Jean-Baptiste Bory de Saint-Vincent | |
|---|---|
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| Born | (1778-07-06)6 July 1778 |
| Died | 22 December 1846(1846-12-22) (aged 68) |
| Rank |  Colonel (1814) |
| Commands | Scientific Expeditions: |
| Battles / wars | French Revolutionary Wars Napoleonic Wars |
| Awards |  Chevalier of the Legion of Honor (1811) Officer of the Legion of Honor (1831) |
| Other work | Naturalist Geographer Botanist Volcanologist Correspondent of the National Museum of Natural History Member of the French Academy of Sciences Deputy:
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Jean-Baptiste Geneviève Marcellin Bory de Saint-Vincent[n 1] was a Frenchnaturalist,officer andpolitician. He was born on 6 July 1778 inAgen (Lot-et-Garonne) and died on 22 December 1846 inParis.Biologist andgeographer, he was particularly interested involcanology,systematics andbotany.The standardauthor abbreviationBory is used to indicate this person as the author whenciting abotanical name.[3]
Jean-Baptiste Bory de Saint Vincent was born atAgen on 6 July 1778. His parents were Géraud Bory de Saint-Vincent and Madeleine de Journu; his father's family werepetty nobility who played important roles at thebar and in the judiciary, during and after theFrench Revolution.[4] Instilled with sentiments hostile to the revolution from childhood,[5] he studied first at the college of Agen, then with his uncle Journu-Auber inBordeaux in 1787. He may have attended courses inmedicine andsurgery from 1791 to 1793. During theReign of Terror in 1793, his family was persecuted and took refuge in theLandes.
In 1794, as a precocious naturalist, aged 15, Bory was instrumental in freeing from prison[6] the entomologistPierre André Latreille, whose early work he had read, and in saving Latreille from deportation to thepenal colony of Cayenne.[N 1] Latreille later became one of the leadingentomologists of his time; he and Bory remained lifelong friends. A student of geologist and mineralogistDéodat Gratet de Dolomieu at the Paris School of Mines,[7] Bory sent his first scholarly publications to the Academy of Bordeaux the same year,[6] and consequently came into contact with many establishednaturalists.
After the death of his father, he joined theFrench Revolutionary armies in 1799. Thanks to the recommendation ofJean-Gérard Lacuée, also from Agen, he was soon appointedsecond lieutenant.[8] He served first in theArmy of the West, then in theArmy of the Rhine under the orders of GeneralJean Victor Marie Moreau.[5][9] He was then assigned toBrittany and moved toRennes; it was at this time that he acquired his Bonapartist sentiments.
In 1799, Bory learned about the upcoming departure of ascientific expedition to Australia organized by the government and obtained, thanks to his uncle and to the famous naturalistBernard-Germain de Lacépède,[9] the position of chiefbotanist aboard one of the three participating corvettes. Thus, after having left the Army of the West at the end of August and receiving from the Ministry of War an indefinite leave, Bory left Paris on 30 September and embarked inLe Havre on 19 October 1799 aboard the corvette commanded by CaptainNicolas Baudin,Le Naturaliste.[8][5][9][10]
After several stops inMadeira, theCanary islands, andCape Verde and then rounding theCape of Good Hope, towards the middle of the trip Bory suddenly left the ship of Captain Baudin with whom he was in conflict[8] and explored alone (and with limited resources) several islands of the African seas.[5][9] He visitedMauritius in March 1800 during a stopover. From there, he sailed to the neighboring island ofRéunion,[5] where in October 1801 he ascended thePiton de la Fournaise, the activevolcano of the island, and wrote the first general scientific description of it. He gave the name of his former professorDolomieu, of whose death he had just learned, to one of the craters he described as amamelon. He gave his own name to the summit crater, theBory crater.[9] On the way back, he continued his geographical, physical and botanical explorations on the island ofSaint Helena[8]
Bory was back inFrance by 11 July 1802 and learned that his mother had died during his absence. He published hisEssai sur les Îles Fortunées (Essay on the archipelago of the Canary islands), which earned him his election first as correspondent of theNational Museum of Natural History in August 1803,[5] and later as correspondent first class of theInstitut de France (division of Physical Sciences) in the spring of 1808.[5][9] In 1804, he published hisVoyage dans les quatre principales îles des mers d'Afrique.
Following his return, he resumed service in the army and, promoted to captain, he was transferred to the5th Dragoon Regiment of cavalry, in the3rd Army Corps ofMarshal Davout, of which he became assistant staff captain on 3 October 1804.[8][5][9] He was then assigned to theCamp of Boulogne for the creation ofEmperor Napoleon I'sGrande Armée.
