François de Chateaubriand
Mémoires d’Outre-Tombe: Index L
Index:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N OP Q R S T U V W X Y Z
L’Estoile, Pierre de
1546-1611. A Chronicler, born in Paris, he was Usher to the Chancellery of Paris. He was imprisoned in 1589.
BkV:Chap14:Sec1 Chateaubriand quotes from his Mémoires et Journal de Pierre de l’Estoile concerning the Paris of Henri III and IV and the League.
BkIX:Chap3:Sec2 Chateaubriand quotes from the Journal.
BkXXXII:Chap3:Sec1 BkXXXV:Chap1:Sec1 Chateaubriand quotes him.
BkXXXIV:Chap1:Sec1 See the Journal.
BkXXXVI:Chap5:Sec1 He relates this tale from June 1595.
BkXXXVII:Chap14:Sec1 See the Journal for January 1595.
BkXXXIX:Chap15:Sec1 See the Journal.
BkXLI:Chap7:Sec1 The lady, Sainte-Beuve, an ardent Leaguer is mentioned several times in the Journal.
L’Hôpital, Michel de
c1505-1573. A French Statesman, he was Chancellor of France under Catherine de Medici. He favoured the Edict of Romorantin (1560) which deprived the secular courts of jurisdiction in cases involving religion, and was responsible for edicts granting liberty of conscience (1561) and restricted liberty of worship (1562). He withdrew from court during the first War of Religion (1562–63) but returned to power and in 1566 was the author of important judicial reforms. After the outbreak (1567) of the second War of Religion he was forced out of office (1568) by Charles and Henri de Guise. In his retirement he composed Latin poetry.
BkXXX:Chap11:Sec1 Mentioned.
BkXXX:Chap11:Sec2 He imitated Horace in Book III of his Complete Works.
La Balue, Cardinal, see Balue
La Baronnais, François-Pierre Collas (?), Monsieur de
b. c. 1726 Father of the Chevalier, a former officer he was an inhabitant of Dinard. He married Renée de Kergu.
BkIX:Chap11:Sec1 His son the Chevalier died at Thionville.
La Baronnais, Chevalier de
Son of Monsieur.
BkIX:Chap11:Sec1 Killed at Thionville.
La Beauce, France
The region in northern France, located between the Seine and Loire rivers. It now comprises the Eure-et-Loir département and parts of Loiret and Loir-et-Cher. The region shared the history of the county of Chartres, which is its only major city.
BkXXXV:Chap16:Sec1 Known for its wheatfields.
BkXXXV:Chap17:Sec1 Madame de Colbert’s house, Montboissier, there.
La Bédoyére, Charles Angélique François Huchet, Comte de
1786-1815. He brought over to Napoleon the 7th Regiment of the Line, during the Hundred Days, and enabled the successful march on Paris. He was named by Napoleon a general and Peer of France. Arrested on the 2nd of May 1815, he was dragged before a court martial then shot on the Plain of Grenelle, on the 19th of August.
BkXXIII:Chap18:Sec2 His speech in the Chamber of Peers in June.
La Belinaye, Renée, Mademoiselle de
1728-1816. Aunt of the Comtesse de Trojolif, she was born and died in Fougères. She was also the aunt of the Marquis de La Rouërie.
BkIV:Chap10:Sec3 Mentioned.
La Besnardière, Jean-Baptiste de Gouey, Comte de
1765-1843. A section head in the Foreign Ministry from 1795 to 1819, he collaborated closely with Talleyrand and accompanied him to the Congress of Vienna. He was given a title on his return.
BkXXIII:Chap11:Sec2 At the Congress of Vienna.
La Billardière, David de
The son of Monsieur Launay, he was a childhood friend of Chateaubriand.
BkII:Chap2:Sec2 Mentioned.
La Billardière, Monsieur Launay de
A tobacco bonder, he lived at Combourg.
BkII:Chap2:Sec2 Mentioned.
La Bletterie, Jean-Philippe-René, Abbé de
1696-1772. A professor of the Collège de France, he left a Life of Julian (1735) and a translation of Tacitus (1755-1768).
BkXXXVIII:Chap8:Sec1 His imitation of an epigram of Julian’s.
La Bouëtardais, Marie-Annibal-Joseph de Bedée, Comte de
La Bouillerie, François Roullet, Baron de
1764-1833. Former Deputy for the Sarthe, and a Peer of France he was Intendant General of the King’s Household.
BkXXIX:Chap14:Sec1 Chateaubriand had asked him to augment the pension which Charles X had granted Thierry.
La Bourdonnais, François Mahé de
1699-1753. A member of the nobility of Saint-Malo, La Bourdonnais was born in the city in 1699. Lieutenant in the East Indies Company in 1718, he took part in the capture of the main islands of the Seychelles archipelago in 1725 which were called Mahé after him. In 1735 he became a very young Governor of Mauritius and the Réunion islands, where he instigated economic development. He commanded a squadron in 1741 and defeated the Marathi who was attacking Mahé. Dupleix, the Colonial Executive and Nabob of India asked for his help against the English and La Bourdonnais took Madras in 1746. He had dealings with his previous enemies, and Dupleix complained. He was recalled to France and imprisoned in the Bastille for three years. At his trial in 1751, he was acquitted and ended his life in Paris.
BkI:Chap4:Sec5 Born in Saint-Malo.
BkXLII:Chap10:Sec1 Mentioned.
La Bourdonnaye, François-Régis, Comte de
1767-1839. Fought with the Chouans in the Vendée, and was an ultra-right wing member (leader of the White Jacobins) of the Chambre introuvable from 1815. Interior Minister under Polignac in 1829, he was quickly dismissed for extremism. He lost his position as Minister of State and Charles X private advisor in the July Revolution.
BkXXVIII:Chap16:Sec1 A possible Chief Minister in 1827.
BkXXXI:Chap5:Sec1 Interior Minister in 1829.
La Bourdonnaye-Montluc, Chevalier de, of the Order of Malta
BkI:Chap1:Sec5. He is mentioned as assisting in the granting of Chateaubriand’s application to enrol in the order of Malta.
La Briche, Adelaide Prévost, Madame de
1755-1844. Married Alexis La Live de La Briche, youngest son of the financier La Live de Bellegarde. Widowed at thirty, her only daughter married Mathieu Molé in 1798.
BkXIV:Chap1:Sec1 She inherited Le Marais, near Saint-Chéron, forty kilometres south-west of Paris, from her uncle before the revolution.
La Chalotais, Louis-René de Caradeuc de
1701-1785. A French magistrate (Advocate-General of the Breton Parlement in 1730-1752, Attorney-General in 1752) who led the Parlement (high court of justice) in a protracted legal battle against the authority of the government of King Louis XV particularly with the Duke of Pivot, who was Governor of Brittany and the King's representative, concerning the influence and fate of the Jesuit order. This led him to be seen as the head of the parliamentary opposition, and in 1765 he was imprisoned by Louis XV and later exiled. He was restored by Louis XVI in 1775. The struggle resulted in the purging and suspensions (1771–74) of the Parlements.
BkI:Chap3:Sec2 The affair involved Chateaubriand’s maternal relatives. His aunt and his cousin Moreau rashly having made false accusations were obliged to make a public retraction, and paid a heavy fine.
BkI:Chap4:Sec4 He wrote his Memoirs (published 1767) while imprisoned in the Château of Saint-Malo.
La Chartreuse, France
The Chartreuse mountain range is close to Grenoble. The mother-house of the Carthusian Order, La Grande-Charteuse was founded there.
BkXVII:Chap5:Sec1 Voreppe is a town between Lyons and Grenoble. Chateaubriand revisited it in July 1838 on his return from Cannes. Saint-Laurent is the oldest district of the modern city of Grenoble.
La Chiffone, frigate
Built for the French fleet in 1801, the 36 ton Frigate Chiffone Captain Pierre Guiyesse captured (June 1801) the British Bellona on her way to London with a rich cargo from Bengal. The Bellona and her prize crew were taken to Mauritius. In the encounter the Chiffone had her mizzen mast crippled, and while this was being repaired a vessel was seen to approach (19th August), flying the Tricolor. When close to the Chiffone the French flag was replaced by the Union Jack, this vessel being the British frigate Sybille, Captain Charles Adam. Both ships opened fire for a battle lasting 17 minutes before the French surrendered with 50 men dead. The Chiffone was repaired and re-commissioned as a British frigate and was in action off the Havre in 1805. Her total complement was 264.
