Dauphiné, one of the old provinces (the name being still in current use in the country) of pre-Revolutionary France, in the south-east portion of France, between Provence and Savoy; since 1790 it forms the departments of the Isère, the Drôme and the Hautes Alpes.
After the death of the last king of Burgundy, Rudolf III., in 1032, the territories known later as Dauphiné (as part of his realm) reverted to the far-distant emperor. Much confusion followed, out of which the counts of Albon (between Valence and Vienne) gradually came to the front. The first dynasty ended in 1162 with Guigue V., whose daughter and heiress, Beatrice, carried the possessions of her house to her husband, Hugh III., duke of Burgundy. Their son, André, continued the race, this second dynasty making many territorial acquisitions, among them (by marriage) the Embrunais and the Gapençais in 1232. In 1282 the second dynasty ended in another heiress, Anna, who carried all to her husband, Humbert, lord of La Tour du Pin (between Lyons and Grenoble). The title of the chief of the house was Count (later Dauphin) of the Viennois, not of Dauphiné. (For the origin of the terms Dauphin and Dauphiné see Dauphin.) Humbert II. (1333-1349), grandson of the heiress Anna, was the last independent Dauphin, selling his dominions in 1349 to Charles of Valois, who on his accession to the throne of France as Charles V. bestowed Dauphiné on his eldest son, and the title was borne by all succeeding eldest sons of the kings of France. In 1422 the Diois and the Valentinois, by the will of the last count, passed to the eldest son of Charles VI., and in 1424 were annexed to the Dauphiné. Louis (1440-1461), later Louis XI. of France, was the last Dauphin who occupied a semi-independent position, Dauphiné being annexed to the crown in 1456. The suzerainty of the emperor (who in 1378 had named the Dauphin “Imperial Vicar” within Dauphiné and Provence) gradually died out. In the 16th century the names of the reformer Guillaume Farel (1489-1565) and of the duke of Lesdiguières (1543-1626) are prominent in Dauphiné history. The “States” of Dauphiné (dating from about the middle of the 14th century) were suspended by Louis XIII. in 1628, but their unauthorized meeting (on the 21st of July 1788) in the tennis court (Salle du Jeu de Paume) of the castle of Vizille, near Grenoble, was one of the earliest premonitory signs of the great French Revolution of 1789. It was at Laffrey, near Grenoble, that Napoleon (March 7th, 1815) was first acclaimed by his old soldiers sent to arrest him.
Bibliography.—J. Brun-Durand, Dictionnaire topographique du département de la Drôme (Paris, 1891); Jules Chevalier, Essai historique sur l’église et la ville de Die, Montélimar and Valence (2 vols., 1888 and 1896); W. A. B. Coolidge, H. Duhamel and Félix Perrin, Climbers’ Guide to the Central Alps of the Dauphiny (a revision of a French work by the same, issued at Grenoble in 1887), London, 1892 (new ed. 1905); J. J. Guiffrey, Histoire de la réunion du Dauphiné à la France (Paris, 1868); Joanne, Dauphiné (Paris, 1905); A. Prudhomme, Histoire de Grenoble (Grenoble, 1888); Ib., “De l’origine des mots ‘Dauphin’ et Dauphiné” (article in vol. liv. (1893) of the Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes); A. Rochas, Biographie du Dauphiné (2 vols., Paris, 1856); J. Roman, Dictionnaire topographique (Paris, 1884); Tableau historique (Paris, 2 vols., 1887 and 1890); and Répertoire archéologique du département des Hautes-Alpes (Paris, 1888); J. Roman, Histoire de la ville de Gap (Gap, 1892); A. De Terrebasse, Notice sur les Dauphins de Viennois (Vienne, 1875); J. M. De Valbonnais, Histoire de Dauphiné (2 vols., Geneva, 1722); J. A. Félix Faure, Les Assemblées de Vizille et de Romans, 1788 (Paris, 1887); O. Chenavas, La Révolution de 1788 en Dauphiné (Grenoble, 1888); C. Lory, Description géologique du Dauphiné (Paris, 1860).