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From 1805 to 1814, Bory followed the greater part of Napoleon's campaigns within the Grande Armée. In 1805, he took part in thecampaign of Austria as captain of dragoons and was present at theBattle of Ulm (15-20 October 1805) and at theBattle of Austerlitz (2 December 1805). Captain Bory then spent two years inPrussia andPoland and fought at theBattle of Jena (14 October 1806) and at theBattle of Friedland (14 June 1807).[8][5][9] He continued drawing military maps of Franconia and Swabia and during his visits to Bavaria, Vienna and Berlin, where he found his own works translated into German, he took the opportunity to meet several scientists including the botanistsNikolaus Joseph von Jacquin andCarl Ludwig Willdenow, who received him with open arms and presented him with valuable gifts. In October 1808, he served on the staff ofMarshal Ney,[9] which he soon left to be attached toMarshal Soult, Duke of Dalmatia, asaide-de-camp, in October 1809.[8] Having been promoted tomajor, Bory was mainly involved in military reconnaissance thanks to his skills in graphic work.[9] From 1809 to 1813, he took part in the Frenchcampaign of Spain and distinguished himself at theSiege of Badajoz in the spring of 1811, at the Battle of Quebara and at theBattle of Albuera (16 May 1811).[5][9] Events having placed him at the head of the troops that formed the garrison of Agen, he found himself commanding soldiers from his hometown for about two weeks.[5] In May 1811, he became squadron leader and was then appointedKnight of the Legion of Honor and attained the rank of lieutenant colonel by the end of the year.
Alongside Soult, Bory hastily left Spain to take part to theGerman campaign and participate in theBattle of Lützen (2 May 1813) and in theBattle of Bautzen (20-21 May 1813). After these victories, he returned to his homeland for thecampaign of France of 1814 and fought at theBattle of Orthez (27 February 1814). He also took part in theBattle of Toulouse (10 April 1814), and on the following day organized troops of partisans and scouts in his own region of Agen.[9] After thefirst abdication of Napoleon I in April 1814 and his exile to the island of Elba, of which Bory learned at Agen on 13 April 1814, he went to Paris.[8]
Marshal Soult, rallying to the new government and having been appointedMinister of War, summoned Bory to his staff and appointed him to the rank of colonel. He also offered Bory, on 10 October 1814, the service of the ministry'sDépôt de la Guerre (a depository of maps and archives), to which his topographic work entitled him.[9] He remained there until his proscription on 25 July 1815. Bory worked on scientific and literary works as well, and took part in the writing of the satirical liberal, anti-monarchist and pro-Bonapartist newspaper,theNain Jaune.[8][5][9]
On the return of Napoleon from exile, Bory was elected by the college of the department ofLot-et-Garonne, on 16 May 1815, to the office ofrepresentative ofAgen at theChamber of the Hundred Days and sat with the liberals.[N 2] He proclaimed the constitution, gave a resounding speech before the tribune,[8] and virulently opposed the Minister of Police,Joseph Fouché, Duke of Otranto.
Absent atWaterloo, his mandate as deputy confining him to the legislative body, he saw the abdication of Napoleon I and the return of KingLouis XVIII. Placed by Fouché on the lists ofproscription by theOrdonnance of 24 July 1815,[9] which condemned 57 persons for having served Napoleon during theHundred Days after having pledged allegiance to Louis XVIII, Bory first took refuge in the valley of Montmorency, from where, hidden, he published hisJustification de la conduite et des opinions de M. Bory de Saint-Vincent.[9] Then, the amnesty law of 12 January 1816 was proclaimed by the King, condemning Bory to exile,[5] and he went toLiège under a false name.[9] First invited by the King ofPrussia (thanks to Bory's friendship with the naturalistAlexander von Humboldt) to stay inBerlin, then inAachen, he was expelled after eighteen months.[9] He refused to submit to the decision which assigned him to Königsberg or Prague for his residence,[9] and when he was offered a commission as General inBolívar's newRepublic of Colombia by botanist and friend (and vice-president)Francisco Antonio Zea, he declined. He finally managed to reachHolland, disguised as a brandy merchant and with a false passport, thenBrussels, where he metEmmanuel Joseph Sieyès and where he lived until 1820.[8][5][9] WithAuguste Drapiez andJean-Baptiste Van Mons, he founded and became one of the scientific directors of theAnnales générales des Sciences physiques, edited in Brussels by the printer Weissenbruch from 1819 to 1821.[8] The articles, written by international scientific luminaries, were illustrated with lithographs printed first by Duval de Mercourt and then byMarcellin Jobard.
