THOU, JACQUES- AUGUSTE DE. 



THOUARS, LOUIS-MAIUE. 



M 



he was admitted a councillor of state ; and from this date he took a 

 leadiug part in all the principal public transactions which followed. 

 When the estates df the kingdom were assembled at Blois, in October 

 of this year, De Thou, as he tells, waa there courted with much bland- 

 ishment by the Duke of Guise, but steadily resisted the attempt to 

 seduce him from his loyalty. He had left Blois and was in Paris 

 when the news of the murders of the Duke of Guiso and his brother 

 the cardinal (on the 23rd and 24th of December^ reached the capital ; 

 and ho had great difficulty in effecting his escape from the popular 

 fury. He succeeded however in rejoining the king at Blois; and 

 having soon after been despatched on a mission into Germany and 

 Italy to raise succours of men and money for the royal cause, he was 

 at Venice when he heard of the death of Henry, in August 1589. He 

 immediately set out by the way of Switzerland for France, and met 

 the King of Navarre, now calling himself Henry IV., at Chateaudun. 

 He was received very graciously ; and for some years from this time 

 lie was constantly with Henry, or employed on missions to different 

 quarters in his service. 



In 1591, while Henry was at Nantes, he received accounts of the 

 death of Amyot, bishop of Auxerre (renowned for his translations of 

 Plutarch and other Greek authors) ; upon which his majesty imme- 

 diately bestowed his office of keeper of the royal library on De 

 Thou. It was in the year 1593, as he has noted, that he at last 

 actually commenced the composition of his ' History,' which he now 

 states he had conceived in his mind so long as fifteen years before. In 

 1594 the death of his uncle opened to him his reversionary office of 

 one of the presidents of the parlement de Paris. 



Among other important transactions in which he had a part after 

 this, was that of the Edict of Nantes, published in 1598, which he 

 was greatly instrumental in arranging. He has left an account of his 

 own life, in ample detail, down to the year 1601, in which the last 

 event he notices is the death of bis wife, in August of that year. In 

 1604 he published the first eighteen books of his 'History.' The 

 work was received with general applause by the literary public through- 

 out Europe, and, although some things in it gave umbrage to the 

 more zealous friends of the Roman Catholic faith, it was not till 

 several years afterwards, when a second portion of it had been pub- 

 lished, that it was formally stigmatised by being inserted in the 

 ' Index Expurgatorius.' De Thou however severely felt this authori- 

 tative condemnation of his performance, when it did take place, in 

 November 1609. The death of Henry IV., in 1610, did not deprive 

 De Thou of his place in the ministry; but he had no longer the 

 same influence as before; and a new appointment, which he received 

 the following year, of one of the three directors charged with the 

 management of the finances, on the retirement of the great Sully, was 

 felt by himself to be not so much an accession of power or honour, as 

 a burdensome and obnoxious office forced upon him, for which he was 

 fitted neither by tastes, habits, nor qualifications. In this same year 

 his brother-in-law, Archille de Harlay, resigned his office of first presi- 

 dent of the parlement de Paris, in the hope tbat De Thou would be 

 nominated his successor ; but the place was given to another. These 

 disappointments and disgusts, together with the loss of a second wife, 

 are supposed to have shortened the life of De Thou, who died at Paris 

 on the 7th of May 1617, in his sixty-fourth year. By his second wife, 

 whose family name was de Bourdeilles, he left three sons and three 

 daughters, one of the former of whom, Frangois Auguste de Thou, 

 the inheritor of his father's virtues and of a considerable share of his 

 talents, fell a sacrifice to the inexorable revenge of Cardinal Richelieu, 

 one of whose last acts was his putting this unfortunate young man to 

 death for his alleged participation in what was called the conspiracy 

 of Cinqmars : he was executed at Lyon, in his thirty-fifth year, on 

 the 12th of September 1642, not three months before Richelieu's own 

 death. 