BkXXIV:Chap10:Sec1 On the 11th July 1801, she had arrived in the Seychelles carrying exiled Republicans.
La Conchée, Saint-Malo
Following plans designed by Vauban, engineer Siméon de Garangeau (1647-1741) extended the town, revamped its fortifications and built sea forts on the small islands off the city, Petit Bé, Grand Bé and Fort Royal, later renamed Fort National, La Conchée, and Cézembre.
BkI:Chap3:Sec4 Mentioned.
La Fare, Anne-Louis-Henri, Cardinal de
1752-1829. Archbishop of Sens from 1817, created Duke in 1822, a Cradinal from 1823. He died on the 10th of December 1829.
BkXXX:Chap4:Sec1 He arrives at the Conclave of 1829.
La Fayette, Georges-Washington de Motier de
1779-1849 The son of the Marquis, after a military career he retired in 1807, then after 1815 pursued a political career. He accompanied his father to America in 1824. He was aide-de-camp to his father in 1830, and was an opposition politican under Louis-Philippe. He was Deputy for the Seine-et-Marne to the Constituent Assembly of 1848.
BkXLII:Chap3:Sec1 Mentioned.
La Fayette, Marie-Joseph-Paul-Ives-Roch-Gilbert de Motier, Marquis de
1757-1834. General and Politician, he was prominent at the start of the Revolution. His early career was distinguished by military success against the British in American Revolution (1777-1779, 1780-1782). As a representative of the States-General he presented the Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789. In 1792 the rising power of the radicals threatened him, and he went to Austria. He was later prominent in the July Revolution of 1830 which overthrew Charles X.
BkV:Chap9:Sec1 Appointed to lead the citizens’ militia which became the National Guard, after the fall of the Bastille in July 1789.
BkV:Chap15:Sec3 BkXXXIII:Chap3:Sec1 Mentioned.
BkIX:Chap3:Sec1 Burnt in effigy for condemning the attack on the Tuileries.
BkIX:Chap5:Sec1 His efforts during the American War of Independence.
BkXI:Chap2:Sec2 A native of the Auvergne.
BkXIX:Chap3:Sec1 His noble birth.
BkXIX:Chap6:Sec1 He presented Paoli to Louis XVI.
BkXXII:Chap15:Sec2 BkXXII:Chap15:Sec3 Used the common linguistic style of the age, as a defender of freedom.
BkXXIII:Chap3:Sec1 In Paris in 1815 during the Hundred Days.
BkXXIII:Chap18:Sec1 His speech to the House of Representatives after Waterloo.
BkXXIII:Chap18:Sec2 Accused by Napoleon of conspiring against him in 1815.
BkXXVIII:Chap13:Sec1 He responds to Chateaubriand’s article.
BkXXXI:Chap8:Sec1 BkXXXII:Chap6:Sec1 Mooted as a member of a Provisional Government in July 1830.
BkXXXII:Chap4:Sec1 His arrest ordered but not carried out on 28th July 1830.
BkXXXII:Chap5:Sec1 Receives a students delegation on the 29th July 1830.
BkXXXII:Chap11:Sec1 Proposed as President of a Republic in July 1830.
BkXXXII:Chap14:Sec1 He refused the Presidency on the morning of the 31st of July 1830 and rallied to the Orléanists.
BkXXXIII:Chap5:Sec1 BkXXXIV:Chap13:Sec1 Mentioned.
BkXXXIII:Chap6:Sec1 Louis-Philippe’s dominance over him.
BkXXXV:Chap1:Sec1 Mentioned in April 1832.
BkXLII:Chap3:Sec1 Chateaubriand’s description of his life and politics. He received a triumphant welcome in America in 1824 despite his failure at home in the February 1824 elections.
BkXLII:Chap4:Sec1 Mentioned.
La Fayette, Marie-Madeleine Pioche de la Vergne, Madame de
1634-1693. A French writer, she married in 1651 the Chevalier de Sévigné, and thus became connected with Mme de Sévigné, who was destined to be a lifelong friend. Her first novel, La Princesse de Montpensier, was published anonymously in 1662; Zayde appeared in 1670 under the name of J. de Segrais; and in 1678 her masterpiece, La Princesse de Cleves, also under the name of Segrais.
BkXIII:Chap1:Sec1 A friend of La Rochefoucauld.
BkXXIII:Chap5:Sec1 Her charming talent.
La Fayette, Marie-Adrienne-Françoise de Noailles, Marquise de
1759-1807. The daughter of Jean-Louis-Paul-François, Duc d’Ayen and Duc de Noailles, she lost her mother and sister to the guillotine and barely escaped execution herself (1794). After a failed attempt to have her husband (they married in 1774) released from an Austrian prison, she shared his prison cell in Olmuts (1795-97). They had four children: Henriette, Anastasie, Virginie, and George Washington.
BkXLII:Chap3:Sec1 Mentioned.
La Feronnays, Pierre-Louis-Auguste Ferron, Comte de
1777-1842. A soldier then diplomat, he was the Ambassador to Copenhagen in 1817, and St Petersburg in 1819. He was French Foreign Minister (4 January 1828 - 24 April 1829).
BkI:Chap4:Sec5 A native of Saint-Malo.
BkXXVII:Chap10:Sec1 A plenipotentiary with Chateaubriand at the Congress of Verona.
BkXXVIII:Chap3:Sec1 Chateaubriand writes to him in St Petersburg in 1824, and he replies.
BkXXVIII:Chap16:Sec1 BkXXIX:Chap12:Sec1 Foreign Minister in 1828, a friend of Chateaubriand.
BkXXIX:Chap11:Sec1 Informs Chateaubriand of the surrender of Varna in September 1829. He had been obliged to take a few weeks leave due to illness, and rumours had spread of his resignation.
BkXXIX:Chap16:Sec1 Went to Italy due to illness in 1829.
BkXXX:Chap4:Sec1 BkXXX:Chap5:Sec1 Chateaubriand reports him cured of his illness in March 1829.
BkXXXI:Chap1:Sec1 Mentioned as unable to fulfil a Ministerial role any longer.
BkXXXI:Chap3:Sec1 Mentioned.
BkXL:Chap4:Sec1 Sent to Prague by the Duchess de Berry in 1833.
BkXLI:Chap1:Sec1 In Udine in 1833. He was brother-in-law to Blacas.
La Flèche, corvette
Sunk by the English near the Seychelles on the 2nd September 1801, this French national corvette was commanded by Lieutenant Bonamy and armed with twenty long 8-pounders and two stern chasers. She had landed a number of banished Frenchmen in the Seychelles and was intending to sail to the Bay of Bengal to prey on British shipping. She was raised again in 1803 and was being refitted, but on being discovered by the English was abandoned and burnt.
BkXXIV:Chap10:Sec1 Used to transport Republican exiles to the Seychelles arriving July/August 1801.
La Fontaine, Jean de
1621-1695. Author of the Fables (1688-1694) sophisticated verse treatments of traditional fables from the collections of Aesop, Phaedrus and others. His many other works include his bawdy verse tales (Contes, 1664) which he supposedly repudiated after his religious conversion in 1692.
BkI:Chap5:Sec3 Chateaubriand, perhaps unconsciously, quotes the first verse of La Fontaine’s fable ‘The Acorn and the Pumpkin’ (Fables IX.4)
BkII:Chap7:Sec3 Chateaubriand quotes from ‘The Monkey and the Cat’ (Fables IX.16)
BkVIII:Chap7:Sec1 Chateaubriand quotes the last line of Vieillard et les trois jeunes hommes (Fables XI.8)
BkIX:Chap1:Sec1 BkXLII:Chap7:Sec1 Chateaubriand quotes from La Cigale et la Fourmi (The Cicada and the Ant, Fables I.1), with himself as the singing Cicada in the first instance and George Sand in the second.
BkX:Chap1:Sec1 Chateaubriand refers to Le Chat, la Belette et le petit Lapin (Fables, VII.16)
BkXII:Chap1:Sec1 BkXIII:Chap7:Sec1 Mentioned.
BkXII:Chap3:Sec1 His work ignored by the English in 1822.
BkXIII:Chap1:Sec1 A reference to ‘Discours á M. le duc de Rochefoucauld’ Fables X:14.
BkXX:Chap5:Sec3 A reference to Fables III:4.
BkXXV:Chap13:Sec1 A reference to Fables VII:9, ‘The Coach and the Fly’, where the Fly goads the horses up the hill, considers it has done all the work, and asks for payment.
