Page images
PDF
EPUB

in the Roman Catholic world to have revealed herself repeatedly to a peasant girl named Bernadette Soubirous in 1858. A statue of the Virgin stands on a rock projecting above the grotto, the walls of which are covered with crutches and other votive offerings; the spot, which is resorted to by multitudes of pilgrims from all quarters of the world, is marked by a basilica built above the grotto and consecrated in 1876. In addition the church of the Rosary, a rich building in the Byzantine style, was erected in front of and below the basilica from 1884 to 1889. Not far from the grotto are several other caves, where prehistoric remains have been found. The Hospice de Notre-Dame de Douleurs is the chief of the many establishments provided for the accommodation of pilgrims.

Lourdes is a fortified place of the second class; and is the seat of the tribunal of first instance of the arrondissement of Argelès. There are marble and slate quarries near the town. The pastures of the neighbourhood support a breed of Aquitaine cattle, which is most highly valued in south-western France.

The origin of Lourdes is uncertain. From the 9th century onwards it was the most important place in Bigorre, largely owing to the fortress which is intimately connected with its history. In 1360 it passed by the treaty of Brétigny from French to English hands, and its governor was murdered by Gaston Phoebus viscount of Béarn, for refusing to surrender it to the count of Anjou. Nevertheless the fortress did not fall into the possession of the French till 1406 after a blockade of eighteen months. Again during the wars of religion the castle held out successfully after the town had been occupied by the troops of the Protestant captain Gabriel, count of Montgomery. From the reign of Louis XIV. to the beginning of the 19th century the castle was used as a state prison. Since the visions of Bernadette Soubirous, their authentication by a commission of enquiry appointed by the bishop of Tarbes, and the authorization by the pope of the cult of Our Lady of Lourdes, the quarter on the left bank of the Gave has sprung up and it is estimated that 600,000 pilgrims annually visit the town. The chief of the pilgrimages, known as the national pilgrimage, takes place in August.

Several religious communities have been named after Our Lady of Lourdes. Of these one, consisting of sisters of the third order of St Francis, called the Congregation of Our Lady of Lourdes (founded 1877), has its headquarters in Rochester, Minnesota. Another, the Order of Our Lady of Lourdes, was founded in 1883 for work in the archdiocese of New Orleans. See G. Marès, Lourdes et ses environs (Bordeaux, 1894); Fourcade, L'Apparition de la grotte de Lourdes (Paris, 1862) and L'Apparition considérée au point de vue de l'art chrétien (Bordeaux, 1862); Boissarie, Lourdes, histoire médicale (Paris, 1891); Bertrin, Hist. critique des événements de Lourdes (2nd ed., Paris, 1905), written under authority of the bishop of Tarbes; H. Lasserre, Miraculous Episodes of Lourdes (London, 1884, tr.); R. F. Clarke, Lourdes and its Miracles (ib., 1889) and Medical Testimony to the Miracles (ib., 1892); D. Barbé, Lourdes hier, aujourd'hui, demain (Paris, 1893; Eng. trans. by A. Meynell, London, 1894); J. R. Gasquet, The Cures at Lourdes (London, 1895); Les Pèlerinages de Lourdes. Cantiques, insignes, costumes (Lourdes, 1897); W. Leschner, The Origin of Lourdes (London, 1900). Zola's Lourdes (Paris, 1894), a criticism from the sceptical point of view, in the form of a realistic novel, has called forth many replies from the Catholic side.

[ocr errors]

LOURENÇO MARQUES, capital of Portuguese East Africa, or Mozambique, on the north bank of the Espirito Santo or English river, Delagoa Bay, and 396 m. by rail via Pretoria by rail via Pretoria from Johannesburg. Pop. (1904) 9849, of whom 4691 were Europeans and 1690 Asiatics. The town is situated close to the mouth of the river in 25° 53′ S. and 32° 30' E., and is built | upon a low-lying spit of sand, formerly surrounded by swamps. The streets are regularly laid out and adorned by several fine buildings. The principal thoroughfare, the Avenida Aguiar, 2 m. long goes from the centre of the town to Reuben Point. The harbour is well equipped with piers, quays, landing sheds and electric cranes, which enable large steamers to discharge cargoes direct into the railway trucks. The depth of water at low tide is 18 ft. The streets are lit by electricity and there is an electric tramway system 7 m. in extent. At Reuben Point, which marks the spot where the English river enters the bay,

