Dominique Dufour Pradt, abbe de, a French author, born at Allanches, Auvergne,' April 23, 1759, died March 18, 1837. On the breaking out of the revolution he was vicar general of the archbishop of Rouen, was elected by the clergy of Normandy deputy to the states general, sided with the royalists in the constituent assembly, and in 1791 fled to Hamburg, where in 1798 he published anonymously a pamphlet entitled VAntidote an congres de Pastadt, ou Plan d'un nouvel equilibre europeen. In another anonymous tract, La Prusse et sa neu-tralite (1800), he urged a coalition of Europe against the French republic. He returned to France in 1801, when his Trois ages des colonies (3 vols. 8vo) appeared. Through the means of his relative Gen. Duroc, he was, in December, 1804, appointed almoner to the emperor, received the title of baron, and became bishop of Poitiers. In 1808 he accompanied Napoleon to Bayonne, was instrumental in bringing about the abdication of Charles IV. of Spain, and was rewarded by a handsome gratuity and the archbishopric of Mechlin. In 1812 he was appointed minister at Warsaw; but having failed to fulfil the intentions of the emperor, he was disgraced, deprived of his office of grand almoner, and sent to his diocese.

On the invasion of France by the combined armies of Ejpope, he hastened to Paris to join the Bourbons, and after the battle of Waterloo published his Histoire de V'ambassade dans le grand duche de Varsovie en 1812, in which he violently denounced the conduct of the ex-emperor, and which passed through nine editions. His zeal for the Bourbons however was received with coolness, and having been obliged to resign his archbishopric, in which he had not been confirmed by the pope, he retired to his estate in Auvergne, and published a number of political works of no permanent importance. He was elected to the chamber of deputies by the department of Puy-de-D6me in 1827, but resigned in 1828, and died in obscurity.