BkXXVII:Chap3:Sec2 A malicious reference to ‘The Two Cockerels’, Fables VII:14, line 3)
BkXXXIV:Chap13:Sec1 A reference to La Fontaine’s, Fables VII:12
BkXXXV:Chap13:Sec1 The reference is to ‘The Cockerel and the Pearl’, Fables I:20. The Cockerel would prefer the smallest grain of seed to the pearl he turns up.
BkXXXVI:Chap1:Sec1 See La Matrone d’Éphèse: 149-150
BkXXXVI:Chap7:Sec1 See Fables XI:7 lines 11-13, Le Paysan de Danube.
BkXXXVI:Chap10:Sec1 See Fables X:1 line 52, L’Homme et la Couleuvre.
BkXXXVI:Chap11:Sec1 See Fables VI:18 Le Charretier Embourbé. The Carter Stuck in the Mud. Set in Quimper-Corentin in Brittany.
BkXXXVII:Chap3:Sec1 See Fables VII:3 line 10 Le Rat qui s’est retiré du monde.
BkXXXVIII:Chap2:Sec1 See Fables VIII:9 line 7 The Rat and the Oyster.
BkXXXVIII:Chap10:Sec1 The reference is to an anecdote of Racine’s in which La Fontaine arrived at Châlons to see his wife who was at prayer and so he left without seeing her.
BkXXXIX:Chap18:Sec1 See Fables, the Fox and the Crow.
BkXLI:Chap1:Sec1 ‘autre injure des ans’ is from Philemon et Baucis: 66, the sense is ‘another victim of time’s injuries’.
La Force, Jacques-Nompar de Caumont, Marshal de
1558-1652. He was a marshal and peer of France.
BkXXXVIII:Chap9:Sec1 Mentioned.
La France
Valet de Chambre to the Chateaubriand family.
BkI:Chap5:Sec2 Mentioned.
La Galaisière
Minister under Louis XVI in 1789.
BkV:Chap8:Sec1 Appointed Comptroller-General in 1789.
La Goulette, Tunisia
A fishing port, now a quarter of Tunis. Charles Quint built a fortress there in 1537.
BkXVIII:Chap2:Sec1 Chateaubriand there in 1807.
La Guiche, Philibert de, Seigneur de La Guiche et de Chaumont
d. 1607 Grand-Master of the French Artillery (1578).
BkI:Chap4:Sec4 Mentioned.
La Harpe, Jean-François de
1739-1803. Literary critic. Friend of Madame Récamier.
La Haye-Sainte
A farm on the field of Waterloo, it was defended by the Allies.
BkXXIII:Chap17:Sec1 Mentioned.
La Hire
Lahire, Ogier, Hector and Lancelot were conventional names for the jacks in a pack of cards in France in the fifteenth century.
BkXXXVII:Chap5:Sec1 Mentioned.
La Hoguette, Saint-Malo
A sand mound surmounted by a gibbet in Chateaubriand’s day.
BkI:Chap3:Sec4 Mentioned.
La Hontan or Lahontan, Louis-Armand de Lom d’Arce, Baron de
1666-1715. French soldier and writer who explored parts of what are now Canada and the United States and who prepared valuable accounts of his travels in the New World.
BkVII:Chap10:Sec1 His description of the Canadian Indians.
La Laurencie, Chevalier de, of the Order of Malta
BkI:Chap1:Sec5. Mentioned as assisting in the granting of Chateaubriand’s application to enrol in the order of Malta.
La Luzerne, Anne-César, Comte de
1741-1791. Diplomat. French Minister to the United States 1779. Ambassador to London in 1788. Died in London in 1791.
BkII:Chap10:Sec1 Mentioned.
La Luzerne, César-Guillaume, Duc et Cardinal de
1738-1821. Brother of Anne-César, he was Bishop of Langres from 1770. Deputy to the States-General, he emigrated in 1791 to Venice, living there until 1800. He recovered his see, and title in 1814. Created Cardinal in 1817, he never received the red hat and title. He transferred to the Metropolitan see of Paris.
BkXXV:Chap9:Sec1 Wrote an article for the Conservateur.
La Luzerne, César-Henri, Comte de
1737-1799. Older brother of Anne-César. Governor-General of San-Dominguo 1786-1787. Minister of the Navy 1788-1789. Died during the Emigration.
BkV:Chap8:Sec1 Dismissed by Louis XVI in 1789.
La Luzerne, César-Guillaume, Vicomte then Comte de
Son of César-Henri. Brother in law of Madame de Beaumont from 1787.
BkXV:Chap4:Sec1 Chateaubriand confuses him with his uncle Anne-César.
BkXV:Chap6:Sec1 Recipient of Chateaubriand’s description of Madame de Beaumont’s last days.
La Maisonfort, Marquis de
1763-1827. Former Captain of Dragoons, a printer in Brunswick during the Revolution, and a royalist. Intrigued at Naples, and Fesch ordered his arrest while he was in Rome in 1803, at which he left for Tuscany. He became a deputy during the Restoration and then a plenipotentiary Minister at Florence. He had literary pretensions.
BkXIV:Chap8:Sec1 Mentioned.
La Marche, Friedrich William Moritz Alexander, Comte de (Graf von der Mark, Brandenburg)
1778-1787 He was the beloved illegitimate son of Frederick-William II of Prussia and his mistress the Countess of Lichtenau (1796). His memorial urn of 1788/9 by Johann Gottfried Schadow, found in the lake, was recently restored to the ‘New Garden’ in Potsdam.
BkXXVI:Chap2:Sec1 Mentioned in Mirabeau’s Secret History.
La Martinière, Antoine Bruzeu de
1673-1749. He published a Grand Dictionnaire géographique et critique (1726-1730) and was the nephew of Richard Simon.
BkIV:Chap10:Sec2 Mentioned.
La Martinière
Officer in the Navarre Regiment.
BkIV:Chap4:Sec1 BkXXIII:Chap20:Sec1 BkXXXVI:Chap1:Sec1
Chateaubriand encountered him at Cambrai in 1786. He describes courting on his behalf (a scene reminiscent of Cyrano only in reverse!).
BkIV:Chap10:Sec2 Chateaubriand found him again at Dieppe in 1789 (or perhaps 1787).
BkIX:Chap9:Sec1 In the émigré army in 1792.
La Mettrie, Julien Offray de
1709-1751. Born 25th of December, 1709. He studied natural philosophy then medicine and wrote widely on medical and philosophical matters. He moved to Paris in 1742. Whilst living in Paris he suffered a violent fever which led him to believe that disorders of the mind were due to physical malfunctions of the brain and nervous system. He had his ideas printed under the title of ‘The Natural History of the Soul’. This cost him his job and in 1746 he was forced to flee France, pursued by the priesthood. He escaped to Leyden and continued his work, taunting his critics with his writings including his now famous treatise ‘Man a Machine’. The reaction of the priesthood to this work forced him to flee once again, this time escaping to Prussia before moving to Berlin in February 1748. He died on 11 November 1751 aged 43 leaving his wife Louise Charlotte Dreano and a 5 year old daughter.
BkI:Chap4:Sec5 Born in Saint-Malo.
La Morandais, François-Placide Maillard de
Steward of Combourg.
BkII:Chap3:Sec2 BkII:Chap3:Sec3 Takes Chateaubriand on a trip to Saint-Malo.
La Motte-Picquet, Toussaint-Guillaume
1720-1791. Commander of a squadron in 1778, he took part in the battle of Ushant. He performed distinguished action during the United States War of Independence. He joined D’Estaing’s squadron in Martinique in June 1779 and took part in the battle off Grenada and the attack on Savannah. On December 18 in front of Royal Fort of Martinique, he attacked the English squadron under Admiral Hyde-Parker who tried to bar the roads. The skill of the operation and the ferocity of the action earned him a letter of congratulation from the English admiral! Commanding in 1781 a division of 6 vessels and 3 frigates, he intercepted the English convoy under Admiral Rodney and destroyed 26 ships. He was named lieutenant-general of the naval armies in January 1782. He died in Brest on June 10, 1791. BkII:Chap8:Sec2 Mentioned.
