DARU, Comte de, a peer of France, a member of the French Academy and of the Academy of Sciences, and a distinguished historian, was born at Montpellier, where his father held the office of secretary to the intendancy of Languedoc, about the year 1767. He entered the army at the age of sixteen, and at the period of the revolution was lieutenant and commissary at war. Like most of the ardent spirits of that time, he warmly embraced the principles of political amelioration which were then professed, and made the campaign of 1792 against the Prussians. But not long after the battle of Valmy, and the retreat of the Duke of Brunswick, he was arrested as a suspected person, and imprisoned for eighteen months, during which he amused his solitary hours with poetical and other compositions. After the guillotine had done tardy justice on Robespierre, and terrorism had ceased, he was liberated; and subsequently he filled several important situations in the commissariat and the office of the ministry of war. When the 18th of Brumaire gave France a new master in Bonaparte, the first consul appointed him secretary to the ministry at war; and the day after the battle of Marengo, the victorious chief nominated him one of the commissioners for the execution of the convention concluded between General Berthier and General Melas. Having warmly attached himself to the fortunes of Napoleon, Daru was, in 1805, nominated a counsellor of state and intendant-general of the emperor’s military household. In 1806, he was appointed intendant-general of the Brunswick territory, and subsequently commissioner for the execution of the treaties of Tilsit and Vienna, as well as minister plenipotentiary at Berlin. In 1806 he was elected a member of the Institute, and in 1808 an honorary member of the Berlin Academy. In 1811 he was appointed minister secretary of state, and shortly afterwards he received the portfolio of the war department. He accompanied Napoleon in his Russian campaign; and in the council summoned immediately after the capture of Smolensko, to’ consider whether the French forces should advance farther during that season, he gave his voice decidedly in the negative. When the disastrous retreat from Moscow had commenced, General Matthieu Dumas having become extremely indisposed, Daru was obliged to assume the functions of intendant-general of the army; and his capacity for labour, which was happily united with an iron constitution, enabled him to fulfil, with apparent ease, duties which would have killed several men of ordinary strength. After the restoration of the Bourbons, he was made intendantgeneral to the king; an appointment which took place in December 1814. But on the return of Napoleon from Elba, he joined the standard of his old master, subscribed a considerable sum for the purpose of arming the Parisian federates, and in his capacity of counsellor of state attached his signature to the celebrated declaration of the 25th March. The second restoration, accordingly, found him compromised by his connection with the government of the hundred days; and he retired for a time to private life,in order to devote himself to literary pursuits. But in 1819 he was summoned by royal ordonnance to the Chamber of Peers, where his rectitude of judgment, his administrative knowledge, his business habits, and his talents as a public speaker, rendered him one of the most formidable adversaries of the Villèle ministry, and enabled him to signalize himself as one of the most powerful defenders of the national liberties. In 1821 he published his History of Venice, which is by far the most important of his works, and that upon which his literary fame principally rests, and which is now universally regarded as the most complete and impartial history of that singular government, equally remarkable for its strength and its duration. Of his subsequent work, the History of Bretagne, all that need be said here is, that it displays labour and accuracy, but is devoid of general interest, though to mere historical antiquaries its value is very great. His other productions consist of a poetical translation of Horace, a variety of occasional poems, discourses and éloges pronounced in the academy, and speeches delivered in the Chamber of Peers. Count Daru died at his seat near Mculan, on the 5th September 1829, aged sixty-two; and his loss was the more generally felt, because his character and talents had procured him many friends. His remains were deposited in the Cemetière Montmartre, and five discourses were pronounced over his tomb by MM. Mirbel, Cuvier, Silvestre de Sacy, Ternaux, and Leroy. Lamartine the poet was elected to fill the vacancy in the academy occasioned by the death of Count Daru.