are the lighthouse, barracks and the private residences of the wealthy citizens. At its mouth the English river is about 2 m, across. Lourenço Marques is the nearest seaport to the Rand gold mines. The port is 8374 m. from Southampton via Cape Town and 7565 m. via the Suez canal. It is served by British, Portuguese and German liners, the majority of the goods imported being shipped at Southampton, Lisbon or Hamburg. Over 50% of the import trade of Johannesburg is with Lourenço Marques. Great Britain and British possessions take some 40% of the import trade, Portugal, Germany, Norway, Sweden and America coming next in order. Most of the imports, being forwarded to the Transvaal, figure also as exports. The chief articles of import are food-stuffs and liquors, iron, mineral oils, inks and dyes, timber and live stock. These all form part of the transit trade. There is practically no export trade by sea save in coal, which is brought chiefly from the collieries at Middelburg in the Transvaal. At Port Matolla, 20 m. from the town, on the river of that name, one of the feeders of the English river, is a flourishing timber trade. The average value of the total trade of Lourenço Marques for the five years 1897-1899 and 1902-1903 (1900 and 1901 being years during which trade was disorganized by the Anglo-Boer War) was over £3,500,000. In 1905 the value of the trade of the port was £5,682,000; of this total the transit trade was worth over £4,500,000 and the imports for local consumption £1,042,000. The retail trade, and trade with the natives, is almost entirely in the hands of Indians. The chief import for local consumption is cheap wine from Portugal, bought by the Kaffirs to the extent of over £500,000 yearly. These natives form the bulk of the Africans who work in the Rand gold mines.

Lourenço Marques is named after a Portuguese navigator, who with a companion (Antonio Calderia) was sent in 1544 by the governor of Mozambique on a voyage of exploration. They explored the lower courses of the rivers emptying their waters into Delagoa Bay, notably the Espirito Santo. The various forts and trading stations which the Portuguese established, abandoned and reoccupied on the north bank of the river were all called Lourenço Marques. The existing town dates from about 1850, the previous settlement having been entirely destroyed by the natives. In 1871 the town was described as a poor place, with narrow streets, fairly good flat-roofed houses, grass huts, decayed forts and rusty cannon, enclosed by a wall 6 ft. high then recently erected and protected by bastions at intervals. The growing importance of the Transvaal led, however, to greater interest being taken in Portugal in the port. A commission was sent by the Portuguese government in 1876 to drain the marshy land near the settlement, to plant the blue gum tree, and to build a hospital and a church. It was not, however, until the end of the 19th century that any marked development took place in the town, and up to 1903 cargo had to be discharged in tugs and lighters.

In 1873-1877 Mr Burgers, president of the Transvaal, endeavoured, unsuccessfully, to get a railway built from Pretoria to Delagoa Bay. In 1878-1879 a survey was taken for a line from Lourenço Marques to the Transvaal, and in 1883 the Lisbon cabinet granted to Colonel Edward McMurdo, an American citizen, a concession-which took the place of others which had lapsed-for the building of a railway from Lourenço Marques to the Transvaal frontier, the Boer government having agreed (1883) to continue the line to Pretoria. Under this concession Colonel McMurdo formed in London in 1887 a company-the Delagoa Bay and East African Railway Company-to construct the line. Meantime a secret agreement had been come to between President Kruger and Portugal for the concession to the Transvaal of a steam tramway" parallel to the projected railway, should the company not complete the line in the time specified. The company, however, built the line to the frontier shown on the Portuguese maps of 1883 within the time limit, the railway being opened on the 14th of December 1888. The frontier by this date had been fixed at Komati Poort, 5 m. farther from the coast. Portugal had previously agreed to grant the company a reasonable extension of time" to complete

XVII. 3

LOUTH, a maritime county in the province of Leinster, Ireland, bounded N.E. by Carlingford Bay and Co. Down, E. by the Irish Sea, S.W. by Meath, and N.W. by Monaghan and Armagh. It is the smallest county in Ireland, its area being 202,731 acres or about 317 sq. m. The greater part of the surface is undulating, with occasionally lofty hills; in the north-east, on the borders of Carlingford Lough, there is a mountain range approaching 2000 ft. in height. Many of the hills are finely wooded, and towards the sea the scenery, in the more elevated districts, is strikingly picturesque. With the exception of the promontory of Clogher Head, which rises abruptly to a height of 180 ft., the coast is for the most part low and sandy. The narrow and

the line if the frontier should be traced farther inland than shown on the 1883 maps. The Lisbon government required the extension to Komati Poort to be completed in eight months (five of which were in the rainy season), an impossible stipulation. The railway not being finished, the Portuguese seized the line on the 25th of June 1889 and cancelled the concession. Portugal in so doing acted, to all appearance, under pressure from the Transvaal. Great Britain and America at once protested, Portugal admitted the illegality of her act and consented to refer the amount of compensation to the decision of three Swiss jurists. This was in 1890, when Portugal paid £28,000 on account. It was not until the 29th of March 1900 that the award was made known. The arbitrators ordered Portugal to pay-picturesque Carlingford Lough is navigable beyond the limits in addition to the £28,000-a sum, including interest, of £950,000. The damages were promptly paid. Meantime the railway had been continued from Komati Poort and was opened for through traffic to Pretoria on the 8th of July 1895. In 1906-1910 another railway (47 m. long) was built from Lourenço Marques due west to the Swaziland frontier, being a link in a new line to shorten the distance by rail between the Rand and the sea by some 60 m.

