Jesuits. Although the inhabitants then increased to 200 or more, dissatisfaction with the paternal rule of the founder increased until 1710, when he was made governor of Louisiana. The year before, the soldiers had been withdrawn; by the second year after there was serious trouble with the Indians, and for several years following the population was greatly reduced and the post threatened with extinction. But in 1722, when the Mississippi country was opened, the population once more increased, and again in 1748, when the settlement of the Ohio Valley began, the governor-general of Canada offered special inducements to Frenchmen to settle at Detroit, with the result that the population was soon more than 1000 and the cultivation of farms in the vicinity was begun. In 1760, however, the place was taken by the British under Colonel Robert Rogers and an English element was introduced into the population which up to this time had been almost exclusively French. Three years later, during the conspiracy of Pontiac, the fort first narrowly escaped capture and then suffered from a siege lasting from the 9th of May until the 12th of October. Under English rule it continued from this time on as a military post with its population usually reduced to less than 500. In 1778 a new fort was built and named Fort Lernault, and during the War of Independence the British sent forth from here several Indian expeditions to ravage the frontiers. With the ratification of the treaty which concluded that war the title to the post passed to the United States in 1783, but the post itself was not surrendered until the 11th of January 1796, in accordance with Jay’s Treaty of 1794. It was then named Fort Shelby; but in 1802 it was incorporated as a town and received its present name. In 1805 all except one or two buildings were destroyed by fire. General William Hull (1753–1825), a veteran of the War of American Independence, governor of Michigan territory in 1805–1812, as commander of the north-western army in 1812 occupied the city. Failing to hear immediately of the declaration of war between the United States and Great Britain, he was cut off from his supplies shipped by Lake Erie. He made from Detroit on the 12th of July an awkward and futile advance into Canada, which, if more vigorous, might have resulted in the capture of Malden and the establishment of American troops in Canada, and then retired to his fortifications. On the 16th of August 1812, without any resistance and without consulting his officers, he surrendered the city to General Brock, for reasons of humanity, and afterwards attempted to justify himself by criticism of the War Department in general and in particular of General Henry Dearborn’s armistice with Prevost, which had not included in its terms Hull, whom Dearborn had been sent out to reinforce.[1] After Perry’s victory on the 14th of September on Lake Erie, Detroit on the 29th of September was again occupied by the forces of the United States. Its growth was rather slow until 1830, but since then its progress has been unimpeded. Detroit was the capital of Michigan from 1805 to 1847.
Authorities.—Silas Farmer, The History of Detroit and Michigan (Detroit, 1884 and 1889), and “Detroit, the Queen City,” in L. P. Powell’s Historic Towns of the Western States (New York and London, 1901); D. F. Wilcox, “Municipal Government in Michigan and Ohio,” in Columbia University Studies (New York, 1896); C. M. Burton, “Cadillac’s Village” or Detroit under Cadillac (Detroit, 1896); Francis Parkman, A Half Century of Conflict (Boston, 1897); and The Conspiracy of Pontiac (Boston, 1898); and the annual Reports of the Detroit Board of Commerce (1904 sqq.).
DETTINGEN, a village of Germany in the kingdom of Bavaria, on the Main, and on the Frankfort-on-Main-Aschaffenburg railway, 10 m. N.W. of Aschaffenburg. It is memorable as the scene of a decisive battle on the 27th of June 1743, when the English, Hanoverians and Austrians (the “Pragmatic army”), 42,000 men under the command of George II. of England, routed the numerically superior French forces under the duc de Noailles. It was in memory of this victory that Handel composed his Dettingen Te Deum.
DEUCALION, in Greek legend, son of Prometheus, king of Phthia in Thessaly, husband of Pyrrha, and father of Hellen, the mythical ancestor of the Hellenic race. When Zeus had resolved to destroy all mankind by a flood, Deucalion constructed a boat or ark, in which, after drifting nine days and nights, he landed on Mount Parnassus (according to others, Othrys, Aetna or Athos) with his wife. Having offered sacrifice and inquired how to renew the human race, they were ordered to cast behind them the “bones of the great mother,” that is, the stones from the hillside. The stones thrown by Deucalion became men, those thrown by Pyrrha, women.
