the Revolution, and had adorned his pages with illustrations from Tacitus, the force of which the commonest reader could feel. In his last number, the seventh, which his publisher refused to print, he had dared to attack even Robespierre, but at his trial it was found that he was devoid of physical courage. He had to be torn from his seat ere he was removed to prison, and as he sat next to Danton in the tumbrel which conveyed them to the guillotine, the calmness of the great leader failed to impress him. In his violence, bound as he was, he tore his clothes into shreds, and his bare shoulders and breast were exposed to the gaze of the surging crowd. Of the fifteen guillotined together, including among them Marie Jean Hérault de Séchelles, François Joseph Westermann and Pierre Philippeaux, Desmoulins died third; Danton, the greatest, died last.
On the 29th of December 1790 Camille had married Lucile Duplessis, and among the witnesses of the ceremony are observed the names of Brissot, Pétion and Robespierre. The only child of the marriage, Horace Camille, was born on the 6th of July 1792. Two days afterwards Desmoulins brought it into notice by appearing with it before the municipality of Paris to demand “the formal statement of the civil estate of his son.” The boy was afterwards pensioned by the French government, and died in Haiti in 1825. Lucile, Desmoulins’s accomplished and affectionate wife, was, a few days after her husband, and on a false charge, condemned to the guillotine. She astonished all onlookers by the calmness with which she braved death (April 13, 1794).
See J. Claretie, Œuvres de Camille Desmoulins avec une étude biographique ... &c. (Paris, 1874), and Camille Desmoulins, Lucile Desmoulins, étude sur les Dantonistes (Paris, 1875; Eng. trans., London, 1876); F. A. Aulard, Les Orateurs de la Législative et de la Convention (Paris, 1905, 2nd ed.): G. Lenôtre, “La Maison de Camille Desmoulins” (Le Temps, March 25, 1899).
DESNOYERS, JULES PIERRE FRANÇOIS STANISLAS (1800–1887), French geologist and archaeologist, was born at Nogent-le-Rotrou, in the department of Eure-et-Loir, on the 8th of October 1800. Becoming interested in geology at an early age, he was one of the founders of the Société Géologique de France in 1830. In 1834 he was appointed librarian of the Museum of Natural History in Paris. His contributions to geological science comprise memoirs on the Jurassic, Cretaceous and Tertiary Strata of the Paris Basin and of Northern France, and other papers relating to the antiquity of man, and to the question of his co-existence with extinct mammalia. His separate books were Sur la Craie et sur les terrains tertiaires du Cotentin (1825), Recherches géologiques et historiques sur les cavernes (1845). He died in 1887.
DESOR, PIERRE JEAN ÉDOUARD (1811–1882), Swiss geologist, was born at Friedrichsdorf, near Frankfort-on-Main, on the 13th of February 1811. Associated in early years with Agassiz he studied palaeontology and glacial phenomena, and in company with J. D. Forbes ascended the Jungfrau in 1841. Desor afterwards became professor of geology in the academy at Neuchâtel, continued his studies on the structure of glaciers, but gave special attention to the study of Jurassic Echinoderms. He also investigated the old lake-habitations of Switzerland, and made important observations on the physical features of the Sahara. Having inherited considerable property he retired to Combe Varin in Val Travers. He died at Nizza on the 23rd of February 1882. His chief publications were: Synopsis des Échinides fossiles (1858), Aus Sahara (1865), Der Gebirgsbau der Alpen (1865), Die Pfahlbauten des Neuenburger Sees (1866), Échinologie helvétique (2 vols., 1868–1873, with P. de Loriol).