La Noue, François de, called Bras de Fer
1531-1591. French Protestant general in the Wars of Religion. He fought at Jarnac (1569) and Moncontour (1569). In 1570 he lost his left arm in battle and had it replaced with an iron hook, whence he became known as Bras-de-fer (iron-arm), as well as the Huguenot Bayard. He took part in the Netherlands expedition sponsored by Gaspard de Coligny. His reputation for fairness led to his being sent by King Charles IX to negotiate (1572–73) with the defenders of La Rochelle. After the failure of these negotiations he gave up his commission and assumed the leadership of the Protestant forces in Western France (1574–78). He fought for the Dutch Protestants against the Spanish, but was captured (1580) and held prisoner for five years. At this time he wrote Discours politiques et militaires (1587, tr. 1587). He fought under King Henry IV at Arques and Ivry.
BkX:Chap1:Sec1 Captured by Spain in 1580 he was handed over to the Duke of Parma, Alexander Farnese, who imprisoned him in the castle of Limbourg until 1585. He died in Brittany, mortally wounded at the siege of Lamballe.
La Noue, Monsieur de, see Cordellier
La Pérouse, Jean-François de Galaup, Comte de
1741-1788. The French explorer and naval officer who mapped the west coast of North America in 1786, and visited Easter Island and the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii). He was lost at sea while searching for the Solomon Islands (after reaching Australia’s Botany Bay). His ships were wrecked, and the survivors probably killed by the inhabitants of Vanikoro.
Preface:Sect1 Chateaubriand mentions meeting him.
BkII:Chap8:Sec3 Chateaubriand saw him at Brest in 1783.
BkVI:Chap2:Sec1 BkIX:Chap9:Sec1 Mentioned.
BkXV:Chap2:Sec1 His road being the road of death.
La Placelière, Mademoiselle de, see Lavigne
La Porte, Monsieur de, see Laporte
Minister under Louis XVI in 1789.
Laqueuille, Marquis de
1742-1810. Resigned as Deputy to organise the émigré Compagnie des gentilhommes auvergnats.
BkIX:Chap1:Sec1 Declared a traitor in December 1791.
La Reveillère-Lepaux
1753-1824. A member of the Directory, he invented a new religion of Theo-philanthropy.
BkXXXII:Chap9:Sec1 Mentioned.
La Rochefoucauld, Ambroise-Polycarpe de, Duc de Doudeauville
1765-1841. An émigré, he returned to live quietly on his estate at Montmirail. Made a Peer of France in 1815, he was named Director of the Postal Services (1822), then in 1824 Minister of the King’s Household.
BkXXVIII:Chap15:Sec1 Mentioned.
BkXXVIII:Chap16:Sec1 Opposes Villèle over the disbanding of the National Guard in April 1827.
BkXXVIII:Chap21:Sec1 He and his son Sosthènes who had married Montmorency’s only daughter, lived at Montmirail.
BkXLII:Chap8:Sec1 Mentioned.
La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de
1613-1680. A French writer, who as head of an ancient family (in his youth he bore the title prince de Marcillac) opposed Richelieu and was later active in both Frondes. Wounded and disheartened, he made his peace (1652) and retired to his estates in Angoumois. Later he settled (c.1658) in Paris where he moved in the literary circle of Mme de Sablé, which included Mme de La Fayette, whose close friendship had an important influence on him. Although his Mémoires are interesting historically, La Rochefoucauld’s place in French literature is assured by his moral maxims and reflective epigrams, which are marked by lucidity and polished brilliance. A collection was published in 1665 as Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales. The fifth edition, which appeared in his lifetime, contained 504 maxims.
BkXIII:Chap1:Sec1 Loved by Madame de Longueville, he was also a friend of Madame de La Fayette, and Madame de Sévigné.
BkXXIII:Chap5:Sec1 His attempt to harm the Cardinal de Retz.
La Rochefoucauld, Sosthènes de
1785-1864. Son of Ambroise, Duke of Doudeauville, son-in-law of Mathieu de Montmorency, he was charged with the department of the fine arts, in the ministry of Charles X’s household until the end of the Restoration. He was thus in control of the museums, royal manufactures, the Conservatory and the five royal theatres: the Opera, the François, the Odeon, the Opera-Comique, and the Italiens. He became Duc de Doudeaville.
BkXXII:Chap 23:Sec1 An avowed Royalist, he was in 1814 aide-de-camp to General Dessoles.
La Rochejacquelein, Henri du Vergier, Comte de
1772-1794. A French commander, he was leader of the counter-revolutionary army in the Vendée. His legendary gallantry and tactical abilities were of little avail against superior Republican armies. He was killed in battle at Nouaillé.
BkV:Chap15:Sec3 BkXI:Chap3:Sec2 BkXXXV:Chap3:Sec1 Mentioned.
La Rochejacquelein, Auguste du Vergier, Comte
1783-1868. Younger brother of Henri, he served with Napoleon then fought in the Vendée on behalf of the Duchesse de Berry, for which he was condemned to death but later acquitted.
BkXXXIII:Chap1:Sec1 At Versailles on the 31st of July 1830.
La Rochelle
A seaport on the Atlantic Ocean, it is the capital of the Charente-Maritime département. The city is connected to the Île de Ré by a bridge, completed in 1988. Its harbour opens into a protected strait, the Pertuis d’Antioche. A 10th century foundation it became a Huguenot stronghold reduced by Cardinal Richelieu, and later a centre of the triangular trade.
BkXXIV:Chap2:Sec1 Mentioned.
La Romana, Pedro Caro y Sureda, 3rd Marquis of
1761-1811. A Spanish officer he fought in the American Revolutionary War. King Charles IV, bullied and pressured by Napoleon, agreed in 1807 to provide a division to bolster the French army in Germany. La Romana was made commander of this ‘Division of the North’ and spent 1807 and 1808 performing garrison duties in Hamburg and later Denmark under Marshal Bernadotte. When the Peninsular War broke out, La Romana made plans to repatriate his men to Spain. That 9,000 men of the 14,000-strong division were able to board British ships on August 27 and escape to Spain was chiefly due to his subterfuge and organizational skills. La Romana drove the French from Asturias. In 1809, he was appointed to the Central Junta and served until 1810. He then returned to military operations under Wellington but died suddenly on January 23, 1811 without again seeing major action.
BkXX:Chap7:Sec2 Mentioned.
La Rouërie, see Rouërie, Marquis de La
La Sablière, Marguerite née Hessein, de
1640-1693. The wife of Antoine Rambouillet, Sieur de la Sablière (1624-1679), a Protestant financier entrusted with the administration of the royal estates, her salon became a meeting-place for poets, scientists, men of letters, and courtiers of Louis XIV. About 1673 Madame de la Sablière received into her house La Fontaine, whom she sponsored for twenty years.
BkXXXVIII:Chap10:Sec1 Mentioned.
La Somaglia, Giulio Maria, Cardinal
1744-1830. Created a Cardinal in 1795, he was expelled from Rome by the French in 1808. He was made Dean of the Sacred College in 1820, and was a zelante in the Conclave of 1823. Named Secretary of State by Leo XII he gave up his functions in June 1828.
BkXXX:Chap1:Sec1 BkXXX:Chap3:Sec1 Mentioned.
La Suze, Louis-François Chamillard, Marquis de
1751-1833. He was Maréchal des Logis to Louis XVIII.
BkXXIII:Chap20:Sec1 Mentioned.
La Tour-Maubourg, Marie-Victor-Nicolas de Fay, Marquis de
1768-1850. He was made a Peer under the Restoration, Ambassador to London in 1819, and Minister of War 1819-1821. He was also Governor of the Invalides. He was wounded at Borodino, and lost a leg at Wachau.
BkXXI:Chap6:Sec1 Commanded the cavalry at Smolensk in retreat in 1812.
BkXXXII:Chap3:Sec1 At the Invalides during the July Revolution.
BkXXXVI:Chap2:Sec1 Mentioned as a supporter of the Duchess de Berry.
BkXXXIX:Chap1:Sec1 Mentioned.
BkXLI:Chap5:Sec1 Mentioned as a possible member of Charles X’s Chateaubriand-led government in 1833!
La Vallière, Louise Françoise de la Blaume Le Blanc, de
1644-1710. She was the mistress of King Louis XIV of France. Maid of honour to Louis’ sister-in-law, Henrietta of England, she became the king's mistress in 1661. She bore him four children, of whom two died in infancy. In 1667, by the same government act that legitimized her daughter, she was created duchess. She was replaced in the king’s affections by Mme de Montespan. In 1674 she retired to a Carmelite convent and became celebrated for her piety.
BkIV:Chap2:Sec2 Her final vows, and Bossuet’s sermon.