On 1 January 1820, Bory was finally allowed to return to France. Dismissed from the army and deprived of pay, he returned to Paris where he lived until 1825.[9] He was obliged to devote himself entirely to editorial work (on his Annales of Brussels in particular) and he collaborated with various liberal newspapers,[5] including theCourrier français, which reserved for him the drafting of the reports on the sessions of the Chamber of Deputies.[9] He gave up later, when, devoting himself entirely to science, he found in the many books he was selling to booksellers an honorable means of livelihood.[9] However, in 1823, he fought a duel with a pistol and was wounded in the foot, and, in 1825, he was thrown inprison at Sainte-Pélagie for debts,[8][5] where he remained until 1827.[N 3][N 4]
It was during this productive period in 1822, that Bory, along with most of the scientists of his time, includingArago,Brongniart,Drapiez,Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire,von Humboldt,de Jussieu,de Lacépède,Latreille, etc., began the writing of one of his greatest works, theDictionnaire classique d'histoire naturelle en 17 volumes (1822-1831).[8]
Awar of Independence had been raging inGreece since 1821,[11][12] but the Greek victories were short-lived and the Turkish-Egyptian troops had reconquered thePeloponnese in 1825.King Charles X, supported by a strongcurrent of philhellenism, decided to intervene alongside the Greek insurgents. After the navalBattle of Navarino (20 October 1827), which saw the annihilation of the Turkish-Egyptian fleet by the AlliedFranco-Russo-British fleet, a French expeditionary force of 15,000 men landed in the south-west of the Peloponnese in August 1828. The purpose of theExpédition de Morée[13] was to liberate the area from the Turkish-Egyptian occupation forces and return it to theyoung independent Greek state; this would be accomplished in just one month.[11][12]
Towards the end of the year 1828, theViscount of Martignac,Interior minister of KingCharles X and the real head of the government at that time (as well as being a childhood friend of Bory in Bordeaux), charged six academicians of theInstitute de France (Georges Cuvier,Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire,Charles-Benoît Hase,Desiré-Raoul Rochette,Jean-Nicolas Hyot andJean-Antoine Letronne) with appointing the chief-officers and members of each section of a scientific committee to be attached to the Morea expedition, just as had been done previously with theCommission of Sciences and Arts duringNapoleon'scampaign in Egypt.[8][9][14] Bory was thus appointed director of the commission.[8][5][9] The minister and the academicians also determined the routes and objectives.[14] Bory wrote, "Messrs. De Martignac and Siméon had asked me expressly not to restrict my observations to Flies and Herbs, but to extend them to places and to men later..." .[14][15]
Bory and his team of 19 scientists (includingEdgar Quinet,Abel Blouet and Pierre Peytier) representing various scientific disciplines, such asnatural history andantiquities (archaeology,architecture andsculpture) disembarked from the frigateCybèle atNavarino on 3 March 1829 and there joined GeneralNicolas Joseph Maison, who was commanding the French expeditionary force. Bory then met GeneralAntoine Simon Durrieu, chief of staff of the expedition, who was also from theLandes region and with whom Bory had been connected for a decade.[8] Bory stayed in Greece for 8 months, until November 1829, and explored thePeloponnese,Attica and theCyclades[14] The scientific work of the commission was of major importance to the increase knowledge of the country.[16][17][18] The topographic maps they produced, which were widely acknowledged, were of an unprecedented high quality and surveys, drawings, cuts, plans and proposals for the theoretical restoration of the monuments were a new attempt to systematically and exhaustively catalogue the ancient Greek vestiges. The Morea expedition and its scientific publications offered a near complete description of the regions visited and formed a scientific, aesthetic and human inventory that remained for a long time one of the best achieved about Greece.[16][17][18] Bory registered all the results of his research and published them later in his major opus of 1832.[14]
After his return from Greece, Bory pursued his scholarly career; in 1830, he presented his candidacy at theInstitute de France for the vacant seat left by the death ofJean-Baptiste de Lamarck, obtaining the votes ofArago,Cuvier,Fourier andThénard among others. He also participated in the founding of theEntomological Society of France, the oldest entomological society in the world, on 29 February 1832, alongside his old friendPierre-André Latreille.[8]
In 1830, while Bory was occupied writing his work on Morea (by ministry order), theJuly Ordinances promulgated byKing Charles X to obtain elections more favorable to theUltra-royalists, and which suspended freedom of the press, revived his political sentiments.[9] He fought on the barricades of the Faubourg Saint-Germain and was first at theHôtel de Ville.[5] After these Three Glorious [Days] (theJuly Revolution) and the new appointment of Marshal Soult to the Ministry of War on 3 November 1830, Bory was finally, after 15 years, reinstated in the army, to his former rank of Colonel with the General Staff and to his post at the war depository, which he had held in 1815.[8][5][9] He remained there throughout the course of theJuly Monarchy (1830-1848) until 1842, four years before his death. On 1 May 1831, Bory was appointedOfficer of the Legion of Honor.
