John Dunmore - From Venus to Antarctica: The life of Dumont dUrville

Jules Sebastien Cesar Dumont DUrville was born on 23 May 1790 in the small town of Cond-sur-Noireau, inland from the city of Caen.

The Sbastien stands like a wedge between the Jules and the Csar, as if an anxious father wanted to avoid his son being teased by his playmates laughing at a diminutive Julius Caesar in their midst. Not that it would have been entirely inappropriate for someone born in a place founded by the Romans, a stronghold they called Condate Nigrum, black Cond. The name subsists in the river Noireau that trickles its way down from what tourist offices now call la Suisse normande Norman Switzerland, rather more hilly than most of Normandy, but, like most of the region, rich in agricultural resources.

Peaceful it may be today, but it was often the scene of wars and invasions, from the Vikings, the North Men, who settled the region and gave it its name, to the Hundred Years War, the Wars of Religion, and in modern times the Normandy landings of 1944 that resulted in 95 per cent of Cond-sur-Noireau, including the Dumont DUrville house, being destroyed.

Jules father, Gabriel Charles Franois, belonged to what was called the noblesse de robe, the nobility of the gown, so called because of the dress normally used by members of the judiciary. He was bailiff of Cond and of nearby Fresnes, an office that was hereditary. In addition, he was lord of Urville, a small country estate and even smaller village of some 200 inhabitants. This allowed him to use the second title, and made him an eligible suitor in the eyes of the Croisilles family who could trace their name back to feudal days. He married Jeanne Franoise Victoire Julie de Croisilles on 23 August 1774 in nearby La Villette. He was forty-six, she was twenty. The Croisilles may have been proud of their lineage, but they had very little money. Jacques father was, like Gabriel, a bailiff of the relatively small district of DHarcourt. Marrying off his daughter Jeanne was a weight off his mind.

The DUrvilles had several children, although, as was not uncommon in those days, most of them died young. Their first child, Jean, died shortly after birth; a second boy, Pierre, died at the age of four; and two, possibly three, of their daughters similarly died young.

By the time Jules was born, their last hope of a male heir, the father was sixty-two. He was in poor health, having recently suffered a stroke. Moreover, the French Revolution had broken out, bringing ruin on people like the DUrvilles and the Croisilles who held hereditary positions in the old administration. He could not cope with the collapse of the only world he had known, and kept to his home, allowing his illness to take over. Madame DUrville, on the other hand, remained a determined and often belligerent royalist. Hearing republicans in the streets celebrating some new political triumph, she went upstairs, took a chamber pot and emptied its contents over the crowd. This earned her a weeks jail, but the punishment did not quell her fighting spirit. When her husband was accused of complicity with foreigners and plotting against the safety of the State, she strode off to the courthouse and argued vehemently and successfully that, in his state of health, her husband could not possibly plot against anyone. The case was dropped, but they decided that it was time to move away. Louis XVI and his family, who had already been forced to leave Versailles and move to Paris, were now in prison. There were street riots and attacks on the prisons where the noblemen the hated aristocrats were being held, with a number of them being killed. Cond-sur-Noireau was a quiet enough place, a backwater in fact, but the DUrvilles were too well known and too easy a prey for the extremists who were gaining the upper hand in France. The family moved first to Vassy, then to Vire, some 60 kilometres south of Caen. It was not wise to spend more than a few months anywhere, because by now the Terror was in full swing. Led by the energetic Jeanne de Croisilles, they moved to Caen itself, then to a secluded property at Feuguerolles-sur-Orne. And there, Jules father, an invalid hardly aware of what was going on, finally died. It was 12 October 1796.