BkIV:Chap9:Sec2 BkXXXIV:Chap12:Sec1 Mentioned.
BkXIII:Chap7:Sec2 Madame de Vintimille might have lived in her company.
BkXLII:Chap10:Sec1 Mentioned.
La Vauguyon, Paul-François de Quelen, Duc de
1746-1818. He was a Minister under Louis XVI.
BkV:Chap8:Sec1 Replaced Montmorin as Minister for Foreign Affairs in 1789.
Labat, Jean-Baptiste, Père
1663-1738. A missionary in the Antilles, he was in Italy from 1709 to 1712 and wrote an account of his travels in Spain and Italy published in 1730.
BkXXIX:Chap7:Sec2 Described.
Labé, Louise, or Loyse Labbé
1526-1566. A poetess, she was born into a prosperous family of rope-makers. In 1555 Euvres de Louize Labe Lionnoize was published in Lyons: it contained a prose dedicatory epistle to a local noblewoman, a prose Debat de Folie et d'Amour, 24 sonnets (the first in Italian), and three elegies; the work concluded with 24 poems by other writers, praising Labe’s ability. The book was popular enough that three other editions came out within a year (the first "revues et corrigees par la dite Dame"), and it was widely-read enough to bring both praise from beyond Lyons and criticism for being immodest and ‘unwomanly.’ Sometime after 1556, she apparently left Lyon to live in the countryside. Her husband died in the early 1560s and she died, perhaps of the plague in 1566.
BkXVII:Chap4:Sec1 Mentioned.
BkXLII:Chap6:Sec1 Quoted.
Laborde, Comte Alexandre-Louis-Joseph de
1773-1842. He was a scholar, writer, Deputy for the Seine and Academician.
BkXVIII:Chap5:Sec1 Attaché in Spain 1801-2. His Voyage historique et pittoresque en Espagne was published in 1807.
BkXX:Chap10:Sec1 In the matter of the marriage of Marie Louise he was the secret agent between Napoleon’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Prince of Schwarzenberg.
BkXXII:Chap11:Sec1 Attaché to the National Guard in 1814.
BkXXII:Chap12:Sec1 Sent to meet Schwarzenberg in 1814.
BkXXXII:Chap1:Sec1 Mentioned in 1830.
BkXXXII:Chap8:Sec1 Named as Prefect of the Seine by the Municipal Commission, 29th July 1830.
Laborie, Antoine-Athanase Roux de
1769-1842. A Friend of the Bertin brothers, he was a shareholder in the Journal of Debates. Employed in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs under Talleyrand’s protection, he was accused by Fouché of leaking confidential information. He had to hide to escape the police and fled France for a time.
BkXIII:Chap8:Sec1 At Savigny in 1801.
BkXXII:Chap11:Sec1 Became Private Secretary to the Provisional Government in 1814.
BkXXIII:Chap5:Sec1 At Ghent in 1815.
BkXXIII:Chap20:Sec1 General Lamothe was his brother-in-law.
Laborie (Roux-Laborie fils)
He was the son of Antoine.
BkXLII:Chap4:Sec1 His duel with Carrel on 2nd February 1833.
Labrador, Pedro Gomez Havela, Marquis de
1775-1850. Spanish Ambassador in Rome 1828, he left a volume of memoirs Mélanges sur la vie privée et publique du marquis de Labrador, par lui-même (Paris, 1849).
BkXXIX:Chap5:Sec1 BkXXX:Chap1:Sec2 Mentioned.
Lacépède, Bernard Germain Étienne de la Ville, Comte
1756-1825. A French naturalist, he won the favour of Buffon, who secured him a position at the Jardin du Roi (later the Jardin des Plantes). His best-known works deal with the oviparous quadrupeds, reptiles, fishes, and whales; they are frequently printed with Buffon’s works, which they supplement. Lacépède was active in politics and was exiled during the Reign of Terror. After his return he gave up scientific work for a political career and held several state offices. Napoleon appointed him Grand Chancellor.
BkXXI:Chap8:Sec1 Quoted.
BkXXII:Chap6:Sec1 Mentioned.
Laclos, Pierre-Ambroise-François Choderlos de
1741-1803. His father was a government official who was ennobled but without a title. Laclos joined the army and with the end of the Seven Years War in 1763, was transferred to north-eastern France. It was while stationed there that he published his first literary piece, a poem in a periodical in 1767. In 1769 he moved to Grenoble where he stayed until being garrisoned in Besançon in 1775. During this period he was promoted and published other minor verse. In December 1776 he became a freemason. The following year saw the sole performance in Paris of his comic opera, Ernestine, adapted from the tale of the same name by the successful novelist, Mme Riccoboni. It is possible that Laclos began writing his most famous work, Les Liaisons dangereuses in 1778. He was certainly engaged on the drafting of the novel while working on the fortifications of the island of Aix in 1779. To aid the composition of his novel, he was on leave in Paris in 1780 and 1781 where he began moves to have his work published. The first edition of the novel appeared in April 1782. In 1788 he entered the service of the Duke of Orléans and accompanied his employer to London in 1790. He engaged in revolutionary activity, using the power of his pen. He resigned from the army in 1791. In the thick of political in-fighting, he was arrested and then released in the spring of 1793, only to be incarcerated again in November. He expected to be guillotined, but was set free in December 1794. After miscellaneous activities in the succeeding years, Laclos was appointed an artillery general in 1800 under Napoleon, and fulfilled various military functions before dying in Italy.
BkV:Chap14:Sec1 Mentioned as involved in the amusements at Monceaux.
Lacretelle, Charles
1766-1855. Lacretelle the younger was journalist then historian, and wrote the first great History of the Revolution (1821-26). He was proscribed after Vendémiaire, and imprisoned after Fructidor. He published an account of his tribulations.
BkXIX:Chap11:Sec1 His courage.
BkXXXI:Chap4:Sec1 He writes to Chateaubriand in 1829.
Lacretelle, Pierre-Louis
1751-1824. A French politician and writer, he practised as a barrister in Paris; and under the Revolution was elected as deputy in the Legislative Assembly. He belonged to the moderate party known as the Feuillants, but after the 10th of August 1792 he ceased to take part in public life. In 1803 he became a member of the Institute, taking the place of Laharpe. Under the Restoration he was one of the chief editors of the Minerve française; he wrote also an essay, Sur le 18 Brumaire (1799), some Fragments politiques et litteraires (1817), and a treatise Des parlis politiques et des factions de Ca pretendue aristocratie d’aujourd-hui (1819).
BkII:Chap3:Sec2 Mentioned as a lawyer.
Lacroix
A student of the École Polytechnique in 1830.
BkXXXII:Chap5:Sec1 Involved in the fighting of 29th July 1830.
Ladvocat, Pierre-François, known as Charles
1785-1854. A well-known Paris bookseller, then publisher, with premises in the Palais-Royal (having married the proprietress in 1817), who initiated public advertising of new books on placards around Paris. He moved subsequently to a fine house on the Rue Chabanais. The son of peasants, he had a flair for marketing, and a taste for luxury. He published Hugo, Delavigne, Lamartine and other Romantics, and many translations from English and German. He was bankrupted under Louis-Philippe and died in the Charity Hospital.
BkXXVIII:Chap9:Sec1 Chateaubriand sold him the rights to his complete works, for 550,000 francs, in March 1826. Thirty volumes duly appeared between June and December 1826 (others through to 1832). With Ladvocat in financial difficulties Chateaubriand agreed to a reduction, to 350,000 francs, in February 1827. In November 1828, Ladvocat sold the rights to Pourrat and Delandine for only 10,000 francs. Chateaubriand presumably lost about 200,000 francs on the original deal.
Lallemand, Père Jèrôme
1593-1673. A Jesuit missionary, he died at Quebec.
BkVII:Chap8:Sec2 Mentioned.
Laensberg, Matthieu
1600-? A Liège mathematician and astrologer under whose name an almanac of prophecies and predictions was produced from 1626.
BkXXXVIII:Chap6:Sec1 The almanac.
Laertes
Laertes, the son of Arcesius, was the king of Ithaca and the father of Odysseus.
