MAUMEE MAUREPAS. 



729 



princess, and sent a part of them to Versailles, and a 

 part of them to the king's commissioner at Paris. 

 The chests were claimed by the princess ; and, on 

 their being opened a large quantity of diamonds, and 

 a sum of 82,000 francs, were found to have been stolen 

 from them. Maubreuil and Dasies were accused of 

 the theft. Dasies was afterwards tried and acquitted, 

 but Maubreuil was not allowed to escape so easily. 

 One of the tribunals declared itself incompetent to 

 try him, and he remained in prison till the 18th of 

 March, two days before the arrival of Napoleon 

 at Paris, when the minister at war set him at 

 liberty. A few days after this he was arrested 

 by the imperial government, but was soon dis- 

 charged. He is said to have gone under an assumed 

 name, to Brussels, and there he was arrested and 

 conducted to Ghent, on suspicion of intending to 

 assassinate Louis XVIII. It does not appear that 

 an iota of proof existed against him. Driven to 

 despair, perhaps, by the persecution which he 

 endured, he opened his veins in prison, but was 

 saved from death. He was next put into the cus- 

 tody of a party of gendarmes, and conducted to Aix- 

 la-Chapelle, to be delivered to the Prussians. He 

 escaped on the road ; and it is a singular fact, that 

 he went back to Paris at the same time that Louis 

 arrived from Ghent, and remained unmolested in the 

 French capital for nearly twelve months. In June, 

 1816, however, the police seized him, on a charge of 

 his having intrigued against the royal government, 

 and formed the project of carrying off the French 

 princes from St Cloud. This accusation, too. seems 

 to have been calumnious, for it was dropped ; but, 

 in April, 1817, he was once more prosecuted for the 

 theft of the money and diamonds. One of the sub- 

 irdinate courts having again refused to take cogni- 

 zance of the cause, he was sent before the royal 

 court. His patience was at length exhausted : he 

 addressed the judges in strong terms, and disclosed 

 the important secret, that he had not been employed 

 to recover the crown jewels, but to assassinate 

 Napoleon, a mission which he accepted, he told 

 them, only for the purpose of saving the emperor. 

 From his prison he repeated this avowal, in a very 

 severe letter to the ambassadors of the allied powers. 

 The cause was now referred to the tribunal of 

 Rouen, and from thence. to that of Douay. The 

 latter tribunal is said to have been on the point of 

 pronouncing sentence, when Maubreuil escaped 

 from his dungeon for the fourth time. After he had 

 made his escape, the tribunal sentenced him to five 

 years' imprisonment, and a fine of 500 francs. He 

 first went to Brussels, and then passed over to 

 Britain, where he published a vindication of him- 

 self. In 1825, he returned to France, and was again 

 imprisoned until 1827, when, having been released, 

 lie made an attack on Talleyrand, whom he beat 

 severely. On his trial for this offence, he accused 

 the prince of having been the cause of all his suffer- 

 ings, by employing him to assassinate Napoleon. 

 Maubreuil was condemned to five years' imprison- 

 ment. Talleyrand has never thought proper to 

 clear up the mystery, and the matter still remains 

 unexplained. Bourrienne, in his memoirs of Napo- 

 leon, has some remarks relating to the circumstances 

 of this transaction. 



MAUMEE, or MIAMI OF THE LAKES ; a river 

 that rises in the north-east part of Indiana, and 

 flows through the north-west part of Ohio, into lake 

 Erie. It is formed by the confluence of St Joseph's, 

 St Mary's, and Great and Little Auglaize. It is 

 navigable only eighteen miles, on account of rapids. 

 For this distance, its breadth is from 150 to 200 

 yards. 



MAUNDAY-THURSDAY is the. Thursday in 



the Passion week ; called Maunday, or Mandate 

 Thursday, from the command which our Saviour 

 gave his apostles to commemorate him in the Lord's 

 supper, which he this day instituted ; or from the 

 new commandment that he gave them, to love one 

 another, after he had washed their feet, in token of his 

 love to them. It was instituted by pope Leo, in 692. 



MAUPERTUIS, PIERRE Louis MOREAU DE, a 

 celebrated French mathematician and philosopher, 

 was born at St Malo, in 1698, and studied at the 

 college of La Marche, in Paris, where he discovered 

 a strong predilection for the mathematics. At the 

 age of twenty, he entered the army, in which he 

 served four years. In 1723, he was received into 

 the academy of sciences, and soon after visited Eng- 

 land and Switzerland, where he became a pupil and 

 admirer of Newton, and formed a lasting friendship 

 with the celebrated John Bernouilli (q. v.) and his 

 family. On his return to Paris, he applied himself 

 to his favourite studies, with greater ardour than 

 ever, and, in 1736, formed one of the scientific 

 party appointed to measure a degree of the meridian 

 at the polar circle. In 1740, he received an invita- 

 tion from the king of Prussia to settle at Berlin. 

 On his return to Paris, in 1742, he was chosen di- 

 rector of the academy of sciences, and, the following 

 year, received into the French academy. He 

 returned to Berlin in 1744, and, in 1746, was de- 

 clared president of the academy of sciences at Berlin, 

 and, soon after, received the order of merit. His 

 unhappy restlessness of temper was a source of 

 continued disquiet to him, and a controversy wilh 

 Konig, which subjected him to the satire of Voltaire, 

 completed his uneasiness. At this time, his health, 

 injured by his northern expedition, and incessant 

 application, began to give way, and he sought 

 relief by repeated visits to his native country. His 

 disorder, however, seems to have uniformly revived 

 with his return to Berlin ; and he at length died, on 

 his return from one of these excursions, at the house 

 of his friend Bernouilli, at Basil, in 1759, in the 

 sixty-first year of his age. His works, collected in 

 four 8vo volumes, were published at Lyons, in 1756, 

 and reprinted in 1768. Among them are Discourse 

 on the different Figures of the Stars ; Reflections on 

 the Origin of Languages ; Animal Physics ; System 

 of Nature ; On the Progress of the Sciences ; Ele- 

 ments of Geography; Expedition to the Polar Circle ; 

 On the Comet of 1742 ; Dissertation upon Lan- 

 guages ; Academical Discourses ; Upon the Laws 

 of Motion; Upon the Laws of Rest ; Operations for 

 determining the Figure of the Earth, &c. 



MAURA, SANTA. See Leucadia. 



MAUREPAS, JEAN FREDERIC PHELIPPEAUX, 

 COUNT DE, born in 1701, was, at the early age of 

 twenty-four years, minister of the French marine. 

 At his suggestion, cardinal Fleury named Amelot 

 minister of foreign affairs, and the latter undertook 

 nothing important without the concurrence of Mau- 

 repas, who finally administered the foreign depart- 

 ment himself. He was hasty in his decisions, with- 

 out system or foresight, but quick in conception, 

 amiable, flexible, artful, and penetrating. He made 

 up in dexterity what was wanting in reflection, and 

 was one of the most agreeable of ministers. An 

 epigram on madame de Pompadour, of which he was 

 accused of being the author, led to his banishment 

 from the court. Louis XIV. recalled him in 1774, 

 and placed him at the head of his ministry. Re- 

 moved from public affairs for the space of thirty 

 years, Maurepas had lost whatever requisite he had 

 ever possessed for the administration of government. 

 With the imprudence of his youth was now united the 

 feebleness of age. He retained the confidence of the 

 king till his death, Nov. 21, 1781; but he was desti- 



