DUMOURIEZ, CHARLES FRANCOIS DU PERIER French general, born at Cambrai on Jan. saw his first service as a volunteer in the campaign of Rossbach. He was retired at the peace of 1763, but was subsequently em ployed in Corsica. Under Choiseul he was in the secret service, and on his patron's fall was imprisoned, being only released on the ac cession of Louis XVI. in 1774. Dumouriez was commandant of Cherbourg for ten years, and in 1788 became marechal de camp. At the outbreak of the Revolution he went to Paris, where he joined the Jacobin Club. The death of Mirabeau, to whose for tunes he had attached himself, was a great blow to him; but, pro moted to the rank of lieut.-general and commandant of Nantes, his opportunity came after the flight to Varennes, when he offered to march to the assistance of the Assembly. He now joined the Girondist party, and on March 15, 1792, was appointed minister of foreign affairs. He was mainly responsible for the declaration of war against Austria (April 2o), and the invasion of the Low Countries was planned by him. On the dismissal of Roland, Cla viere and Servan (June 13) , he took the latter's post of minister of war, but resigned it two days later on account of the king's refusal to come to terms with the Assembly, and went to join the army of Marshal Liickner. After the emeute of August io and Lafayette's flight he was appointed to the command of the "Army of the Centre," and at the same moment the Coalition assumed the offensive. Dumouriez acted promptly. His subordinate Kel lermann repulsed the Prussians at Valmy (Sept. 20, 1792), and he himself severely defeated the Austrians at Jemappes (Nov. 6).
Defeated at Neerwinden in Mar. 1793, he ventured all on a desperate stroke. Arresting the commissaries of the Convention sent to inquire into his conduct, he handed them over to the en emy, and then attempted to persuade his troops to march on Paris and overthrow the revolutionary government. The attempt failed, and Dumouriez with the duc de Chartres (afterwards King Louis Philippe) and his brother the duc de Montpensier, fled into the Austrian camp.
In 1804 he settled in England, where the government conferred on him a pension of £1200 a year. He became a valuable adviser to the War Office in connection with the struggle with Napoleon, though the extent to which this went was only known to the public many years later. He died at Turville Park, near Henley-on Thames, on March 14, 1823. His memoirs were published at Hamburg in 1794. An enlarged edition, La Vie et les memoires du General Dumouriez, appeared at Paris in 1823.
See A. von Boguslawski, Das Leben des Generals Dumouriez (1878 79) ; Revue des deux mondes (July 15, Aug. 1 and 15, 1884) ; H. Welschinger, Le Roman de Dumouriez (1890) ; A. Chuquet, La Premiere Invasion, Valmy, La Retraite de Brunswick, Jemappes, La Trahison de Dumouriez (1886-91) ; A. Sorel, L'Europe et la Revolu tion f rancaise (1885-92) ; J. Holland Rose and A. M. Broadley, Dumouriez and the Defence of England (1908) ; E. Daudet, La Con juration de Pichegru et les complots royalistes du midi et du t'est, (1901) ; Pouget de Saint-Andre, in his Le General Du mouriez (1914) contends that Dumouriez has been misjudged.