BkXXXVI:Chap11:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lafitau or Laffiteau, Joseph-François, Le Père
1681-1746. A Jesuit missionary and writer, he entered the Society in 1696, and the general, Tamburini, yielding to his entreaties, sent him to Canada in 1711. Appointed to the mission of Sault Saint-Louis (Caughnawaga), he made a thorough study of Iroquois character and usages, as a preparation to his great work ‘Mœures des Sauvages américains comparées aux mœurs des premiers temps’: published in 1724. It was then that he discovered ginseng, a root highly prized as a panacea in China and Tartary, one ounce selling for as high as three ounces of silver. This discovery created an excitement comparable to that caused later by the finding of gold in California and Australia; but the exportation of the root, after promising immense profits to Canadian trade, rapidly decreased, owing to over-production and inferiority of quality due to hasty and artificial desiccation. Lafitau’s treatise on ginseng (1718) drew public attention to this apparent source of prosperity. In 1717, he returned to France in the interests of the mission, chiefly to obtain authorization from Court to transfer the Iroquois settlement to its present superior site. He likewise pleaded for the repression of the liquor traffic. In spite of his wish to return to Canada, where his knowledge of Indian languages and customs rendered him so valuable that Father Julien Garnier wished him to have him recalled, he was retained in France. After Charlevoix, Lafitau was the most remarkable historian and naturalist ever sent to Canada by the Society of Jesus.
BkVII:Chap10:Sec1 His description of the Canadian Indians.
Lafitte-Clavé
A French officer who worked with Lazare Carnot.
BkXIX:Chap12:Sec2 Mentioned.
Lafitte, Jacques
1767-1844. A French banker and politician, he became a partner in a Perregaux banking house in 1800 and head of the firm in 1804. As governor of the Bank of France (1814–19), he raised large sums of money for the provisional government in 1814 and for Louis XVIII during the Hundred Days. He saved Paris from a financial crisis in 1818. An early partisan of a constitutional monarchy under Louis-Philippe, he did much to secure Louis-Philippe's accession to the throne, and he briefly served as premier (1830–31) in the July Monarchy.
BkXXVIII:Chap16:Sec1 Joint leader of the left-wing opposition in 1827.
BkXXXII:Chap4:Sec1 His arrest ordered but not carried out on 28th July 1830.
BkXXXII:Chap5:Sec1 Receives a students’ delegation on the 29th July 1830.
BkXXXII:Chap6:Sec1 BkXXXII:Chap8:Sec1 Hosts a meeting of Deputies, and is appointed a member of the Municipal Commission on the 29th July 1830.
BkXXXII:Chap11:Sec1 BkXXXII:Chap14:Sec1 A supporter of Louis-Philippe in July 1830.
BkXXXII:Chap15:Sec1 At the Hôtel de Ville on the 31st of July. He was President of the Chamber of Deputies from 3rd August.
BkXXXIII:Chap5:Sec1 Mentioned.
BkXXXV:Chap9:Sec1 BkXXXVII:Chap3:Sec1 He advanced Chateaubriand money in 1832.
Lafontaine, Auguste
1759-1832. A novelist, descended from French refugees, and pastor at Halle, he wrote dozens of family novels, which were highly detailed, and was much appreciated in France during the Restoration.
BkXXXVI:Chap11:Sec1 Mentioned.
Laforest, Antoine-René, Comte de
1756-1846. Career diplomat and protégé of Talleyrand, he participated in the Congress of Luneville, then represented France at the Diet of Ratisbonne. He was plenipotentiary minister in Berlin from 1805-1807.
BkXVI:Chap6:Sec1 BkXVI:Chap9:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lagarde, Pierre-François-Denis de
1769-? A former functionary in the Foreign Office, and Director of Censorship, he was the Commissioner-General of Police in Venice in 1806.
BkXXXIX:Chap5:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lagorce, Colonel
He was an adjutant at the Palace of Fontainebleau in 1813.
BkXXII:Chap2:Sec1 He carried communications between Napoleon and the Pope.
Lagrange, Joseph-Louis
1736-1813. He was a French mathematician and astronomer, of French and Italian descent. Before the age of 20 he was professor of geometry at the royal artillery school at Turin. With his pupils he organized (1759) a society from which the Turin Academy of Sciences developed. Among his early successes were his method of solving iso-perimetrical problems, on which the calculus of variations is based in part; his researches on the nature and propagation of sound and on the vibration of strings; and his studies on the libration of the moon and on the satellites of Jupiter. On the recommendation of Euler and D’Alembert, Frederick the Great invited him (1766) to succeed Euler as director of mathematics at the Berlin Academy of Sciences. During this time he wrote his chief work, Mécanique analytique, a treatment of mechanics based solely on algebra and the calculus and containing not a single diagram or geometric explanation. This was published (1788) in Paris, where he had been called by Louis XVI in 1787. In 1793 he became president of the commission on weights and measures; he was influential in causing the adoption of the decimal base for the metric system. A professor at the École polytechnique from 1797, he developed the use in teaching of the analytic method that he so skilfully employed in his research. He wrote Théorie des fonctions analytiques (1797) and Leçons sur le calcul des fonctions (1806), both based on his lectures. Under Napoleon, Lagrange was made senator and count; he is buried in the Panthéon. His contributions to the development of mathematics also include the application of differential calculus to the theory of probabilities and notable work on the solution of equations. In astronomy he is known for his calculations of the motions of planets.
BkXIII:Chap11:Sec2 His capitulation to Napoleon.
BkXXII:Chap3:Sec1 His death in 1813.
Laharpe, Jean-François
1739-1803. Poet, essayist and member of the Academy, he was already famous by the start of the Revolution, and supported it until he was arrested in 1794. After Thermidor, he was a leader of the anti-Jacobin reaction.
BkIV:Chap11:Sec1 BkIV:Chap12:Sec3 BkIV:Chap12:Sec4
BkV:Chap14:Sec1 Mentioned.
BkV:Chap15:Sec2 Argued with Chateaubriand over his politics.
BkIX:Chap6:Sec2 His reaction to the invasion of the Tuileries in 1792.
BkXI:Chap2:Sec1 Chateaubriand sent him a copy of the Essai.
BkXI:Chap3:Sec1 He reviewed Fontanes first verse favourably.
BkXI:Chap3:Sec1 He co-founded the Mémorial journal.
BkXII:Chap5:Sec1 Chateaubriand quotes from Le Triomphe de la religion chrétienne, ou le Roi martyr.
BkXIII:Chap7:Sec2 Celebrated Madame de Vintimille and Madame de Fezensac.
BkXIV:Chap1:Sec1 Converted in prison by Madame de Clermont-Tonnerre.
BkXIV:Chap3:Sec1 His death in February 1803. He had previously published Du Fanatisme dans la langue révolutionnaire. His poem on the Revolution was Le Triomphe (Published posthumously by Migneret in 1814): Chateaubriand quotes from Book XII, chapter V. He remarried at 68, with a Mademoiselle de Hatte-Longuerue, much younger than himself, but swiftly divorced in 1797.
BkXVIII:Chap7:Sec2 Buried in the Vaugirard cemetery.
BkXIX:Chap11:Sec1 His pamphlets in 1795.
Lainé, Joseph
1767-1835. Politician and magistrate, he was a Member of the Legislature under the Empire and of the Chamber of Deputies after the Restoration, chairing the latter 1814-16. Minister of the Interior 1816-18. He was a Member of the Chamber of Peers and of the Academy.
BkXV:Chap7:Sec2 Regarded by Bonaparte as an agent of England.
BkXXII:Chap7:Sec1 Presided over the Legislature.
BkXXII:Chap 24:Sec1 BkXXIII:Chap3:Sec1 President of the Chamber of Deputies in 1814-15. His agreement with Chateaubriand in 1815.
BkXXV:Chap6:Sec1 Buys a ticket in the lottery sale of Chateaubriand’s property in 1817.
BkXXV:Chap13:Sec1 Chateaubriand wishes to see him in government and works on his behalf in 1820.
BkXXVIII:Chap9:Sec1 BkXXXV:Chap24:Sec1 Mentioned.
BkXXXVIII:Chap4:Sec1 Chateaubriand recommends him to the Dauphine.
Lais
4th century BC. A legendary hetaera or courtesan of ancient Greece she was born probably in Corinth. Another hetaera with the same name was Lais of Hyccara. Since ancient authors often confuse them the two are inextricably linked. The philosopher Aristippus (he twice mentions her) was one of her numerous lovers.
BkXLII:Chap7:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lajard, Pierre-Auguste
1757-1837. Minister of War from June 1792-August 1793, he emigrated to England. Returned under the Empire and became a Marshal under the Restoration.