See also DELAGOA BAY and the authorities there cited. The text of the railway arbitration award was published in French at Berne in 1900. Annual reports on the trade of Lourenço Marques are issued by the British Foreign Office.

as "

LOUSE (O. Eng. lús, cf. Du. luis, Ger. Laus, Dan. and Swed. lus), a term applied to small wingless insects, parasitic upon birds and mammals, and belonging strictly speaking to the order Anoplura, often included among the Hemiptera, though the term is frequently extended to the bird-lice constituting the suborder Mallophaga, formerly included among the Neuroptera. Both agree in having nothing that can be termed a metamorphosis; they are active from the time of their exit from the egg to their death, gradually increasing in size, and undergoing several moults or changes of skin. The true lice (or Anoplura) are found on the bodies of many Mammalia, and occasion by their presence intolerable irritation. The number of genera is few. Two species of Pediculus are found on the human body, and are known ordinarily as the head-louse (P. capitis) and the body-louse (P. vestimenti); P. capitis is found on the head, especially of children. The eggs, laid on the hairs, and known nits," hatch in about eight days, and the lice are full grown in about a month. Such is their fecundity that it has been asserted that one female (probably of P. vestimenti) may in eight weeks produce five thousand descendants. Want of cleanliness favours their multiplication in a high degree-the idea once existed, and is probably still held by the very ignorant, that they are directly engendered from dirt. The irritation is caused by the rostrum of the insect being inserted into the skin, from which the blood is rapidly pumped up. A third human louse, known as the crab-louse (Phthirius pubis) is found amongst the hairs on other parts of the body, particularly those of the pubic region, but probably never on the head. The louse of monkeys is now generally considered as forming a separate genus (Pedicinus), but the greater part of those infesting domestic and wild quadrupeds are mostly grouped in the large genus Haematopinus, and very rarely is the same species found on different kinds of animals.

The bird-lice (Mallophaga) are far more numerous in species, although the number of genera is comparatively small. With the exception of the genus Trichodectes, the various species of which are found on mammalia, all infest birds (as their English names implies) (see BIRD-LOUSE). Louse-infestation is known as phthiriasis in medical and veterinary terminology.

AUTHORITIES.—The following works are the most important: Denny, Monographia Anoplurorum Britanniae (London, 1843); Giebel, Insecta Epizoa (which contains the working-up of Nitzsch's posthumous materials; Leipzig, 1874); van Beneden, Animal Parasites (London, 1876); Piaget, Les Pédiculines (Leiden, 1880); Mégnin, Les Parasites et les maladies parasitaires (Paris, 1880); Neumann, Parasites and Parasitic Diseases of Domesticated Animals (1892); Osborn, Pediculi and Mallophaga affecting Man and the Lower Animals (Washington, 1891; U.S. Dept. Agr.); Enderlein, Läuse-Studien," Zool. Anz. xxviii. (1904).

46

of the county, and Carlingford and Greenore are well-known watering-places on the county Louth shore. The Bay of Dundalk stretches to the town of that name and affords convenient shelter. The principal rivers, the Fane, the Lagan, the Glyde and the Dee, flow eastwards. None of these is navigable, but the Boyne, which forms the southern boundary of the county, is navigable for large vessels as far as Drogheda.

Almost all this county is occupied by an undulating lowland of much-folded Silurian shales and fine-grained sandstones; but Carboniferous Limestone overlies these rocks north and east of Dundalk. Dolerite and gabbro, in turn invaded by granite, have broken through the limestone north of Dundalk Bay, and form a striking and mountainous promontory. There is now no doubt that these rocks, with those on the adjacent moorland of Slieve Gullion, belong to the early Cainozoic igneous series, and may be compared with similar masses in the Isle of Skye. A raised beach provides a flat terrace at Greenore. Lead ore has been worked in the county, as in the adjacent parts of Armagh and Monaghan. In the lower regions the soil is a very rich deep mould, admirably adapted both for cereals and green crops. The higher mountain regions are covered principally with heath. Agriculture generally is in an advanced condition, and the farms are for the most part well drained. The acreage of tillage is but little below that of pasture. Oats, barley, flax, potatoes and turnips are all satisfactorily cultivated. Cattle, sheep, pigs and poultry represent the bulk of the live stock. Linen manufactures are of some importance. The deepsea and coast fishery has its headquarters at Dundalk, and the salmon fisheries at Dundalk (Castletown river) and Drogheda (river Boyne). These fisheries, together with oyster beds in Carlingford Lough, are of great value. The county is traversed from S. to N. by the Great Northern railway, with a branch westward from Dundalk; while the same town is connected with the port of Greenore by a line owned by the London & North-Western railway of England. Greenore the London & North-Western railway passenger steamers from the Great Northern line at Dromin. run regularly to Holyhead. The town of Ardee is served by a branch

From

The population (71,914 in 1891; 65,820 in 1901) decreases at about an average rate, and a considerable number of the inhabitants emigrate. Of the total population about 92% are Roman Catholics. The principal towns are Dundalk (pop. 13,076), Drogheda (12,760) and Ardee (1883). The county includes six baronies and sixty-four parishes. Assizes are held at Dundalk and quarter sessions at Ardee, Drogheda and Dundalk. Louth was represented by two county and ten borough members in the Irish parliament; the two present divisions are the north and south, each returning one member. The county is in the Protestant dioceses of Armagh and Clogher and the Roman Catholic diocese of Armagh.

