| Notes |
Louis XIV's determination to have his own way makes him incapable
of tolerating religious dissension. An immediate target is the
Huguenots, over whom he triumphs (to France's considerable loss). A
more complex problem is that of Jansenism, a dissenting sect within
Catholicism; this issue remains unresolved at the king's death.
The Huguenots have thrived economically since 1629, when the peace
of Alès left them with only their freedom of conscience. Their success
makes the Catholic clergy even more eager to suppress them. In 1661
Louis willingly grants the church's request to send commissioners into
Huguenot territories to report on any infringement of the edicts
defining their liberties.
For twenty years a legal war is waged against the Huguenots, with
pretexts found to close their schools and hospitals. When this fails
to effect their conversion, more drastic methods are adopted in the
1680s. In the policy known as dragonnades, troops of dragoons are
billetted in Huguenot villages with orders to cause as much mayhem as
they like in the houses of their heretical hosts.
The violence leads to mass conversions, enabling Louis to claim
that there are now so few Huguenots in France that the edict of Nantes
is no longer needed. He revokes it in 1685, in the edict of
Fontainebleau. Protestantism, a powerful feature of French life since
the Reformation, is now illegal in the kingdom.
Events prove Louis dramatically wrong in his assessment. Some 400,
000 French citizens, including many of the country's best craftsmen
and tradesmen, emigrate rather than deny their Huguenot beliefs. Their
arrival proves of great value in the places where they choose to
settle - in particular England, Holland, Prussia and the American
colonies.
Louis' disagreement with the Jansenists is more tenuous but no less
obsessive. They are followers of a theologian from the Netherlands,
Cornelius Jansen, whose studies of St Augustine lead him into
doctrinal clashes with the Jesuits. The differences of opionion might
have remained purely ecclesiastical. But the situation in France -
with its absolutist monarch - adds a political dimension.
The Jansenists in France seem a threat in Louis' eyes because of
their insistence on the rights of the individual conscience and their
refusal to be browbeaten. Their convent school of Port-Royal in Paris
is a fashionable centre of intellectual excellence (Pascal is closely
associated with it, and Racine is a pupil). Louis XIV becomes
determined to suppress it.
The king's measures against the Jansenists of Port-Royal span much
of his reign, ending with the closing of the convent in 1709 and the
destruction of its buildings in 1711. Even so Jansenism remains a
strong force in France throughout much of the 18th century.
France's expansionist policies during the late 17th century benefit
greatly from the military genius of Sebastien de Vauban, who spends
more than half a century in active service in Louis XIV's campaigns.
His special interest is in fortification (though he is also the
inventor of the socket bayonet). In siege warfare he is as skilled in
the arts of defence as of attack.
During his long career Vauban either builds or redesigns some 160
fortresses. But his most significant contribution is the tactic which
he develops for approaching and breaching an enemy's stronghold.
Vauban's method, first put into practice during the Dutch wars at
the 1673 siege of Maastricht, becomes known as the 'approach by
parallel line'. It consists essentially of the infantry and artillery
leapfrogging to the base of a fortress wall.
The range of a siege cannon at this time is about 600 yards. Vauban
arranges his guns at this distance from the weakest flank of a
fortress and then digs a trench behind the guns as a base for the
infantry. From here musketeers can protect the artillery from attack
by enemy sorties, and can at the same time cover sappers digging
trenches which lead towards the fort. They dig in a zigzag line, as a
protection from raking cannon-fire along a trench's length.
When the zigzag has moved forward about 200 yards, another trench
is dug parallel to the fortress wall. Both infantry and artillery move
up into this new position, and the process is repeated. The second
move forward brings the sappers within range of musket fire from the
ramparts. They extend their trench now under a protective roof, pushed
forward on wheels (a device known as a gabion, in the ancient
tradition of the Roman tortoise).
When the third parallel position is successfully established, the
siege artillery is near enough for a direct bombardment on the walls.
In most cases this is soon sufficient to force a breach in the
defences.
Maastricht, subjected to these tactics in 1673, falls to the French
army in thirteen days. In subsequent engagements Vauban's method of
parallel lines proves reliable and easily adapted to each particular
fortification and its surrounding terrain. It becomes the custom in
the French army to classify enemy fortresses in terms of the number of
days for which they are expected to hold out against an assault of
this kind.
The majority of sieges during the 18th century are conducted by
European armies along the lines pioneered by Vauban. His example also
gives engineers, for the first time, an important status in any modern
army.
The military adventures of Louis XIV prompt other European powers
to form alliances against expansionist France. The first is the League
of Augsburg, put together in 1686 by the Austrian emperor Leopold I.
He brings into it his Habsburg cousins in Spain and various states of
the Holy Roman empire. This league has no specific purpose (other than
to give Leopold a sense of security during his proposed campaign
against the Turks), and it takes no action against France. Its
successor, the Grand Alliance of 1689, is in a different category.
The Grand Alliance is prompted by opportunistic moves on Louis'
part. In the second half of 1688 he sends two armies across the Rhine.
One French army goes to Cologne to support Louis' favoured
candidate for the archbishopric, which has fallen vacant. The other
marches into the Palatinate, where the death of the elector Palatine
has given Louis a tenuous French claim (through his brother's marriage
to the elector's sister).