BkXIX:Chap6:Sec1 Chateaubriand’s text is in error here. Narbonne dismissed Napoleon in December 1791 when he returned to Corsica. In April 1792 Napoleon became a lieutenant colonel second-class in the National Guard at Ajaccio. In July 1792 Lajard accepted Napoleon back as a captain in the army.
BkXIX:Chap8:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lalage
She was a mistress of Horace, addressed in his Odes.
BkXXXVIII:Chap5:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lalande, Joseph Jérôme Lefrançais de
1732-1807. A French astronomer, who under the direction of the French Academy of Science, he went to Berlin in 1751 to make observations on the parallax of the moon for comparison with those that Nicolas Lacaille was making at the Cape of Good Hope. He was admitted to the Berlin Academy, and in 1760 he became professor of astronomy in the Collège de France, holding the post for 46 years. In 1768 he became director of the Paris Observatory. The Lalande Prize, which he established in 1802, is awarded for the outstanding achievement in astronomy each year. His works include Traité d'astronomie (1764); Histoire céleste française (1801), including a catalog of over 47,000 stars; and Bibliographie astronomique (1802).
BkXXIX:Chap7:Sec3 BkXXIX:Chap9:Sec1 His Voyage d'un français en Italie (1769) is a valuable and detailed record of his travels in 1765–1766.
Lally-Tolendal, Thomas-Arthur O’Mullally, Baron de
1702-1766. Last Governor of the Indies, he was condemned to death in 1766 for high treason, but pardoned in 1788.
BkXXIII:Chap5:Sec1 His trial mentioned.
Lally-Tolendal, Trophime-Gérard, Marquis de
1751-1830. Son of Thomas, he obtained the rehabilitation of his father’s name in 1778, his father having been condemned to death in 1766 for high treason. He emigrated in 1790, returning in 1792 to assist in vain in the King’s escape.
BkV:Chap9:Sec1 He was one of those who met and harangued the King at the Hôtel de Ville on the 17th July 1789.
BkXVII:Chap1:Sec1 Occupied the house at 31 Rue Mirosmesnil, after Chateaubriand.
BkXXIII:Chap5:Sec1 A Minister without Portfolio in Ghent during the Hundred Days. His muse was the fervently royalist wife of the physician Charles, she later inspiring Lamartine.
BkXXV:Chap2:Sec1 Named a Peer at the same time as Chateaubriand in 1815, he supported a liberal government.
BkXXVIII:Chap14:Sec1 On the 16th of January 1827, the Academicians voted to present an appeal to the king regarding a proposed law on the freedom of the Press, despite Lally-Tollendal’s objections. Charles X rejected the petition out of hand.
Lama, Grand
The Dalai Lama is the temporal and spiritual head of the Tibetan State (in exile since 1959). Its traditional religion is a form of Mahayana Buddhism, with deities, mandalas, and gurus, introduced in the 7th Century AD, which has surviving features of Bon shamanism.
BkVIII:Chap5:Sec1 His entomologists.
Lamarque, Jean-Maximilien, General
1770-1832. Commander during the Napoleonic Wars who later became a member of French Parliament. He was a noted military patriot and orator. As an opponent of the Ancien Régime, he is known for his active suppression of Royalist and Legitimist activity. His death was also the catalyst of a Parisian uprising in June of 1832.
BkXXXV:Chap1:Sec1 Mentioned in April 1832.
BkXXXV:Chap2:Sec1 His death from cholera led to an insurrection at his funeral on the 5th of June 1832. Victor Hugo dramatised the events in the fourth part of Les Miserables.
Lamartine, Alphonse Louis Marie de Prat, de
1790-1869. He was a French poet, novelist, and statesman. After a trip to Italy and a brief period in the army, Lamartine began to write and achieved immediate success with his first publication, Méditations poétiques (1820). Its musicality was developed in Harmonies (1830). His religious orthodoxy becomes a kind of pantheism in Jocelyn (1836) and La Chute d’un ange (1838). In politics, his idealism led him to embrace the principles of democracy, social justice, and international peace. His Histoire des Girondins (1847), a glorification of the Girondists, was immensely popular, and after the February Revolution of 1848 Lamartine briefly headed the provisional government and was a member of the executive committee that replaced it. His moderation soon cost him the support of both the right and the left wings of the revolutionists. He competed unsuccessfully for the presidency with Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (later Napoleon III). Lamartine left politics and devoted himself entirely to writing, spending much of the remainder of his life in a hopeless effort to repay the fantastic debts he had accumulated in his youth. His later prose works include the novel Graziella (1849) and Les Confidences (1852).
BkXXII:Chap15:Sec2 The reference is to an intervention of his in the Chamber of Deputies on the 26th of May 1840 regarding the return of Napoleon’s remains to France. ‘Je ne suis pas de cette religion napoléonienne…’
BkXXV:Chap12:Sec1 The phrase used of the infant Duc de Bordeaux derives from Lamartine’s Ode on the Birth of the Duke of Bordeaux (written in Naples 1820, published 1822).
BkXXX:Chap11:Sec2 Mentioned.
BkXXXI:Chap4:Sec1 Lamartine was elected to the Academy on the 5th of November 1829.
Lambach, Austria
The old market town of Lambach lies in the Alpine foreland 15 miles north of the Traunsee and 6 miles southwest of the town of Wels, on the left bank of the River Traun at the spot where, having flowed down from the Salzkammergut, it turns eastward.
BkXLI:Chap2:Sec1 Chateaubriand there in 1833.
Lamballe, Brittany
A commercial town in Brittany, it lies between Dinan and Saint-Brieuc.
BkI:Chap3:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lamballe, Marie Thérèse Louise de Savoie-Carignan, Princesse de
1749-92. Devoted friend and favourite of Queen Marie Antoinette of France. Extremely unpopular, she was killed by a mob during the French Revolution in the September massacres (1792), and her head was displayed on a pike under the queen's windows.
BkXIV:Chap8:Sec1 Imprisoned in La Force.
Lambesc, Charles-Eugène-Henri de Lorraine, Duc de Brionne, Prince de
1751-1825. Colonel of the Royal-Allemand Regiment. He fought in the army of the Bourbons, and later in the service of Austria.
BkV:Chap8:Sec2 His action at the Tuileries on the 12th July 1789.
Lambruschini, Luigi, Monsignor
1766-1854. Archbishop of Genoa 1819, then Papal Nuncio to Paris from 1827-1831. The July Monarchy asked for his recall because of his relationship with the Ultras. He was made a Cardinal in 1831 and Secretary of State in 1836.
BkXXX:Chap4:Sec1 BkXXX:Chap6:Sec1 He was involved in intrigue in 1829.
Lamennais, Abbé Félicité Robert de
1782-1854. In 1816, his Essay on indifference in matters of religion achieved a remarkable success. An ultramontane and one who denounced the secular despotism of Napoleon, he dared to criticise the Charter and to advocate the restoration of absolutism to bring about the reign of God and the freedom of the peoples on earth. A virulent polemicist, he lost no opportunity to stigmatise with bitter zeal the concessions made by the royal government and the cowardice of those clergy and bishops who were Cartesians, Gallicans and supporters of the Concordat. Eventually condemned by the Pope, he renounced formal religious convictions, and effectively died an apostate.
BkI:Chap4:Sec5 A native of Saint-Malo.
BkXX:Chap12:Sec1 From a Hymn to Poland inserted in Mickiewicz’s Books of the Polish Nation.
BkXXV:Chap9:Sec1 He collaborated with Chateaubriand on the Conservateur, in 1818.
BkXLII:Chap15:Sec1 He was fined and imprisoned for a year in December 1840 for his pamphlet Le Pays et le Gouvernement. Chateaubriand quotes from his pamphlet published in Septembver 1841, and written in gaol.
Lameth, Alexandre Théodore Victor, Comte de
1760-1829. A French soldier and politician, he served in the American War of Independence under Rochambeau, and in 1789 was a deputy to the States-General. In the Constituent Assembly he formed with Barnave and Adrien Duport a ‘Triumvirate’, which controlled the advanced left of the Assembly. He presented a famous report on the organization of the army, but is better known for his speech on February 28, 1791, at the Jacobin Club, against Honoré Mirabeau, whose relations with the court were suspect, and who was a personal enemy. However, after the flight to Varennes, Lameth became reconciled with the court. He served in the army but was accused of treason in 1792, fled the country, and was imprisoned by the Austrians. After his release he went into business with his brother Charles at Hamburg and did not return to France until the Consulate. Under the Empire he was made prefect successively in several departments, and in 1810 was created a baron. In 1814 he attached himself to the Bourbons, and under the Restoration was appointed prefect of Somme, deputy for Seine-Inférieure and finally deputy for Seine-et-Oise, in which capacity he was a leader of the Liberal opposition. He was the author of an important History of the Constituent Assembly (1828-1829).