The territory which afterwards became the county Louth was included in the principality of Uriel, Orgial or Argial, which comprehended also the greater part of Meath, Monaghan and Armagh. The chieftain of the district was conquered by John de Courcy in 1183, and Louth or Uriel was among the shires generally considered to have been created by King John, and peopled by English settlers. Until the time of Elizabeth it was included in the province of Ulster. County Louth is rich in antiquarian remains. There are ancient buildings of all dates. and spears, swords, axes of bronze, ornaments of gold, and other relics have been discovered in quantities. Among Druidical remains is the fine cromlech of Ballymascanlan, between Dundalk and Greenore. Danish raths and other forts are numerous. It is said that there were originally twenty religious houses in the county. Of the remains of these the most interesting are at Monasterboice and Mellifont, both near Drogheda. At the former site are two churches, the larger dating probably from the 9th century, the smaller from the 13th; a fine round tower, 110 ft. in height, but [not 'quite perfect; and three crosses, two of which, 27 and 15 ft. in height respectively, are adorned with

moulding, sculptured figures and tracery, and are among the finest in Ireland. At Mellifont are the remains of the first Cistercian monastery founded in Ireland, in 1142, with a massive gatehouse, an octagonal baptistery and chapter-house. Carlingford and Drogheda have monastic remains, and at Dromiskin is a round tower, in part rebuilt. Ardee, an ancient town, incorporated in 1376, has a castle of the 13th century. At Dunbar a charter of Charles II. (1679) gave the inhabitants the right to elect a sovereign. Louth, 5 m. S.W. from Dundalk, is a decayed town which gave its name to the county, and contains ruins of an abbey to which was attached one of the most noted early schools in Ireland.

LOUTH, a market-town and municipal borough in the E. Lindsey or Louth parliamentary division of Lincolnshire, England, on the river Lud, 1413 m. N. of London by the Grimsby branch of the Great Northern railway. Pop. (1901) 9518. By a canal, completed in 1763, there is water communication with the Humber. The Perpendicular church of St James, completed about 1515, with a spire 300 ft. in height, is one of the finest ecclesiastical buildings in the county. Traces of a building of the 13th century are perceptible. There are a town hall, a corn exchange and a market-hall, an Edward VI. grammar school, which is richly endowed, a commercial school founded in 1676, a hospital and several almshouses. Thorpe Hall is a picturesque building dated 1584. In the vicinity are the ruins of a Cistercian abbey (Louth Park). The industries include the manufacture of agricultural implements, iron-founding, brewing, malting, and rope and brick-making. The town is governed by a mayor, 6 aldermen and 18 councillors. Area, 2749 acres.

Louth (Ludes, Loweth) is first mentioned in the Domesday record as a borough held, as it had been in Saxon times, by the bishop of Lincoln, who had a market there. The see retained the manor until it was surrendered by Bishop Holbeach to Henry VIII., who granted it to Edward, earl of Lincoln, but it was recovered by the Crown before 1562. Louth owed much of its early prosperity to the adjacent Cistercian abbey of Louth Park, founded in 1139 by Alexander bishop of Lincoln. The borough was never more than prescriptive, though burgesses were admitted throughout the middle ages and until 1711, their sole privilege being freedom from tolls. The medieval government of the town was by the manor court under the presidency of the bishop's high steward, the custom being for the reeve to be elected by eighteen ex-reeves. The original parish church was built about 1170. During the 13th and 14th centuries nine religious gilds were founded in the town. Fear of confiscation of the property of these gilds seems to have been one of the chief local causes of the Lincolnshire Rebellion, which broke out here in 1536. The disturbance began by the parishioners seizing the church ornaments to prevent their surrender. The bishop's steward, who arrived to open the manorial court for the election of a reeve, agreed to ride to ask the king the truth about the jewels, but this did not satisfy the people, who, while showing respect to a royal commission, seized and burnt the papers of the bishop's registrar. After swearing several country gentlemen to their cause, the rebels dispersed, agreeing to meet on the following day under arms. Edward VI. in 1551 incorporated Louth under one warden and six assistants, who were to be managers of the school founded by the same charter. This was confirmed in 1564 by Elizabeth, who granted the manor of Louth to the corporation with all rights and all the lands of the suppressed gilds at an annual fee-farm rent of £84. James I. gave the commission of the peace to the warden and one assistant in 1605; a further charter was obtained in 1830. Louth has never been a parliamentary borough. The markets said to have been held from ancient times and the three fairs on the third Sunday after Easter and the feasts of St Martin and St James were confirmed in 1551. Louth was a seat of the wool trade as early as 1297; the modern manufactures seem to have arisen at the end of the 18th century, when, according to the charter of 1830, there was a great increase in the population, manufactures, trade and commerce of the town.

