DUNOIS, JEAN, called the bastard of Orleans, count of Dunois and Longueville, one of the most brilliant soldiers that France ever produced, was b. about the year 1403. He was the natural son of Louis duke of Orleans, brother of Charles VI., and was brought up in the house of that prince along with his legitimate children. D. is said to have been intended for the church, but this is doubted. His first important military achievement was the overthrow of the English at Montargis (1427). He next threw himself into Orleans with a small body of men, and bravely defended the place till the arrival of the famous Joan of Arc, whose religious enthusiasm combined with the valor of the bastard raised the drooping spirits of the French, and the English were obliged to raise the siege. This was the turning-point in the fortunes of the French nation. Iu 1429, D. and the maid of Orleans won the battle of Patay, after which he marched, with a small body of men, through the provinces then overrun by the English, and took the fortified towns. The capture and death of Joan of Arc arrested for a moment the prog ress of the French arms, but the heroism of D. was irresistible. He took Chartres, the key of Paris, forced Bedford to raise the siege of Lagny, chased the enemy from Paris, and within a very short period deprived them of all their French conquests except Normandy and Guienne. The next grand series of successes on the part of D. was the
expulsion of the English from Normandy. Town after town yielded—Rouen, Hartleur, Honfleur, Caen, Falaise, Cherbourg. This splendid campaign lasted only a year and six days. Not less triumphant was his career immediately after in Guienne; Montguyon, Blaye, Fronsac, Bordeaux, and lastly Bayonne, fell into his hands. The English, in fact, were swept out of the country, and the freedom of France from all external pres sure permanently secured. Louis on his accession to the throne in 1462, dispatched D. as governor to Genoa, which had yielded itself to France, but soon after, in a fit of jealousy and suspicion, deprived him of all :ds offices. D. now placed himself at the head of the alliance Pour is Bien Public, and by the treaty Of Conflans, 1465, recovered all his confiscated estates. He died 24th of Nov., 1468. There is no name so popular in France as that of D.; there is no hero so national; he labored 25 years for the deliver ance of his country, and this alone—his sword was never unsheathed, except against the English. He never had a force under him which could enable him to win a victory that might balance Agincourt or Crecy, but the multitude and constancy of his petty successes served the cause of France more effectively than great and sanguinary contests would have done.