This provokes the first coherent and widespread European response
to French aggression. During 1689 an alliance is formed which
eventually includes the Austrian empire, Holland, England,
Brandenburg, Hanover, Saxony, Bavaria, Savoy and Spain. The eventual
leader of the alliance is William III, ruler of both England and
Holland. But at the start his attention is elsewhere. He is busy
fighting Louis' ally, the Stuart king James II, in Ireland.
After an inconclusive war, Louis has to make considerable
concessions in the peace of Rijswijk in 1697. But by now he is
conserving his strength for the struggle over a much more important
European issue. Who will inherit the Spanish empire on the death of
the childless and sickly Habsburg king of Spain?
That conflict, with so much at stake, erupts in 1700. The king of
Spain leaves everything to a Bourbon grandson of Louis XIV. Louis,
breaking previous agreements, will now consider no compromise in the
distribution of this windfall. He insists that his grandson remain in
line of succession for the French throne, and warns that the rich
trade with Spanish America will be reserved for France.
During 1701 the leading members of the Grand Alliance join forces
again for a renewal of war against France. The resulting War of the
Spanish Succession is a long one, to 1713, and it ends with the
compromise which could perhaps have avoided it in the first place; the
Bourbons receive Spain and Spanish America, the Austrian Habsburgs win
the Spanish possessions in the Netherlands and Italy.
So Louis XIV lives to see his second grandson on the throne of
Spain, as Philip V. But he also sees the death of his elder son, in
1711, and of his eldest grandson in the following year. He is
succeeded, in 1715, by his 5-year-old great-grandson, as Louis XV.
(Source of the History of France: http://www.historyworld.net)
DuPree arrival in America:
Three brothers, Thomas, Jean and Louis Dupre, apparently arrived in
Manakintown, Virginia in 1701 aboard the Mary Ann, one of four ships
that brought huguenots to America via London. Apparently there is a
family bible out there. One story is that the Dupre family were silk
farmers in the South of France.
King George of England granted land along the James River to the
French Protestants or Huguenots, who were escaping persecution in
Catholic France. (see The Olive Tree: Index to Huguenots) Thomas
married Margaret Easley who was among even earlier settlers in
Virginia . Over the years, the family migrated mile-by-mile to the
South. In the late 1700s, Lewis (Thomas) and his children, Drury and
Daniel, lived in South Carolina before they moved to the Northeastern
corner of the state of Georgia. Within the next centuries, the family
spread to Texas, Alabama, Mississippi and one Dupree accompanied the
Cherokee on the Trail of Tears from Georgia to Oklahoma.
From "The Travels of the Dupree Family Huguenot Bible; from 1684 in
France to 1925 in Houston, Texas"
The devout French Huguenot family of dupree were honest and ??? in
their religion, giving each Sunday to their churches. At the
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, this church-going and worship had
to be done in privacy or be persecuted. Joseph (Josias) Dupre and his
wife Mary took refuge in or near London. Life was hard. They had
opportunity to send their sons Jean (John), Thomas, and Loys (Lewis)
to Virginia with one of the ministers on the ship 'Mary Ann' to
Manakintown where other Huguenots were located and they could worship.
Jean and Thomas went to Henrico, then Thomas to Goochland. Loys who
carried the Huguenot bible went to James and Elizabeth City and the
Isle of Wight. Loys married Larence Ellerbee in Elizabeth City, Va;
then moved to Henrico County in 1730s where his brother Jean left him
land and a slave. He moved to Brunswick Co. Va where he an Larance
reared quite a family of at least 5 sons--Thomas, John, Lewis, James,
and Haley--and possibly daughters.
Son Lewis bought from his father the 90 acres of Thomas Ellerby Land.
It is surmised that Lewis inherited the great Huguenot Bible at this
time in 1748, Brunswick County, VA....
LAND BOOK - TAXES
R. Proprietor's Name Name Quantity of Land
1782 Lewis Dupree
Joseph Dupree
Thomas Dupree
623
406
100
1783 No Records
1784 No alterations in land owned
1785 No alterations in land owned
1786 Lewis Dupree 527 A (Alterations for 1786 -
others same
1787 Lewis Dupree
Joseph Dupree
Thomas Dupree dec'd estate
96 A
400 A
100 A
Thomas Dupree dec'd estate 100 A
1788 Daniel Dupree: from Nedams (?)
Lewis Dupree
Joseph Dupree
Thomas Dupree est
150 A
96
400
100
1789 Daniel Dupree
Lewis Dupree
" " from Jesse Saunders
Joseph Dupree
Thomas Dupree est
150 A
96 )
392)
400
100
1791 Daniel Dupree
Lewis Dupree
ditto
Joseph Dupree
Thomas Dupree est
150 A
96 )
392)
400
100
1792 Daniel Dupree
Thomas Dupree est
Joseph Dupree
150
100
400
Comment: Note that LEWIS
DUPREE is not listed here,
nor hereafter.
1793 Daniel Dupree
Thomas Dupree est
Joseph Dupree
150
100
400
1794 Daniel Dupree
Thomas Dupree est
Joseph Dupree
150
100
400
1795 Joseph Dupree 400 Comment: Daniel Dupree
missing this year: also
Thomas's est.
1796 Joseph Dupree
Do fr P. Wood
400)
200)
1797 Joseph Dupree 394 A
1798 Joseph Dupree 394 A
|
1654 - 1690 (36 years)