[ocr errors]

See E. H. R. Tatham, Lincolnshire in Roman Times (Louth, 1902); Richard W. Goulding, Louth Old Corporation Records (Louth, 1891).

LOUVAIN (Flem. Leuven), a town of Belgium in the province of Brabant, of which it was the capital in the 14th century before the rise of Brussels. Pop. (1904) 42,194. Local tradition attributes the establishment of a permanent camp at this spot to Julius Caesar, but Louvain only became important in the 11th century as a place of residence for the dukes of Brabant. In 1356 Louvain was the scene of the famous Joyeuse Entrée of Wenceslas which represented the principal charter of Brabant. At that time it had a population of at least 50,000 and was very prosperous as the centre of the woollen trade in central Belgium. The gild of weavers numbered 2400 members. The old walls of Louvain were 41⁄2 m. in circumference, and have been replaced by boulevards, but within them there is a considerable extent of cultivated ground. Soon after the Joyeuse Entrée a serious feud began between the citizens and the patrician class, and eventually the duke threw in his lot with the latter. After a struggle of over twenty years' duration the White Hoods, as the citizens called themselves, were crushed. In 1379 they massacred seventeen nobles in the town hall, but this crime brought down on them the vengeance of the duke, to whom in 1383 they made the most abject and complete surrender. With this civil strife the importance and prosperity of Louvain declined. Many weavers fled to Holland and England, the duke took up his residence in the strong castle of Vilvorde, and Brussels prospered at the expense of Louvain. What it lost in trade it partially recovered as a seat of learning, for in 1423, Duke John IV. of Brabant founded there a university and ever since Louvain University has enjoyed the first place in Belgium. It has always prided itself most on its theological teaching. In 1679 the university was established in the old Cloth Workers' Hall, a building dating from 1317, with long arcades and graceful pillars supporting the upper storeys. The library contains 70,000 volumes and some 500 manuscripts. Attached to the university are four residential colleges at which the number of students average two thousand. In the 16th century when the university was at the height of its fame it counted six thousand.

The most remarkable building in Louvain is the Hôtel de Ville, one of the richest and most ornate examples of pointed Gothic in the country. If less ornate than that of Oudenarde it is more harmonious in its details. It was the work of Mathieu de Layens, master mason, who worked at it from 1448 to 1463. The building is one of three storeys each with ten pointed windows forming the façade facing the square. Above is a graceful balustrade behind which is a lofty roof, and at the angles are towers perforated for the passage of the light. The other three sides are lavishly decorated with statuary. The interior is not noteworthy.

Opposite the Hôtel de Ville is the fine church of St Pierre, in the form of a cross with a low tower to which the spire has never been added. The existing edifice was built on the site of an older church between 1425 and 1497. It contains seven chapels, in two of which are fine pictures by Dierich Bouts formerly attributed to Memling. Much of the iron and brass work is by Jean Matseys. There is also an ancient tomb, being the monument of Henry I., duke of Brabant, who died in 1235. There are four other interesting churches in Louvain, viz. Ste Gertrude, St Quentin, St Michael and St Jacques. In the last-named is a fine De Crayer representing St. Hubert. Some ruins on a hill exist of the old castle of the counts of Louvain whose title was merged in the higher style of the dukes of Brabant.

LOUVER, LOUVRE or LUFFER, in architecture, the lantern built upon the roof of the hall in ancient times to allow the smoke to escape when the fire was made on the pavement in the middle of the hall. The term is also applied to the flat overlapping slips of wood, glass, &c., with which such openings are closed, arranged to give ventilation without the admission of rain. Openings fitted with louvers are now utilized for the purposes of ventilation in schools and manufactories.

The word has been derived from the French l'ouvert, the " open" | succeeded in bringing to justice in September but for the poor space. This, Minsheu's guess, is now generally abandoned. The Old French form, of which the English is an adaptation, was lover or lovier. The medieval Latin lodium, lodarium, is suggested as the ultimate origin. Du Cange (Glossarium, s.v. lodia") defines it as lugurium, i.e. a small hut. The English form "louvre" is due to a confusion with the name of the palace in Paris. The origin of that name is also unknown; louverie, place of wolves, is one of the suggestions, the palace being supposed to have originally been a hunting-box (see PARIS).

