Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/479

BEA scandalous than that of the presiding prelate, Beauvais. He was successively canon of Paris, Besançon, and Rouen. Died about the middle of the fifteenth century.—J. S., G.  BEAUPRÉ,, a French priest, who became a member of the national convention in 1792, and voted for the execution of Louis XVI.  BEAUPUY,, bachelier de, a French general, born in 1757. He served chiefly on the Prussian frontier; and was killed at the battle of Emandinghen in 1796.  BEAUPUY,, bachelier de, elder brother of the preceding, after serving in the army, was placed over the department of Dordogne at the Revolution, and subsequently sat in the representative assembly. He died in 1802.  BEAUREGARD, (called ), a French officer, a native of Metz, received his rank of general at the Revolution; was commandant of Alexandria in 1802, and fell near Badajoz, heading a brigade of dragoons, in 1810.  BEAUREPAIRE,, a native of Poitou, joined the Vendean royalists in 1793; and, towards the close of the same year, died of the wounds which he had received leading a column of infantry at the second battle of Chatillon.  BEAUREPAIRE,, resigned his lieutenant's commission in the French army at the Revolution; but was recalled to the service, and made commandant of Verdun in 1792. He died by his own hand, rather than surrender to the Prussians, who had laid siege to the fortress.—W. B.  * BEAUREPAIRE-ROHAN,, a Brazilian officer of French extraction, who has distinguished himself by his geographical and meteorological researches in some of the central regions of South America. His journey from Cuyaba to Rio Janeiro, through Paraguay, Rio Grande, and St. Catherina, was published in 1846; and other results of his enterprising labours have found a place in the Quarterly Review of the Historical Institute of Rio Janeiro. For these and more recent services, he received, in 1850, a major's commission in the Brazilian engineers.—W. B. <section end="479H" /> <section begin="479I" />BEAURIEU,, a French writer, born at Saint-Paul in Artois on the 3rd July, 1728, was more remarkable for his eccentricities and the oddity of some of his notions, than for the number or quality of his works. He dressed in an eccentric style, attracted the attention of people passing him in the street by the vivacity and spirit of his talk, professed a great contempt for riches, and was exceedingly fond of children. He died on the 5th October, 1795, in the Hospital de la Charité at Paris. His most celebrated work is entitled "L'Elève de la nature;" it was published in 1763, and to give it a greater importance in the eyes of the public, Beaurieu did not hesitate to ascribe it to J. J. Rousseau. Three of his other works, "L'Heureux citoyen," "Variétés littéraires," and "L'Accord parfait," are also regarded as possessing considerable merit.—W. S. D. <section end="479I" /> <section begin="479J" />BEAUSOBRE,, comte de, a French general of the last century, whose military experience, acquired in many battles and sieges, was published in 1757, in notes to an ancient work on the defence of fortified places. <section end="479J" /> <section begin="479K" />BEAUSOBRE,, born at Berlin, 1730, when his father (an eminent protestant minister, and author of a history of Manicheism) had attained his eighty-first year; died in 1783. Studied at Berlin and Frankfort, and was afterwards made a member of the Academy of Sciences and privy councillor to Frederick the Great. His writings exhibit the sceptical and sensual philosophy so common in his age. <section end="479K" /> <section begin="479L" />BEAUSOBRE,, a distinguished protestant writer, was born at Niort in 1659. He studied at the famous academy of Saumur, and was ordained to the ministry at the early age of twenty-two. Persecution broke out in France, and the church in which he ministered was shut up by authority. In his youthful fervour, he scorned such a prohibition, and broke the royal seal which had been placed on the door of the chapel. To avoid the punishment which such an act entailed, he fled first into Holland and then to Dessau, where the princess of Anhalt kindly received him, and where he wrote a defence of some points of Calvinism, "Défense de la doctrine des Réformés sur la providence, sur la prédestination, sur la grâce, et sur l'eucharistie," Magdeburg, 1694. In the year in which he published this clever work, he went to Berlin, where he preached and laboured for forty-six years. His services were not only highly useful, but were much esteemed. He became a royal chaplain, a consistorial counsellor, and inspector of French schools and churches. His biblical works commenced with a new edition of the