Word Finder - dauphin

definition

The eldest son of the king of France. Under the Valois and Bourbon dynasties, the Dauphin of France, generally shortened to Dauphin, was heir apparent to the throne of France. The title derived from the main title of the Dauphin, Dauphin of Viennois.

definition

Allegorical An eldest son.

The hilly regions of Limousin, Prigord and the Cvennes are the home of the chestnut, which in some places is still a staple food; walnuts grow on the lower levels of the central plateau and in lower Dauphin and Provence, figs and almonds in Provence, oranges and citrons on the Mediterranean coast, apricots in central France, the olive in Provcnce and the lower valleys of the Rhneand Durancc. Truffles arc found under Silk Cocoons.

In 1413 he resumed his role of mediator, and was for a short time tutor to the dauphin.

He left five sons, the eldest of whom was his successor in Saxony, Frederick Christian; and five daughters, one of whom was the wife of Louis, the dauphin of France, and mother of Louis XVI.

Louis Charles became dauphin on the death of his elder brother on the 4th of June 1789.

Simon was sent to the guillotine with Robespierre in 1794, and two years later Marie Jeanne entered a hospital for incurables in the rue de Sevres, where she constantly affirmed the dauphin's escape.

On the 16th of November 1816, she was interrogated by the police, who frightened her into silence about the supposed substitution of another child for the dauphin.

Immediately on the announcement of the dauphin's death there arose a rumour that he had escaped.

If the dauphin did escape, it seems probable that he perished shortly afterwards or lived in a safe obscurity.

Robespierre visited Marie Therese on the 11th of May, but no one, according to the legend, entered the dauphin's room for six months until Barras visited the prison after the 9th Thermidor (July 2 7, 1794).

According to him Barras determined to save the dauphin in order to please Josephine Beauharnais, the future empress, having conceived the idea of using the dauphin's existence as a means of dominating the comte de Provence in the event of a restoration.

The dauphin was concealed in the fourth storey of the Tower, a wooden figure being substituted for him.

It was not the dead child, but the dauphin who left the prison in the coffin, whence he was extracted by his friends on the way to the cemetery.

He was a missionary to the Indians when the prince de Joinville, son of Louis Philippe, met him, and after some conversation asked him to sign a document abdicating his rights in favour of Louis Philippe, in return for which he, the dauphin (alias Eleazar Williams), was to receive the private inheritance which was his.

He was imprisoned from 1825 to 1828 for coining, though apparently on insufficient evidence, and in 1833 came to push his claims in Paris, where he was recognized as the dauphin by many persons formerly connected with the court of Louis XVI.

Lady Atkyns was trying by every possible means to get the dauphin out of his prison when he was apparently already in safe hands, if not outside the Temple walls.

That there was fraud, and complicated fraud, in the guardians of the dauphin may be taken as proved by a succession of writers from 1850 onwards, and more recently by Frederic Barbey, who wisely attempts no ultimate solution.

The official version of the dauphin's history as accepted under the Restoration was drawn up by Simien Despreaux in his uncritical Louis XVII.

Catherine Welch, in The Little Dauphin (1908) gives a résumé of the various sides of the question.

The Scottish parliament agreed to the marriage of the young queen with the dauphin of France, and, on the plea of securing her safety from English designs, she set sail from Dumbarton in August 1548 to complete her education at the French court.

The new regent had to deal with an empty exchequer and with a strong opposition to her daughter's marriage with the dauphin.

At the foot of the fortress of Mont Dauphin it receives (left) the Guil, which flows through the Queyras valley from near the foot of Monte Viso.

In 1608 she appeared at court, where her beauty soon attracted admiration and became the theme of the poets, her suitors including the dauphin, Maurice, prince of Orange, Gustavus Adolphus, Philip III.

Subsequently peace was made with the dauphin, who promised to restore to Charles his confiscated estates.

Answering the entreaties of Marcel he returned to Paris on June 1358, and became captain-general of the city, which was soon besieged by the dauphin.

This position, however, did not prevent him from negotiating both with the dauphin and with the English; terms were soon arranged with the former, and Charles, having lost much of his popularity, left Paris just before the murder of Marcel in July 1358.