LOUVET, JEAN (c. 1370-c. 1440), called the president of Provence, occupied the position of president of the Chambre des Comptes at Aix in 1415. Towards the end of that year he went to Paris with Louis II. of Anjou, king of Sicily, attached himself to the dauphin Charles, and after having been chief steward of the household to Queen Isabella he turned against her. He was one of the principal agents of the Armagnac party, and became the most influential adviser of Charles VII. during the first years of his reign. But his rapacity gained him enemies, and when the constable Arthur, earl of Richmond, attained a preponderating influence over Charles VII. Louvet retired to his captaincy of Avignon. He still remained a personage of importance in his exile, and played an influential part even in his last years.

support he received from the Girondist leaders. It is more probable, however, that his ill-balanced invective contributed to their ruin and his own; for him Robespierre was a royalist," Marat "the principal agent of England," the Montagnards Orleanists in masquerade. His courageous attitude at the trial of Louis XVI., when he supported the " appeal to the people," only served still further to discredit the Girondists. He defended them, however, to the last with great courage, if with little discretion; and after the crisis of the 31st of May 1793 he shared the perils of the party who fled from Paris (see GIRONDISTS). His wife, "Lodoïska," who had actively cooperated in his propaganda, was also in danger.

After the fall of Robespierre, he was recalled to the Convention, when he was instrumental in bringing Carrier and the others responsible for the Noyades of Nantes to justice. His influence was now considerable; he was elected a member of the Committee of the Constitution, president of the Assembly, and member of the Committee of Public Safety, against the overgrown power of which he had in earlier days protested. His hatred of the Mountain had not made him reactionary; he was soon regarded as one of the mainstays of the "Jacobins," and La Sentinelle reappeared, under his auspices, preaching union among republicans. Under the Directory (1795) he was elected a member of the Council of Five Hundred, of which he was secretary, and also a member of the Institute. Meanwhile he had returned to his old trade and set up a bookseller's shop in the Palais Royal. But, in spite of the fact that he had once more denounced the Jacobins in La Sentinelle, his name had become identified with all that the combative spirits of the jeunesse dorée most disliked; his shop was attacked by the young men" with cries of À bas la Loupe, à bas la belle Lodoïska, à bas les gardes du corps de Louvet!" he and his wife were insulted in the streets and the theatres: "A bas les Louvets et les Louvetants!" and he was compelled to leave Paris. The Directory appointed him to the consulship at Palermo, but he died on the 25th of August 1797 before taking up his post.

66

[ocr errors]

See Vallet de Viriville in the Nouvelle Biographie générale, and G. du Fresne de Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII. (1881-1891). (J. V.*) LOUVET DE COUVRAI, JEAN BAPTISTE (1760-1797), French writer and politician, was born in Paris on the 12th of June 1760, the son of a stationer. He became a bookseller's clerk, and first attracted attention with a not very moral novel called Les Amours du chevalier de Faublas (Paris, 1787-1789). The character of the heroine of this book, Lodoïska, was taken from the wife of a jeweller in the Palais Royal, with whom he had formed a liaison. She was divorced from her husband in 1792 and married Louvet in 1793. His second novel, Émilie de Varmont, was intended to prove the utility and necessity of divorce and of the marriage of priests, questions raised by the Revolution. Indeed all his works were directed to the ends of the Revolution. He attempted to have one of his unpublished plays, L'Anobli conspirateur, performed at the Théâtre Français, and records naïvely that one of its managers, M. d'Orfeuil, listened to the reading of the first three acts "with mortal impatience," exclaiming at last: "I should need cannon in order to put that piece on the stage.' A "sort of farce" at the expense of the army of the émigrés, La Grande Revue des armées noire et blanche, had, however, better success: it ran for twenty-istic type of the honest, sentimental, somewhat hysterical and wholly five nights.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

66

Louvet was, however, first brought into notice as a politician by his Paris justifié, in reply to a "truly incendiary" pamphlet in which Mounier, after the removal of the king to Paris in October 1789, had attacked the capital," at that time blameless," and argued that the court should be established elsewhere. This led to Louvet's election to the Jacobin Club, for which, as he writes bitterly in his Memoirs, the qualifications were then "a genuine civisme and some talent." A self-styled philosophe of the true revolutionary type, he now threw himself ardently into the campaign against despotism and "reaction," i.e. against the moderate constitutional royalty advocated by Lafayette, the Abbé Maury and other "Machiavellians." On the 25th of December 1791 he presented at the bar of the Assembly his Pétition contre les princes, which had a prodigious success in the senate and the empire." Elected deputy to the Assembly for the department of Loiret, he made his first speech in January 1792. He attached himself to the Girondists, whose vague deism, sentimental humanitarianism and ardent republicanism he fully shared, and from March to November 1792 he published, at Roland's expense, a bi-weekly journalaffiche, of which the title, La Sentinelle, proclaimed its mission to be to "enlighten the people on all the plots" at a time when, Austria having declared war, the court was "visibly betraying our armies." On the 10th of August he became editor of the Journal des débats, and in this capacity, as well as in the Assembly, made himself conspicuous by his attacks on Robespierre, Marat and the other Montagnards, whom he declares he would have