Around the same time, on 5 July 1831, Bory was elected[N 5] deputy of the 3rd college ofLot-et-Garonne (Marmande) to replace his friend theViscount of Martignac.[N 6] In his profession of faith, he denounced the hereditary titles of the peerage, which he declared to be contradictory to the principle of equality before the law, spoke against the incompatibility of the legislature's mandate with a public function, and advocated for the revision of the municipal, electoral and national guard laws.[9] The conservative tendencies of the majority forced him, after only two months in that position, to resign as deputy[8][5][9] on 19 August 1831. He was replaced in October by Monsieur de Martignac.
In 1832, Bory published the report of his exploration in Greece in his work, theRelation du voyage de la commission scientifique deMorée dans lePéloponnèse, lesCyclades et l'Attique, for which he received many accolades,[9] and which allowed him to be finally elected a member of theFrench Academy of Sciences on 17 November 1834.
Between 1835 and 1838, Bory sat on the General Staff commission and republished hisJustifications of 1815 under the title ofMémoires in 1838. On 24 August 1839, acommission of scientific exploration of Algeria (Commission d'exploration scientifique d'Algérie) on the model of those which were put in placein Egypt (1798) andin Morea (1829), was designed for the newly conquered, but not yet pacifiedAlgeria.[16][19] Bory de Saint-Vincent, who had been one of its promoters, became its president as a staff Colonel and went there, accompanied by his collaborators, to conduct his identifications, researches, samplings and scientific explorations. He arrived in the first days of January 1840 inAlgiers and visited other cities of the coast. He left Algeria in the first trimester of 1842.[8][16][20] Bory published numerous books on the country, such asNotice sur la commission exploratrice et scientifique d'Algérie (1838),Sur la flore de l'Algérie (1843),Sur l'anthropologie de l'Afrique française (1845) and theExploration scientifique de l'Algérie pendant les années 1840, 1841, 1842. Sciences physiques (1846-1867).
Although sick, Bory was still thinking about making a trip to the islands of the Indian Ocean or to Algeria. He died, however, on 22 December 1846, at the age of sixty-eight, of a heart attack, in his apartment on the 5th floor, 6 rue de Bussy inParis.[8] He left behind him only debts and hisherbarium, which was sold the following year.[21] He was buried in thePère-Lachaise Cemetery (49th Division).[22]
An indefatigable worker, Bory wrote on several branches ofnatural history, including the study of reptiles, fish, microscopic animals, plants,cryptogams, etc. He was the main editor of theBibliothèque physico-économique, of theDictionnaire classique d'histoire naturelle en 7 volumes and of the scientific part of theExpédition de Morée. He participated in composing for theEncyclopédie Méthodique the sections concerning the zoophytes and the worms, as well as for the volumes of the physical geography and atlas that accompanied them. He also wrote well-composed geographical summaries, especially the one concerningSpain, and contributed many articles notable for the originality of their ideas to theEncyclopédie moderne.
Bory was a proponent of the theory of thetransmutation of species alongside, among others,Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck.[23][24][25] According to historianAdrian Desmond Bory was a leading anti-Cuvierian materialist who blended the best of Lamarck's philosophy withGeoffroy's higher anatomy.[26] HisDictionnaire classique d'histoire naturelle already contained information about Lamarck and the species debate, and is notable for a copy of it having been carried byCharles Darwin on theBeagle.[23][24][27]
Bory was also a fervent defender ofspontaneous generation (theme of the famous controversy betweenLouis Pasteur andFélix Archimède Pouchet) and an ardentpolygenist. He thought that the different human "races", according to the sense of the time, were true species, each having its own origin and history.[28] He was finally a notorious opponent ofslavery;Victor Schœlcher quotes him among his scientific allies in favor ofabolition.
In September 1802, atRennes where he was garrisoned, Bory married Anne-Charlotte Delacroix of la Thébaudais, with whom he had two daughters: Clotilde, born on 7 February 1801, and Augustine, born on 25 May 1803, whom he called "his little Antigone" and with whom he remained very close all his life. His marriage, "contracted too young to be a happy one"[8] did not last. His wife died in 1823, after their separation.
When he was proscribed by theOrdonnance of 24 July 1815 and was fleeing toRouen, he met the actress Maria Gros. She followed him throughout his exile between 1815 and 1820; they began to cohabitate in 1817.[8] On 17 May 1818, their first daughter, Cassilda, was born. A second daughter, Athanalgide, was born on 22 July 1823, after the separation of her parents.
Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur (Knight rank - May 1811)
Officier de la Légion d'Honneur (Officerrank - 1 May 1831)
Acomplete list of Jean-Baptiste Bory de Saint-Vincent's publications can be found at the end of the introduction by Philippe Lauzun (pp. 52–55) inBory de Saint-Vincent,Correspondence, published and annotated by Philippe Lauzun, Maison d'édition et imprimerie moderne, 1908. (Read online on Archive.org)
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