Meanwhile the war with the dauphin had been renewed.

He followed the fortunes of the dauphin, afterwards Charles V'II., acting in the triple capacity of clerk, notary and financial secretary.

In 1424 Chartier was sent on an embassy to Germany, and three years later he accompanied to Scotland the mission sent to negotiate the marriage of Margaret of Scotland, then not four years old, with the dauphin, afterwards Louis XI.

After having vainly tried to place the necklace outside of France, the jewellers attempted again in 1781 to sell it to Marie Antoinette after the birth of the dauphin.

He was much employed, owing to Richelieu's influence, in the fetes of the dauphin's marriage, and was rewarded through the influence of Madame de Pompadour on New Year's Day 1745 by the appointment to the post of historiographer-royal, once jointly held by Racine and Boileau.

In 1338 Humbert, the dauphin, granted a part of the forest of Chamborant to a glass-worker named Guionet on the condition that Guionet should supply him with vessels of glass.

From this time onward the Armagnac party, with the dauphin, afterwards King Charles VII., at its head, was the national party, while the Burgundians united with the English.

John endeavoured to strengthen his position by marrying his daughter Margaret to the dauphin Louis, and by betrothing his son Philip to a daughter of Charles VI.

He was, however, called back to the council to find that the duke of Orleans and the queen had carried off the dauphin.

John succeeded in bringing back the dauphin to Paris, and open war seemed imminent between the two princes.

But an arrangement was effected in October 1405, and in 1406 John was made by royal decree guardian of the dauphin and the king's children.

By the peace of Chartres (March 9, 1409) the king absolved him from the crime, and Valentina Visconti, the widow of the murdered duke, and her children pledged themselves to a reconciliation; while an edict of the 27th of December 1409 gave John the guardianship of the dauphin.

The dauphin, afterwards King Charles VI., fled from the town, and John betook himself to the king, who promised to forget the past.

The dauphin then decided on a reconciliation, and on the 11th of July the two princes swore peace on the bridge of Pouilly, near Melun.

On the ground that peace was not sufficiently assured by the Pouilly meeting, a fresh interview was proposed by the dauphin and took place on the 10th of September 1419 on the bridge of Montereau, when the duke of Burgundy was felled with an axe by Tanneguy du Chastel, one of the dauphin's companions, and done to death by the other members of the dauphin's escort.

In consequence of a chance circumstance he entered into relations with the dauphin Louis, at that time (1455) in arms against the king his father; he attached himself to the prince, and followed him on his retreat into Burgundy.

During the Naples expedition he was in charge of the dauphin, Charles Orland, who died in 1495.

When only seven years old he was sent by his father, with his brother the dauphin Francis, as a hostage to Spain in 1526, whence they returned after the conclusion of the peace of Cambrai in 1530.

In 1536 Henry, hitherto duke of Orleans, became dauphin by the death of his elder brother Francis.

Moreover, his younger brother, Charles of Orleans, who was of a more sprightly temperament, was his father's favourite; and the rivalry of Diane and the duchesse d'Etampes helped to make still wider the breach between the king and the dauphin.

But his eldest son, the dauphin, died in April 1711; his eldest grandson the duke of Burgundy in February 1712; and his great-grandson the duke of Brittany in March 1712.

The duke of Bourbon gained over to their side the dauphin Louis - afterwards Louis XI.

The dauphin and the duke of Alencon failed to bring about any sympathetic rising in Auvergne, and the Praguerie was over, except for some final pillaging and plundering in Saintonge and Poitou, which the royal army failed to prevent.

Her marriage with the dauphin, which took place at Versailles on the 16th of May 1770, was intended to crown the policy of Choiseul and confirm the alliance between Austria and France.

Thus the young princess was surrounded by enemies both at court and in the dauphin's household, and came to rely almost entirely upon the Austrian ambassador, the comte de Mercy-Argenteau, whom Maria Theresa had instructed to act as her mentor, at the same time arranging that she herself should be kept informed of all that concerned her daughter, so that she might at once advise her and safeguard the alliance.