In 1795 Louvet published a portion of his Memoirs under the title of Quelques notices pour l'histoire et le récit de mes périls depuis le 31 mai 1793. They were mainly written in the various hiding-places in which Louvet rook refuge, and they give a vivid picture of the sufferings of the proscribed Girondists. They form an invaluable document for the study of the psychology of the Revolution; for in spite of their considerable literary art, they are artless in their revelation of the mental and moral state of their author, a character

unbalanced minds nurtured on the abstractions of the philosophes. The first complete edition of the Mémoires de Louvet de Couvrai, edited, with preface, notes and tables, by F. A. Aulard, was published at Paris in 1889.

LOUVIERS, a town of north-western France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Eure, 17 m. S.S.E. of Rouen by road. Pop. (1906) 9449. Louviers is pleasantly situated in a green valley surrounded by wooded hills, on the Eure, which here divides into several branches. The old part of the town, built of wood, stands on the left bank of the river; the more modern portions, in brick and hewn stone, on the right. There are spacious squares, and the place is surrounded by boulevards. The Gothic church of Notre-Dame has a south portal which ranks among the most beautiful works of the kind produced in the 15th century; it contains fine stained glass of the 15th and 16th centuries and other works of art. The hôtel-de-ville, a large modern building, contains a museum and library. The chief industry is cloth and flannel manufacture. wool-spinning and fulling mills, thread factories and manufactories of spinning and weaving machinery, and enamel ware; leather-working, dyeing, metal-founding and bell-founding are also carried on. The town is the seat of a sub-prefect and has a court of first instance, a tribunal of commerce, a chamber of arts and manufactures, and a council of trade arbitrators.

There are

Louviers (Lovera) was originally a villa of the dukes of Normandy and in the middle ages belonged to the archbishops of Rouen; its cloth-making industry first arose in the beginning of the 13th century. It changed hands once and again during the Hundred Years' War, and from Charles VII. it received extensive privileges,

and the title of Louviers le Franc for the bravery of its inhabitants | beginning of the Christian era. His Chansons de Bilitis, roman in driving the English from Pont de l'Arche, Verneuil and Harcourt. It passed through various troubles successively at the period of the League of the Public Weal under Louis XI., in the religious wars (when the parlement of Rouen sat for a time at Louviers) and in the wars of the Fronde.

See G. Petit, Hist. de Louviers (Louviers, 1877).

[ocr errors]

LOUVOIS, FRANÇOIS MICHEL LE TELLIER, MARQUIS DE (1641-1691), French statesman, war minister of Louis XIV., was born at Paris on the 18th of January 1641. His father, Michel le Tellier (q.v.), married him to an heiress, the marquise de Courtenvaux, and instructed him in the management of state business. The young man won the king's confidence, and in 1666 he succeeded his father as war minister. His talents were perceived by Turenne in the war of Devolution (1667-68), who gave him instruction in the art of providing armies. After the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, Louvois devoted himself to organizing the French army. The years between 1668 and 1672, says Camille Rousset, were years of preparation, when Lionne was labouring with all his might to find allies, Colbert to find money, and Louvois soldiers for Louis." The work of Louvois in these years is bound up with the historical development of the French army and of armies in general (see ARMY). Here need only be mentioned Louvois's reorganization of the military orders of merit, his foundation of the Hôtel des Invalides, and the almost forcible enrolment of the nobility and gentry of France, in which Louvois carried out part of Louis's measures for curbing the spirit of independence by service in the army or at court. The success of his measures is to be seen in the victories of the great war of 1672-78. After the peace of Nijmwegen Louvois was high in favour, his father had been made chancellor, and the influence of Colbert was waning. The ten years of peace between 1678 and 1688 were distinguished in French history by the rise of Madame de Maintenon, the capture of Strassburg and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in all of which Louvois bore a prominent part. The surprise of Strassburg in 1681 in time of peace was not only planned but executed by Louvois and Monclar. A saving clause in the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which provided for some liberty of conscience, if not of worship, Louvois sharply annulled with the phrase "Sa majesté veut qu'on fasse sentir les dernières rigueurs à ceux qui ne voudront pas se faire de sa religion." He claimed also the credit of inventing the dragonnades, and mitigated the rigour of the soldiery only in so far as the licence accorded was prejudicial to discipline. Discipline, indeed, and complete subjection to the royal authority was the political faith of Louvois. Colbert died in 1683, and had been replaced by Le Pelletier, an adherent of Louvois, in the controllergeneralship of finances, and by Louvois himself in his ministry for public buildings, which he took that he might be the minister able to gratify the king's two favourite pastimes, war and building. Louvois was able to superintend the successes of the first years of the war of the League of Augsburg, but died suddenly of apoplexy after leaving the king's cabinet on July 16, 1691. His sudden death caused a suspicion of poison. Louvois was one of the greatest of the rare class of great war ministers. French history can only point to Carnot as his equal. Both had to organize armies out of old material on a new system, both were admirable contrivers of campaigns, and both devoted themselves to the material well-being of the soldiers. In private life and in the means employed for gaining his ends, Louvois was unscrupulous and shameless.

