| Chapter 2: | Dupin’s Background and Family |
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was disrupted by national events, but it seems that the character of his parents and brothers enabled them to adapt to circumstances. I shall now look at those other members of his family.
2.2. Dupin’s Father
Charles-André Dupin (1758–1843) was descended from an ancient, bourgeois Varzy family which had produced many clerics, businessmen, and lawyers (Perrin 1983, 35–43). Born in Clamecy, he became a lawyer in 1779, but deafness prevented him from practising. He moved to Varzy in 1781, where he assumed various official posts. On 7 September 1791, he was elected by the Nièvre department to the Legislative Assembly. Returning to Clamecy, he was suspected of being a moderate when he came up against the extremist Jacobins who had taken over the district. In January 1793, he was listed as suspect—‘tarnished by conduct unworthy of a citizen’ (Baron 1978)—and was put under house arrest for several months. Freed on 17 August by Joseph Fouché,1 who was on a visit to Clamecy, Dupin considered it prudent to retire to Varzy, where his wife resided. This did not, however, prevent him from being incarcerated two more times, first at Nevers in October 1793 and then for two months at Pressures (the Château de Pressures, between Clamecy and Varzy, which was used as a prison during the Revolution; both the Abbé Bougon and Dupin père were imprisoned there). Dupin père was set free in January 1794 by J. A. Lefiot, Fouché’s successor. Returning to Varzy, he realized that if he were to be free of worries, it would be wise for him to keep a comparatively low profile in politics. He joined the minority of Jacobins of the Société populaire, which in the main was of a moderate tendency, and he became their official spokesman until the fall of Maximilien Robespierre in July 1794 (see Baron 1978).
This period of relative calm enabled Charles-André Dupin to devote his attention to the education of his sons, André-Marie, who became the famous Dupin aîné, and Pierre-Charles-François, the future Baron Dupin, the subject of this work; in 1794, they were aged eleven and ten,