the furtherance of that object. On the rise of General Boulanger, M. Déroulède attempted to use the Ligue des patriotes, hitherto a non-political organization, to assist his cause, but was deserted by a great part of the league and forced to resign his presidency. Nevertheless he used the section that remained faithful to him with such effect that the government found it necessary in 1889 to decree its suppression. In the same year he was elected to the chamber as member for Angoulême. He was expelled from the chamber in 1890 for his disorderly interruptions during debate. He did not stand at the elections of 1893, but was re-elected in 1898, and distinguished himself by his violence as a nationalist and anti-Dreyfusard. After the funeral of President Faure, on the 23rd of February 1899, he endeavoured to persuade General Roget to lead his troops upon the Élysée. For this he was arrested, but on being tried for treason was acquitted (May 31). On the 12th of August he was again arrested and accused, together with André Buffet, Jules Guérin and others, of conspiracy against the republic. After a long trial before the high court, he was sentenced, on the 4th of January 1900, to ten years’ banishment from France, and retired to San Sebastian. In 1901, he was again brought prominently before the public by a quarrel with his Royalist allies, which resulted in an abortive attempt to arrange a duel with M. Buffet in Switzerland. In November 1905, however, the law of amnesty enabled him to return to France.
Besides the works already mentioned, he published Le Sergent, in the Theâtre de campagne (1880); De l’éducation nationale (1882); Monsieur le Uhlan et les trois couleurs (1884); Le Premier grenadier de France; La Tour d’Auvergne (1886); Le Livre de la ligue des patriotes (1887); Refrains militaires (1888); Histoire d’amour (1890); a pamphlet entitled Désarmement? (1891); Chants du paysan (1894); Poésies Militaires (1896) and Messire du Guesclin, drame en vers (1895); La mort de Hoche. Cinq actes en prose (1897); La Plus belle fille du monde, conte dialogué en vers libres (1898).
DERRICK, a sort of crane (q.v.); the name is derived from that of a famous early 17th-century Tyburn hangman, and was originally applied as a synonym.
DERRING-DO, valour, chivalrous conduct, or “desperate courage,” as it is defined by Sir Walter Scott. The word in its present accepted substantival form is a misconstruction of the verbal substantive dorryng or durring, daring, and do or don, the present infinitive of “do,” the phrase dorryng do thus meaning “daring to do.” It is used by Chaucer in Troylus, and by Lydgate in the Chronicles of Troy. Spenser in the Shepherd’s Calendar first adapted derring-do as a substantive meaning “manhood and chevalrie,” and this use was revived by Scott, through whom it came into vogue with writers of romance.
DE RUYTER, MICHAEL ADRIANZOON (1607–1676), Dutch naval officer, was born at Flushing on the 24th of March 1607. He began his seafaring life at the age of eleven as a cabin boy, and in 1636 was entrusted by the merchants of Flushing with the command of a cruiser against the French pirates. In 1640 he entered the service of the States, and, being appointed rear-admiral of a fleet fitted out to assist Portugal against Spain, specially distinguished himself at Cape St Vincent, on the 3rd of November 1641. In the following year he left the service of the States, and, until the outbreak of war with England in 1652, held command of a merchant vessel. In 1653 a squadron of seventy vessels was despatched against the English, under the command of Admiral Tromp. Ruyter, who accompanied the admiral in this expedition, seconded him with great skill and bravery in the three battles which were fought with the English. He was afterwards stationed in the Mediterranean, where he captured several Turkish vessels. In 1659 he received a commission to join the king of Denmark in his war with the Swedes. As a reward of his services, the king of Denmark ennobled him and gave him a pension. In 1661 he grounded a vessel belonging to Tunis, released forty Christian slaves, made a treaty with the Tunisians, and reduced the Algerine corsairs to submission. From his achievements on the west coast of Africa he was recalled in 1665 to take command of a large fleet which had been organized against England, and in May of the following year, after a long contest off the North Foreland, he compelled the English to take refuge in the Thames. On the 7th of June 1672 he fought a drawn battle with the combined fleets of England and France, in Southwold or Sole Bay, and after the fight he convoyed safely home a fleet of merchantmen. His valour was displayed to equal advantage in several engagements with the French and English in the following year. In 1676 he was despatched to the assistance of Spain against France in the Mediterranean, and, receiving a mortal wound in the battle on the 21st of April off Messina, died on the 29th at Syracuse. A patent by the king of Spain, investing him with the dignity of duke, did not reach the fleet till after his death. His body was carried to Amsterdam, where a magnificent monument to his memory was erected by command of the states-general.
See Life of De Ruyter by Brandt (Amsterdam, 1687), and by Klopp (2nd ed., Hanover, 1858).
DERVISH, a Persian word, meaning “seeking doors,” i.e. “beggar,” and thus equivalent to the Arabic faqīr (fakir). Generally in Islam it indicates a member of a religious fraternity, whether mendicant or not; but in Turkey and Persia it indicates more exactly a wandering, begging religious, called, in Arabic-speaking countries, more specifically a faqir. With important differences, the dervish fraternities may be compared to the regular religious orders of Roman Christendom, while the Ulema (q.v.) are, also with important differences, like the secular clergy. The origin and history of the mystical life in Islam, which led to the growth of the order of dervishes, are treated under Ṣūfi‘ism It remains to treat here more particularly of (1) the dervish fraternities, and (2) the Ṣūfī hierarchy.
1. The Dervish Fraternities.—In the earlier times, the relation between devotees was that of master and pupil. Those inclined to the spiritual life gathered round a revered sheikh (murshid, “guide,” ustadh, pir, “teacher”), lived with him, shared his religious practices and were instructed by him. In time of war against the unbelievers, they might accompany him to the threatened frontier, and fight under his eye. Thus murābit, “one who pickets his horse on a hostile frontier,” has become the marabout (q.v.) or dervish of French Algeria; and ribat, “a frontier fort,” has come to mean a monastery. The relation, also, might be for a time only. The pupil might at any time return to the world, when his religious education and training were complete. On the death of the master the memory of his life and sayings might go down from generation to generation, and men might boast themselves as pupils of his pupils. Continuous corporations to perpetuate his name were slow in forming. Ghazali himself, though he founded, taught and ruled a Ṣūfī cloister (khānqāh) at Tus, left no order behind him. But ʽAdī al-Hakkārī, who founded a cloister at Mosul and died about 1163, was long reverenced by the ʽAdawite Fraternity, and in 1166 died ʽAbd al-Qādir al-Jilānī, from whom the Qādirite order descends, one of the greatest and most influential to this day. The troublous times of the break up of the Seljuk rule may have been a cause in this, as, with St Benedict, the crumbling Roman empire. Many existing fraternities, it is true, trace their origin to saints of the third, second and even first Moslem centuries, but that is legend purely. Similar is the tendency to claim all the early pious Moslems as good Ṣūfīs; collections of Ṣūfī biography begin with the ten to whom Mahomet promised Paradise. So, too, the ultimate origin of fraternities is assigned to either Ali or Abu Bekr, and in Egypt all are under the rule of a direct descendant of the latter.
To give a complete list of these fraternities is quite impossible. Commonly, thirty-two are reckoned, but many have vanished or have been suppressed, and there are sub-orders innumerable. Each has a “rule” dating back to its founder, and a ritual which the members perform when they meet together in their convent (khānqāh, zāwiya, takya). This may consist simply in the repetition of sacred phrases, or it may be an elaborate performance, such as the whirlings of the dancing dervishes, the Mevlevites, an order founded by Jelāl ud-Dīn ar-Rūmī, the author of the