The principal authority for Louvois's life and times is Camille Rousset's Histoire de Louvois (Paris, 1872), a great work founded on the 900 volumes of his despatches at the Depôt de la Guerre. Saint Simon from his class prejudices is hardly to be trusted, but Madame de Sévigné throws many side-lights on his times. Testament politique de Louvois (1695) is spurious.

LOUYS, PIERRE (1870- ), French novelist and poet, was born in Paris on the 10th of December 1870. When he was nineteen he founded a review, La Conque, which brought him into contact with the leaders of the Parnassians, and counted Swinburne, Maeterlinck, Mallarmé and others among its contributors. He won notoriety by his novel Aphrodite (1896), which gave a vivid picture of Alexandrian morals at the

[ocr errors]

lyrique (1894), which purported to be a translation from the Greek, is a glorification of Sapphic love, which in subject-matter is objectionable in the highest degree; but its delicate decadent prose is typical of a modern French literary school, and some of the "songs were set to music by Debussy and others. Later books are: La Femme et le pantin (1898); Les Aventures du roi Pausole (1900); Sanguines (1903); Archipel (1906). Louy's married in 1899 Louise de Heredia, younger daughter of the poet. LOVAT, SIMON FRASER, 12TH BARON (c. 1667-1747), Scottish chief and Jacobite intriguer, was born about 1667 and was the second son of Thomas Fraser, third son of the 8th Lord Lovat. The barony of Lovat dates from about 1460, in the person of Hugh Fraser, a descendant of Simon Fraser (killed at Halidon Hill in 1338) who acquired the tower and fort of Lovat near Beauly, Inverness-shire, and from whom the clan Fraser was called "Macshimi" (sons of Simon). Young Simon was educated at King's College, Aberdeen, and his correspondence afterwards gives proof, not only of a command of good English and idiomatic French, but of such an acquaintance with the Latin classics as to leave him never at a loss for an apt quotation from Virgil or Horace. Whether Lovat ever felt any real loyalty to the Stuarts or was actuated by self-interest it is difficult to determine, but that he was a born traitor and deceiver there can be no doubt. One of his first acts on leaving college was to recruit three hundred men from his clan to form part of a regiment in the service of William and Mary, in which he himself was to hold a command,his object being to have a body of well-trained soldiers under his influence, whom at a moment's notice he might carry over to the interest of King James. Among other outrages in which he was engaged about this time was a rape and forced marriage committed on the widow of the 10th Lord Lovat with the view apparently of securing his own succession to the estates; and it is a curious instance of influence that, after being subjected by him to horrible ill-usage, she is said to have become seriously attached to him. A prosecution, however, having been instituted against him by Lady Lovat's family, Simon retired first to his native strongholds in the Highlands, and afterwards to France, where he found his way in July 1702 to the court of St Germain. In 1699, on his father's death, he assumed the title of Lord Lovat. One of his first steps towards gaining influence in France seems to have been to announce his conversion to the Catholic faith. He then proceeded to put the project of restoring the exiled family into a practical shape. Hitherto nothing seems to have been known among the Jacobite exiles of the efficiency of the Highlanders as a military force. But Lovat saw that, as they were the only part of the British population accustomed to the independent use of arms, they could be at once put in action against the reigning power. His plan therefore was to land five thousand French troops at Dundee, where they might reach the north-eastern passes of the Highlands in a day's march, and be in a position to divert the British troops till the Highlands should have time to rise. Immediately afterwards five hundred men were to land on the west coast, seize Fort William or Inverlochy, and thus prevent the access of any military force from the south to the central Highlands. The whole scheme indicates Lovat's sagacity as a military strategist, and his plan was continuously kept in view in all future attempts of the Jacobites, and finally acted on in the outbreak of 1745. The advisers of the Pretender seem to have been either slow to trust their

coadjutor or to comprehend his project. At last, however, he was despatched (1703) on a secret mission to the Highlands to sound those of the chiefs who were likely to rise, and to ascertain what forces they could bring into the field. He found, however, that there was little disposition to join the rebellion, and he then apparently made up his mind to secure his own safety by revealing all that he knew to the government of Queen Anne. He persuaded the duke of Queensberry that his rival, the duke of Atholl, was in the Jacobite plot, and that if Queensberry supported him he could obtain evidence of this at St Germain. Queensberry foolishly entered into the intrigue with him against Atholl, but when Lovat had gone to France with a pass from

« PreviousContinue »