instruments. In 1791 he established a Journal de chirurgerie, edited by his pupils, which was a record of the most interesting cases that had occurred in his clinical school, with the remarks which he had made upon them in the course of his lectures. But in the midst of his labours he became obnoxious to some of the revolutionists, and he was, on some frivolous charge, denounced to the popular sections. After being twice examined, he was seized on the 28th of May 1793, while delivering a lecture, carried away from his theatre, and committed to prison in the Luxembourg. In three days, however, he was liberated, and permitted to resume his functions. He died in Paris on the 1st of June 1795, the story that his death was caused by poison being disproved by the autopsy carried out by his pupil, M. F. X. Bichat. A pension was settled on his widow by the republic. Together with François Chopart (1743–1795) he published a Traité des maladies chirurgicales (1779), and Bichat published a digest of his surgical doctrines in Œuvres chirurgicales de Desault (1798–1799).
DES BARREAUX, JACQUES VALLÉE, SIEUR (1602–1673), French poet, was born in Paris in 1602. His great-uncle, Geoffroy-Vallée, had been hanged in 1574 for the authorship of a book called Le Fléau de la foy. His nephew appears to have inherited his scepticism, which on one occasion nearly cost him his life. The peasants of Touraine attributed to the presence of the unbeliever an untimely frost that damaged the vines, and proposed to stone him. His authorship of the sonnet on “Pénitence,” by which he is generally known, has been disputed. He had the further distinction of being the first of the lovers of Marion Delorme. He died at Chalon-sur-Saône on the 9th of May 1673.
See Poésies de Des Barreaux (1904), edited by F. Lachèvre.
DESBOROUGH, JOHN (1608–1680), English soldier and politician, son of James Desborough of Eltisley, Cambridgeshire, and of Elizabeth Hatley of Over, in the same county, was baptized on the 13th of November 1608. He was educated for the law. On the 23rd of June 1636 he married Eltisley Jane, daughter of Robert Cromwell of Huntingdon, and sister of the future Protector. He took an active part in the Civil War when it broke out, and showed considerable military ability. In 1645 he was present as major in the engagement at Langport on the 10th of July, at Hambleton Hill on the 4th of August, and on the 10th of September he commanded the horse at the storming of Bristol. Later he took part in the operations round Oxford. In 1648 as colonel he commanded the forces at Great Yarmouth. He avoided all participation in the trial of the king in June 1649, being employed in the settlement of the west of England. He fought at Worcester as major-general and nearly captured Charles II. near Salisbury. After the establishment of the Commonwealth he was chosen, on the 17th of January 1652, a member of the committee for legal reforms. In 1653 he became a member of the Protectorate council of state, and a commissioner of the treasury, and was appointed one of the four generals at sea and a commissioner for the army and navy. In 1654 he was made constable of St Briavel’s Castle in Gloucestershire. Next year he was appointed major-general over the west. He had been nominated a member of Barebones’ parliament in 1653, and he was returned to the parliament of 1654 for Cambridgeshire, and to that of 1656 for Somersetshire. In July 1657 he became a member of the privy council, and in 1658 he accepted a seat in Cromwell’s House of Lords. In spite of his near relationship to the Protector’s family, he was one of the most violent opponents of the assumption by Cromwell of the royal title, and after the Protector’s death, instead of supporting the interests and government of his nephew Richard Cromwell, he was, with Fleetwood, the chief instigator and organizer of the hostility of the army towards his administration, and forced him by threats and menaces to dissolve his parliament in April 1659. He was chosen a member of the council of state by the restored Rump, and made colonel and governor of Plymouth, but presenting with other officers a seditious petition from the army council, on the 5th of October, was about a week later dismissed. After the expulsion of the Rump by Fleetwood on the 13th of October he was chosen by the officers a member of the new administration and commissary-general of the horse. The new military government, however, rested on no solid foundation, and its leaders quickly found themselves without any influence. Desborough himself became an object of ridicule, his regiment even revolted against him, and on the return of the Rump he was ordered to quit London. At the restoration he was excluded from the act of indemnity but not included in the clause of pains and penalties extending to life and goods, being therefore only incapacitated from public employment. Soon afterwards he was arrested on suspicion of conspiring to kill the king and queen, but was quickly liberated. Subsequently he escaped to Holland, where he engaged in republican intrigues. Accordingly he was ordered home, in April 1666, on pain of incurring the charge of treason, and obeying was imprisoned in the Tower till February 1667, when he was examined before the council and set free. Desborough died in 1680. By his first wife, Cromwell’s sister, he had one daughter and seven sons; he married a second wife in April 1658 whose name is unrecorded. Desborough was a good soldier and nothing more; and his only conception of government was by force and by the army. His rough person and manners are the constant theme of ridicule in the royalist ballads, and he is caricatured in Butler’s Hudibras and in the Parable of the Lion and Fox.
DESCARTES, RENÉ (1596–1650), French philosopher, was born at La Haye, in Touraine, midway between Tours and Poitiers, on the 31st of March 1596, and died at Stockholm on the 11th of February 1650. The house where he was born is still shown, and a métairie about 3 m. off retains the name of Les Cartes. His family on both sides was of Poitevin descent. Joachim Descartes, his father, having purchased a commission as counsellor in the parlement of Rennes, introduced the family into that demi-noblesse of the robe which, between the bourgeoisie and the high nobility, maintained a lofty rank in French society. He had three children, a son who afterwards succeeded to his father in the parlement, a daughter who married a M. du Crevis, and René, after whose birth the mother died.
Descartes, known as Du Perron, from a small estate destined for his inheritance, soon showed an inquisitive mind. From 1604 to 1612 he studied at the school of La Flêche, which Henry IV. had lately founded and endowed for the Jesuits. He enjoyed exceptional privileges; his Early years.feeble health excused him from the morning duties, and thus early he acquired the habit of reflection in bed, which clung to him throughout life. Even then he had begun to distrust the authority of tradition and his teachers. Two years before he left school he was selected as one of the twenty-four who went forth to receive the heart of Henry IV. as it was borne to its resting-place at La Flêche. At the age of sixteen he went home to his father, who was now settled at Rennes, and had married again. During the winter of 1612 he completed his preparations for the world by lessons in horsemanship and fencing; and then started as his own master to taste the pleasures of Parisian life. Fortunately he went to no perilous lengths; the worst we hear of is a passion for gaming. Here, too, he made the acquaintance of Claude Mydorge, one of the foremost mathematicians of France, and renewed an early intimacy with Marin Mersenne (q.v.), now Father Mersenne, of the order of Minim friars. The withdrawal of Mersenne in 1614 to a post in the provinces was the signal for Descartes to abandon social life and shut himself up for nearly two years in a secluded house of the faubourg St Germain. Accident betrayed the secret of his retirement; he was compelled to leave his mathematical investigations, and to take part in entertainments, where the only thing that chimed in with his theorizing reveries was the music. French politics were at that time characterized by violence and intrigue to such an extent that Paris was no fit place for a student, and there was little honourable prospect for a soldier. Accordingly, in May 1617, Descartes set out for the Netherlands and took service in the army of Prince Maurice of Orange. At Breda he enlisted as a volunteer, and the first and only pay which he accepted he kept as a curiosity through life. There was a lull in the war, and the
