DUMAS, GUILLAUME MATHIEU, COUNT 1837), French general, was born at Montpellier on Nov. and entered the army in 1773. He served in America and else where almost continuously up to the outbreak of the Revolution. During the Revolution he acted with the moderate party, and, though he was president of the Legislative Assembly in 1791, spent most of his time abroad until the consulate. Under Napoleon he served at Austerlitz, and then with Joseph Bonaparte in Naples and Spain. He was made a count of the empire in 181o. In he was intendant-general of the Grande Aimee in Russia, but was taken prisoner after the capitulation of Dresden in 1813. At the first restoration he assisted in army administration, but joined Napoleon during the Hundred Days, when he organized the Na tional Guard. He employed his enforced retirement after the second restoration in writing his Précis des evenements militaires (19 vols., 1817-26), the first part of which had appeared anony mously at Hamburg in i800. The Précis embraces the history of the war from 1798 to the peace of 1807. A growing weakness of sight, ending in blindness, prevented him from carrying the work further, but he translated Napier's Peninsular War as a sort of continuation to it. In 1818 Dumas was admitted a member of the council of state, from which, however, he was excluded in 1822. After the revolution of 183o, in which he took an active part, Dumas was created a peer of France, and re-entered the council of state. He died in Paris on Oct. 16, 183 7.
Besides the Précis des evenements militaires, which forms a valuable source for the history of the period, Dumas wrote Souvenirs du lieut.-general Comte Mathieu Dumas (published posthumously by his son, 1839).