogy (3 vols. and atlas, 1844–1845; 2nd ed., 4 vols. and atlas, 1856–1859), in which the geological relations as well as the physical and chemical properties of minerals were dealt with; he likewise contributed numerous papers to the Annales des mines and other scientific publications, one of the most interesting of which is entitled Des terrains volcaniques des environs de Naples. Dufrénoy was a member of the Academy of Sciences, a commander of the Legion of Honour, and an inspector-general of mines. He died in Paris on the 20th of March 1857.
DUFRESNY, CHARLES, Sieur de la Rivière (1648–1724), French dramatist, was born in Paris in 1648. The allegation that his grandfather was an illegitimate son of Henry IV. procured him the liberal patronage of Louis XIV., who gave him the post of valet de chambre, and affixed his name to many lucrative privileges. Dufresny’s expensive habits neutralized all efforts to enrich him, and as if to furnish a piquant commentary on the proverb that poverty makes us acquainted with strange bedfellows, he married, as his second wife, a washerwoman, in discharge of her bill—a whimsicality which supplied Le Sage with an episode in the Diable boiteux, and was made the subject of a comedy by J. M. Deschamps (Charles Rivière Dufresny, ou le mariage impromptu). He died in Paris on the 6th of October 1724. His plays, destitute for the most part of all higher qualities, abound in sprightly wit and pithy sayings. In the six volumes of his Théâtre (Paris, 1731), some of the best are L’Esprit de contradiction (1700), Le Double Veuvage (1701), La Joueuse (1709), La Coquette de village (1715), La Réconciliation normande (1719)