The president De Thou is the author of a number of Latin poems, 

 one of the principal of which, entitled ' De Re Accipitraria ' (on 

 Hawking), was published in 1584 ; but his fame rests upon his ' Histo 

 ria sui Temporis,' or ' History of his own Time,' written also in Latin, 

 in 138 books, of which the first 80 appeared in his lifetime, the 

 remainder not till 1620. The space over which it extends is from the 

 year 1544 to 1607, comprehending the closing years of the reign of 

 Francis I., the entire reigns of Henry II., Francis II., Charles IX., 

 and Henry III., and nearly the whole of that of Henry IV. For about 

 one-half of this period of sixty-three years it has the value belonging 

 to the narrative of one who was himself a principal actor in many oi 

 the affairs which he relates, and who with regard to many others was 

 so placed as to have an opportunity of seeing much that was concealed 

 from the common eye ; but in truth, from the author's family connec- 

 tions, and his extended acquaintance among the eminent and remark- 

 able persons of his time, this is an advantage which belongs in some 

 degree to the earlier as well as to the later part of the work. It is 

 also admitted to have throughout the merit of a rare impartiality 

 with no deficiency of patriotic feeling, and perfect steadiness to his 

 own political principles, De Thou is always ready frankly to recognise 

 the high qualities, of whatever kind, that may have belonged either 

 to the citizen of a rival state or a party opponent. As for religious 

 prejudice, he shows so little of that, as to have exposed himself to the 

 imputation of having no religion, or at least of not being really a 

 believer in the form of Christianity, the Roman Catholic, which he 



professed. But for either of these charges there seems to be no 

 ground. The reputation of big ' History ' however stand* not BO much 

 upon the facts contained in it that are not elsewhere to be found, 

 as upon tho skill displayed in its composition not BO much upon the 

 material as upon the workmanship ; and it is very evident that with 

 all the pains he took in the collecting of information, this was tbo 

 praise of which he was the most ambitious, as indeed may perhaps be 

 said to have been the case with the most famous hUtorians of every 

 age and country, from Herodotus and Thucydides among the Greeks, 

 and Livy and Tacitus among the Latins, to Hume and Gibbon not 

 ;o speak of contemporaries among ourselves. But De Thou'a manner 

 of writing, though flowing and eloquent, is not very picturesque ; and 

 of course he also loses something in raciness and natural grace, ease, 

 and expressiveness, by writing in a dead language. De Them's Latin 

 style, with all its merit, is not admitted to be faultless, though he has 

 taken great pains to give it as uniformly classical an air as possible, 

 not only by metamorphosing all his modern names, both of places 

 and persons, so as to give them antique forms, often to tbo no small 

 perplexity and hindrance of the reader, but, what sometimes produces 

 still more obscurity or ambiguity, by generally endeavouring to 

 describe modern proceedings and transactions in the established legal, 

 political, and military phraseology of the old Romans. The best 

 edition of De Thou's ' History ' is that published at London in 1733, 

 in seven volumes, folio, under the superintendence of Samuel Buckley, 

 Esq., and at the expense of Dr. Mead. The last volume of this 

 edition contains De Thou's autobiographical memoir (first published 

 in 1620, and also written in Latin), in six books, together with a 

 mass of additional materials illustrative of the history of his life and 

 works. 



THOUARS, LOUIS-MARIE- AUBERT-DU-PETIT, an eminent 

 French botanist, was born at the chateau de Boumois, in Anjou, 1756. 

 His family was wealthy and noble, and being destined for the army, 

 he was early sent to the school of La Fleche. He was made a lieu- 

 tenant of infantry at the age of sixteen. This was in a time of peace, 

 and he occupied his leisure in studying the science of botany and its 

 literature. At the time of the loss of La Perouse and his companions, 

 Aristide du Petit Thouars proposed to his brother Aubert that they 

 should go in search of him. To this he willingly consented, hoping to 

 add to his stock of plants and his fame by the voyage. The two 

 brothers sold their patrimony, raised a subscription, and having 

 secured the patronage of Louis XVI., were ready to start on their 

 voyage, when a curious accident separated them. The ship that was 

 to have taken them lay at Brest, and Aubert, with his vasculum (the 

 tin box which botanists carry to put their plants in) at his back, 

 intended to botanise on his way from the capital to the port. He 

 was however found by some gens d'armes in the woods, and being sus- 

 pected as an enemy of his country in those days of disorder, he was 

 arrested and thrown into prison at Quimper. He was however soon 

 released, but too late, as his brother had sailed. He followed him to 

 the Isle of France, but his brother had again departed; and being 

 here without money and without friends, his only resource was his 

 botanical knowledge, and he accordingly applied for employment to 

 some of the rich planters of that island. He quickly obtained an 

 engagement, and remained in the island for nearly ten years. On this 

 spot he was very favourably placed for making those observations for 

 which his previous studies had so well prepared him ; and during his stay 

 here he collected most of the materials for the numerous works which 

 he published on his return. Whilst a resident in the Isle of France 

 he made a voyage to Madagascar, and collected plants from that 

 island. He returned to Paris in 1802. Many of the results of his 

 researches in the Isle of France and Madagascar were communicated 

 to the Institute and other scientific bodies in Paris. His first work on 

 the botany of the islands which he had visited, was published at Paris 

 in 1804, with the title ' Plantes des lies de 1'Afrique Australe formant 

 des Genres nouveaux,' &c., 4to. He also published on the same 

 subject the ' Histoire des Vdge"taux des lies de France, de Bourbon, et 

 de Madagascar,' 4to, 1804. In the same year Bory St. Vincent gave 

 an account of the vegetation of the African islands, in his ' Voyage dans 

 les quatre principales lies des Mers 1'Afrique,' 4to, Paris, although he 

 did not go out till Du Petit Thouars had returned. In 1806 Du Petit 

 Thouars was appointed director of the royal nursery-ground at Paris, 

 which office he held till the closing of the institution a short time 

 before his death. In 1806 he published another work on the plants of 

 Africa, with the title ' Histoire des Ye'ge'taux recueillies dans les lies 

 Australes d'Afrique,' 4to, Paris. In 1810 his ' Genera nova Madagas- 

 cariensia' appeared, in which the Madagascar plants were arranged 

 according to the system of Jussieu. His latest work on systematic 

 botany was one on the Orchidaceas of the African islands, ' Historie 

 des Plantes Orchide"es recueilles dans les trois lies Australes d'Afrique,' 

 8vo, Paris 1822. His publications on vegetable physiology are equally 

 numerous. Most of these had their foundation in observations and 

 experiments which he made while in the Isle of France. In 1805 he 

 published his ' Essai sur 1'Organisation des Plantes,' Svo, Paris ; in 

 1809, another essay on the vegetation of plants ; in 1811, ' Melanges de 

 Botanique et de Voyages,' Svo, Paris; in 1819, a kind of botanical 

 miscellany, passing in review his own labours, under the title ' Revue 

 ge"ne"rale des Materiaux de Botanique; et autres, fruit de trente-cinq 

 anne"es d'observations,' Svo, Paris. He died in May 1831. 



