Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 16.djvu/251

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Durand
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Durand

tion of his cathedral music, in 3 vols., was published after his death by his pupil John Spencer. Prefixed to this work is a portrait. There is also an engraving by C. Turner, after Russell. He was an admirable organist.

[Misc. Geneal. et Herald. iii. 249; Gent. Mag. vol. lxvi. pt. ii. p. 621; Appendix to Bemrose's Choir Chant Book; Evans's Cat. of Engraved Portraits; Chester's Westminster Registers, pp. 418, 457; Addit. MSS. 27691, 27693; Cheque-Book of the Chapel Royal; Records of the Royal Society of Musicians.]

W. B. S.

DURAND, DAVID (1680–1763), French protestant minister and author, was born in 1680 at Sommières in the south of France, and studied for the ministry at Basle. Thence he went to Holland, and accompanied a corps of French refugees to Spain, where he was taken prisoner at the battle of Almanza 1707. He would have been burnt alive by some peasants but for the intervention of the Duke of Berwick. From Spain he was sent into France, and succeeded in escaping to Switzerland, ultimately finding his way back to Holland, where he became one of the pastors at Rotterdam, and gained the friendship of Bayle. He finally left Holland for London in 1711, and was successively pastor of the French churches in Martin's Lane and the Savoy. He became a member of the Royal Society in 1728, and died on 16 Jan. 1763.

Durand was a voluminous author and translator. Among his works, all in French, are a history of the sixteenth century (1725–9), a continuation of Rapin's ‘History of England’ (1734), a history of painting in antiquity (1725), and ‘Histoire naturelle de l'or et de l'argent, extraite de Pline le Naturaliste,’ London, 1729, which contains a lumbering imitation of ‘Paradise Lost’ in French verse.

[Barbier's Dict. des Ouvrages Anonymes et Pseudonymes, vol. iv.; a biographical notice by Samuel Beuzeville, prefixed to Durand's posthumous work, La Vie de J. J. Ostervald, London, 1778, a very rare book; Haag's La France Protestante and Agnew's Protestant Exiles; Gent. Mag. 1763, p. 46.]

F. T. M.

DURAND, Sir HENRY MARION (1812–1871), major-general royal engineers, K.C.S.I., C.B., born on 6 Nov. 1812, was the son of a cavalry officer who had served in the Peninsula and at Waterloo. At an early age he was left an orphan. He was educated at Leicester school and the East India Company's military college at Addiscombe. He received a commission as second lieutenant in the Bengal engineers in June 1828, and after spending the usual year at Chatham to complete his training as an engineer officer, sailed for India in October 1829 in company with Alexander Duff [q. v.], the missionary, was shipwrecked off the Cape of Good Hope, but eventually landed at Calcutta in May 1830. Attached to the public works department shortly after his arrival in India, he was, in 1832, sent to the north-west provinces to the irrigation branch. In 1837, while employed near Delhi, he made the acquaintance of Lord Auckland, the governor-general, who, impressed with his detailed knowledge of the people and their land tenures, proposed to appoint him secretary of the Sudder board of revenue, but the projected invasion of Afghanistan in 1838 led to his rejoining the army and proceeding with his own corps, the royal engineers, through the Bolan Pass to Quetta and Candahar. He accompanied the column under Sir John Keane in the advance northward to Cabul, and took a very prominent part in the capture of Ghazni.

Captain Thomson, the chief engineer, had advised the assault of Ghazni by the Cabul gate, and Durand was selected to place the powder bags and to fire the train. The operation was a very hazardous one. The little party had to advance without any cover and exposed to fire from the outworks, and to approach the gate by a narrow, winding roadway, lined on each side by a loopholed wall, while the enemy were known to be on the alert. The powder, three hundred pounds, was carried in bags by native sappers, a sergeant carried the hose, and Durand headed the party. On arriving within 150 yards of the gate they were discovered and fire opened on them, but pushing rapidly on they reached the gate without the loss of a man. The powder bags were quickly laid against the gate, and Durand, with the assistance of the sergeant, laid the hose to an adjacent sally-port, where they took refuge while firing the train. The explosion was successful, the Cabul gate of Ghazni was blown in, the storming party entered, and Ghazni fell on 23 July 1839. Shortly after the occupation of Cabul, Durand returned to India with Sir John Keane.

The greater part of 1840 was passed at the hill station of Mussuri in preparing maps, plans, and reports in connection with the recent campaign, and in the spring of 1841 Durand obtained leave and visited England. While at home he made the acquaintance of Lord Ellenborough, who, on his appointment shortly afterwards as governor-general of India, took Durand out with him as his private secretary.

In April 1843 Durand married Mary, daughter of Major-general Sir John McCaskill, K.C.B., one of the divisional commanders in the Afghan campaign of 1842, and in June 1843 he received his promotion to the rank of captain. Durand accompanied the go-