DE SOTO, a city of Jefferson county, Missouri, U.S.A., on Joachim Creek, 42 m. S.S.W. of St Louis. Pop. (1890) 3960; (1900) 5611 (332 being foreign-born and 364 negroes); (1910) 4721. It is served by the St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern railway, which has extensive repair shops here. About 212 m. from De Soto is the Bochert mineral spring. In De Soto are Mount St Clement’s College (Roman Catholic, 1900), a theological seminary of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer under the charge of the Redemptorist Fathers, and a Young Men’s Christian Association building. De Soto is in a good agricultural and fruit-growing region, which produces Indian corn, apples, plums, pears and small fruit. Lead and zinc are mined in the vicinity and shipped from the city in considerable quantities; and among the city’s manufactures are shoes, flour and agricultural implements. The municipality owns the water-works, the water supply of which is furnished by artesian wells. De Soto was laid out in 1855 and was incorporated in 1869.
DESPARD, EDWARD MARCUS (1751–1803), Irish conspirator, was born in Queen’s Co., Ireland, in 1751. In 1766 he entered the British navy, was promoted lieutenant in 1772, and stationed at Jamaica, where he soon proved himself to have considerable engineering talent. He served in the West Indies with credit, being promoted captain after the San Juan expedition (1779), then made governor of the Mosquito Shore and the Bay of Honduras, and in 1782 commander of a successful expedition against the Spanish possessions on the Black river. In 1784 he took over the administration of Yucatan. Upon frivolous charges he was suspended by Lord Grenville, and recalled to England. From 1790 to 1792 these charges were held over him, and when dismissed no compensation was forthcoming. His complaints caused him to be arrested in 1798; and with a short interval he remained in gaol until 1800. By that time Despard was desperate, and engaged in a plot to seize the Tower of London and Bank of England and assassinate George III. The whole idea was patently preposterous, but Despard was arrested, tried before a special commission, found guilty of high treason, and, with six of his fellow-conspirators, sentenced in 1803 to be hanged, drawn and quartered. These were the last men to be so sentenced in England. Despard was executed on the 21st of February 1803.
His eldest brother, John Despard (1745–1829), had a long and distinguished career in the British army; gazetted an ensign in 1760, he was promoted through the various intermediate grades and became general in 1814. His most active service was in the American War of Independence, during which he was twice made prisoner.
DESPENSER, HUGH LE (d. 1265), chief justiciar of England, first plays an important part in 1258, when he was prominent on the baronial side in the Mad Parliament of Oxford. In 1260 the barons chose him to succeed Hugh Bigod as justiciar, and in 1263 the king was further compelled to put the Tower of London in his hands. On the outbreak of civil war he joined the party of Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, and led the Londoners when they sacked the manor-house of Isleworth, belonging to Richard, earl of Cornwall, king of the Romans. Having fought at Lewes (1264) he was made governor of six castles after the battle, and was then appointed one of the four arbitrators to mediate between Simon de Montfort and Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester. He was summoned to Simon de Montfort’s parliament in 1264, and acted as justiciar throughout the earl’s dictatorship. Despenser was killed at Evesham in August 1265.
See C. Bémont, Simon de Montfort (Paris, 1884); T. F. Tout in Owens College Historical Essays, pp. 76 ff. (Manchester, 1902).
DESPENSER, HUGH LE (1262–1326), English courtier, was a son of the English justiciar who died at Evesham. He fought for Edward I. in Wales, France and Scotland, and in 1295 was summoned to parliament as a baron. Ten years later he was sent by the king to Pope Clement V. to secure Edward’s release from the oaths he had taken to observe the charters in 1297. Almost alone Hugh spoke out for Edward II.’s favourite, Piers Gaveston, in 1308; but after Gaveston’s death in 1312 he himself became the king’s chief adviser, holding power and influence until Edward’s defeat at Bannockburn in 1314. Then, hated by the barons, and especially by Earl Thomas of Lancaster, as a deserter from their party, he was driven from the council, but was quickly restored to favour and loaded with lands and honours, being made earl of Winchester in 1322. Before this time Hugh’s son, the younger Hugh le Despenser, had become associated with his father, and having been appointed the king’s chamberlain was enjoying a still larger share of the royal favour. About 1306 this baron had married Eleanor (d. 1337), one of the sisters and heiresses of Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester, who was slain at