See Apollodorus i. 7, 2; Ovid, Metam. i. 243-415; Apollonius Rhodius iii. 1085 ff.; H. Usener, Die Sintflutsagen (1899).
DEUCE (a corruption of the Fr. deux, two), a term applied to the “two” of any suit of cards, or of dice. It is also a term used in tennis when both sides have each scored three points in a game, or five games in a set; to win the game or set two points or games must then be won consecutively. The earliest instances in English of the use of the slang expression “the deuce,” in exclamations and the like, date from the middle of the 17th century. The meaning was similar to that of “plague” or “mischief” in such phrases as “plague on you,” “mischief take you” and the like. The use of the word as an euphemism for “the devil” is later. According to the New English Dictionary the most probable derivation is from a Low German das daus, i.e. the “deuce” in dice, the lowest and therefore the most unlucky throw. The personification, with a consequent change of gender, to der daus, came later. The word has also been identified with the name of a giant or goblin in Teutonic mythology.
DEUS, JOÃO DE (1830–1896), the greatest Portuguese poet of his generation, was born at San Bartholomeu de Messines in the province of Algarve on the 8th of March 1830. Matriculating in the faculty of law at the university of Coimbra, he did not proceed to his degree but settled in the city, dedicating himself wholly to the composition of verses, which circulated among professors and undergraduates in manuscript copies. In the volume of his art, as in the conduct of life, he practised a rigorous self-control. He printed nothing previous to 1855, and the first of his poems to appear in a separate form was La Lata, in 1860. In 1862 he left Coimbra for Beja, where he was appointed editor of O Bejense, the chief newspaper in the province of Alemtejo, and four years later he edited the Folha do Sul. As the pungent satirical verses entitled Eleições prove, he was not an ardent politician, and, though he was returned as Liberal deputy for the constituency of Silves in 1869, he acted independently of all political parties and promptly resigned his mandate. The renunciation implied in the act, which cut him off from all advancement, is in accord with nearly all that is known of his lofty character. In the year of his election as deputy, his friend José Antonio Garcia Blanco collected from local journals the series of poems, Flores do campo, which is supplemented by the Ramo de flores (1869). This is João de Deus’s masterpiece. Pires de Marmalada (1869) is an improvisation of no great merit. The four theatrical pieces—Amemos o nosso proximo, Ser apresentado, Ensaio de Casamento, and A Viúva inconsolavel—are prose translations from Méry, cleverly done, but not worth the doing. Horacio e Lydia (1872), a translation from Ronsard, is a good example of artifice in manipulating that dangerously monotonous measure, the Portuguese couplet. As an indication of a strong spiritual reaction three prose fragments (1873)—Anna, Mãe de Maria, A Virgem Maria and A Mulher do Levita de Ephrain—translated from Darboy’s Femmes de la Bible, are full of significance. The Folhas soltas (1876) is a collection of verse in the manner of Flores do campo, brilliantly effective and exquisitely refined. Within the next few years the writer turned his attention to educational problems, and in his Cartilha maternal (1876) first expressed the conclusions to which his study of Pestalozzi and Fröbel had led him. This patriotic, pedagogical apostolate was a misfortune for Portuguese literature; his educational mission absorbed João de Deus completely, and is responsible for numerous controversial letters, for a translation of Théodore-Henri Barrau’s treatise, Des devoirs des enfants envers leurs
- ↑ Hull was tried at Albany in 1814 by court martial, General Dearborn presiding, was found guilty of treason, cowardice, neglect of duty and unofficerlike conduct, and was sentenced to be shot; the president remitted the sentence because of Hull’s services in the Revolution.