French psalms. The "New Testament" was published in 1718, and in this work Lenfant was his coadjutor. Beausobre translated the epistles of Paul, and prefixed a good introduction. His incomplete "History of the Reformation" appeared after his death, at Berlin, in four volumes octavo, 1785. Parts of this work had already appeared in separate portions, such as his "Dissertation sur les Adamites de Bohème." His principal work was his well-known "Histoire Critique de Manichée et du Manichéisme," 2 vols. 4to, Amsterdam, 1734-39. "These volumes," as Gibbon says, "form a rich treasury of facts and opinions." They are pervaded by sound and varied learning, clear judgment, and sharp polemical skill; though they are occasionally tedious from long digressions and extraneous discussions. Beausobre died in 1738. After his death, two volumes of his critical and philological notes were published at the Hague, and his son edited four volumes of his sermons. Beausobre was one of the bright lights of the French reformed church,—preached, acted, and wrote with great ability and spirit. In one of his letters to Voltaire, Frederick the Great, then crown prince, calls him "the famous Beausobre, a man of honour, of great genius, and of exquisite taste, . . . a consummate orator, . . . . the best writer in Berlin, a man so full of fire, that eighty years have not chilled it, and yet so conscious of his abilities as to be affected by applause."—J. E. <section end="479L" /> <section begin="479M" />BEAUSSIER,, nephew of Louis Joseph de, followed the same profession. He relieved Quebec in 1758, and subsequently served at St. Domingo, and in America. At the peace he was promoted, had a seat in the assembly of notables, and died in 1789.—W. B. <section end="479M" /> <section begin="479N" />BEAUSSIER DE LILLE,, a naval officer in the French service. He commanded the squadron which carried Montcalm to his Canadian governorship in 1756. Afterwards taken prisoner by the English, and exchanged, he was employed in other expeditions of importance, and died in 1765. <section end="479N" /> <section begin="479O" />BEAUTEMPS-BEAUPRÉ,, a celebrated French hydrographer, born at Neuville-au-Pont, near Sainte Menehould, in 1766, began to be employed in the public service in his nineteenth year, being at that age commissioned by government to prepare some charts for an expedition to the Baltic. After the completion of his "Atlas de la mer Baltique," he was engaged to survey the eastern coast of the Adriatic, and the northern shores of the German ocean. In 1815 he prepared plans for a military station on the Elbe, which met the approval of the Hanoverian government, and procured him the honour of being elected a member of the Royal Society of Göttingen. He was latterly chief hydrographer in the marine service, and in that capacity superintended the preparation of a complete atlas of the French maritime boundaries. The plans and maps by which the first English ship directed its course round Van Diemen's Land, were taken from a French officer, to whom they had been intrusted by Beautemps-Beaupré, then a prisoner at the Cape of Good Hope. He had prepared them in 1791, when engaged in the expedition of Admiral Entrecasteaux, employed to search for the unfortunate La Perouse.—J. S., G. <section end="479O" /> <section begin="479P" />BEAUVAIS,, a privy councillor under Louis XVI., became a refugee at the Revolution, and afterwards joined the royalists in La Vendée, where he commanded a division of artillery. He made every effort to prolong the struggle, and at length took refuge in England, where he died in poverty in 1857, having published two works on the Vendean war.—W. B. <section end="479P" /> <section begin="479Zcontin" />BÉAUVAIS,, a French general, born at Orleans, 8th November, 1772; died at Paris about the beginning of 1830. He entered the army as a common soldier, and was speedily raised to the rank of adjutant-general, in which capacity he was employed successively in the armies of the north, of Italy, of the interior, and of Egypt, when, in consequence of an altercation with Buonaparte, the commander-in-chief, he requested and obtained permission to quit the service. On his voyage homewards he was captured by the Turks, and, being carried to Constantinople, was committed a prisoner to the Seven Towers, where he was detained for eighteen months. On reaching France, being shut out from all military employment, he was fain to accept of a situation which opened to him in the custom-house of Paris. In 1809 he was recalled to the service, and was sent with his former rank, first to Antwerp, then to Spain, and afterwards, in 1813, to the Rhine. During <section end="479Zcontin" />