BkXXIII:Chap18:Sec2 Speaking in the Chamber of Peers in June 1815.
Lameth, Charles Malo François, de
1757-1832. A French politician and soldier, he was in the retinue of the Comte d'Artois (future King Charles X), and became an officer in a cuirassier regiment. He served in the American War of Independence, and was a deputy to the Estates-General of 1789. As the Assembly began to divide into factions, Lameth, a constitutional monarchist, was identified with the Feuillants. When the French Revolution became a Republic, he emigrated. He returned to France under the Consulate, and was appointed governor of Würzburg under the First Empire. In 1814, he rose to the rank of Lieutenant General. Like his brother Alexandre, after the Bourbon Restoration, Charles joined the Bourbon camp, succeeding Alexandre as deputy in 1829. In the final years of his life, he was nonetheless a noted supporter of the July Monarchy.
BkXXVI:Chap5:Sec1 Bonnay satirised him in a poem: ‘La Prise des Annociades’ regarding surveillance of the convent of the ‘Annonciades’ at Pontoise.
Lamoignon, Les
BkIV:Chap13:Sec1 Examples of parliamentary magistrates.
Lamoignon, Auguste, Marquis de
1765-1845. A Councillor in the Parlement, he crossed to England during the Revolution. Mrs Lindsay was his mistress throughout the emigration. Returning to France he lived a quiet life in the Gironde.
BkXI:Chap2:Sec1 BkXII:Chap6:Sec1 Mentioned.
BkXIII:Chap3:Sec1 Joined Mrs Lindsay on her return to Paris in May 1800.
Lamoignon, Christian de
1567-1636. A pupil of Cujas. Member of the Parlement of Paris.
BkII:Chap3:Sec2 Mentioned. Father of Guillaume.
Lamoignon, Christian, Vicomte de
1770-1827. The brother of Auguste, he served in the émigré army, and was wounded at Quiberon Bay. Having emigrated to England, he returned to France under the Consulate, and became the brother-in-law of Mathieu Molé. A Peer of France from 1815, he retired to his chateau at Méry-sur-Oise, before dying in Paris in 1827.
BkXI:Chap2:Sec1 A friend of Chateaubriand in London in 1798.
BkXII:Chap5:Sec1 With Chateaubriand at Richmond in the summer of 1799.
BkXII:Chap6:Sec1 Mentioned.
BkXIII:Chap7:Sec1 A returning émigré in Paris in 1801.
BkXXII:Chap12:Sec1 He helped to settle the articles of surrender in Paris in 1814.
BkXXIX:Chap1:Sec1 Chateaubriand says that Christian introduced him to Madame Récamier, Chateaubriand having first seen her at Madame de Staël’s. This was presumably in 1805, since he did not meet her again for twelve years.
Lamoignon, Guillaume de, Marquis de Basville
1617-1677. Became in 1644 master of requests in the Parlement, took an active part in the Fronde of the Parlement against Mazarin. He became first president of the Parlement in 1658. Made Marquis de Basville in 1670. The great work which he did towards preparing the codification of French laws has made him famous. A distinguished member of the Society of the Holy Sacrament, he was greatly devoted to the Catholic cause.
BkII:Chap3:Sec2 Mention of his father, Christian.
BkXI:Chap2:Sec1 Mention of his estate at Basville in Languedoc. His circle (entertained at the Hotel Lamoignon in Paris, where Malesherbes a member of the family was born) included Boileau, Madame de Sévigny, and Bourdalue.
Lamothe, Gourlet de, General
1772-1836. The brother-in-law of Laborie. He took part in the Malet conspiracy. He was re-appointed as a Lieutenant-General at the First Restoration.
BkXXIII:Chap20:Sec1 In Roye in 1815.
Lamotte, Mademoiselle
A friend of Lucile.
BkXV:Chap2:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lamour de Langégu, Pétronille, see Chateaubriand
Lampedusa, Island
The largest of the Pelagie Islands in the Mediterranean, 205 km from Sicily and 113 km from Tunisia. Politically and administratively Lampedusa is part of Italy, but geologically it belongs to Africa since the sea between the two is no deeper than 120 meters.
BkXVIII:Chap2:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lance, Monsieur de
Colonel of the Regiment de La Fère at Auxonne in 1785.
BkXIX:Chap5:Sec2 Colonel of Bonaparte’s regiment.
Lancellotti, Ottavio, 1st Prince of
1789-1852. Owner of the Palazzo Lancellotti, now no 18 Via Lancelotti, in Rome. He was created Prince in 1825.
BkXXIX:Chap6:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lancellotti, Giuseppina Massimo, Princess
1799-1862. She was the daughter of Prince Camillo VII Massimo of Arsoli.
BkXIV:Chap8:Sec1 BkXXIX:Chap6:Sec1 Mentioned.
Landau (Landau in der Pfalz), Germany
An autonomous city in the Rhineland Palatinate, Landau was occupied by the French from 1680 to 1815, when it was one of the Décapole, the ten free cities of Alsace, and received its modern fortifications from Louis XIV’s military architect Vauban, making the little city (population in 1789 was still only approximately 5,000) one of Europe’s strongest citadels. After the Hundred Days Landau was granted to Bavaria in 1816 and became the capital of one of the thirteen Bezirksämter (counties) of the Bavarian Rheinpfalz.
BkXXIII:Chap11:Sec3 BkXXIX:Chap13:Sec2 Traded at the Congress of Vienna. Note Maximilian I divided Germany into ten ‘circles’ (Austria, Burgundy, the Lower Rhine, Bavaria, Upper Saxony, Franconia, Swabia, the Upper Rhine, Westphalia, and Lower Saxony)
Lander, Richard Lemon
1804-1834. An English explorer of West Africa, the son of a Truro innkeeper, he investigated the Niger Delta and the Niger River in 1830-1831, and died there in 1834.
BkXLI:Chap1:Sec1 Mentioned.
Landsturm
The Landsturm was the Prussian and Austrian equivalent of the Levée en masse, or general levy of all men capable of bearing arms and not included in the other regularly organized forces, standing army or second line formations, of Continental nations. It was introduced in Prussia in 1813.
BkXXII:Chap4:Sec1 The levy of 1813.
Langres, Pierre de
Possibly the seventeenth century inquisitor (fl. 1612).
BkI:Chap5:Sec3 His religious fervour.
Lanjamet, Chevalier de, of the Order of Malta
BkI:Chap1:Sec5. Mentioned as assisting in the granting of Chateaubriand’s application to enrol in the order of Malta.
Lanjuinais, Jean Denis, Comte
1753-1827. A French Politician and lawyer, he developed moderate, even reactionary views, becoming one of the fiercest opponents of the Mountain, though he never wavered in his support of republican principles. He refused to vote for the death of Louis XVI, alleging that the nation had no right to despatch a vanquished prisoner. He was President of the upper house during the Hundred Days. Together with G. J. B. Target, J. E. M. Portalis and others he founded under the empire an academy of legislation in Paris, himself lecturing on Roman law. Closely associated with oriental scholars, and a keen student of oriental religions, he entered the Academy of Inscriptions in 1808. After the Bourbon restoration, Lanjuinais consistently defended the principles of constitutional monarchy, but most of his time was given to religious and political subjects. Besides many contributions to periodical literature he wrote, among other works, Constitutions de la nation francaise (1819); Appreciation du projet de loi relatif aux trois concordats (1806, 6th ed. 1827), in defence of Gallicanism; and Etudes biographiques et littraires sur Antoine Arnauld, P. Nicole et Jacques Necker (1823).
BkXXII:Chap15:Sec2 BkXXII:Chap15:Sec3 Used the common linguistic style of the age, as a defender of freedom.
BkXXIII:Chap18:Sec1 President of the Chamber of Representatives in 1815.
Lannes, Jean, Duc de Montebello, Marshal of France
1769-1809. A Marshal of France, he fought under Napoleon in the Italian and Egyptian campaigns, supported his coup of 18th Brumaire, and distinguished himself at Montebello, Austerlitz, Jena, Friedland, and Zaragoza. Napoleon considered Lannes one of his ablest generals and named him duke of Montebello. Lannes was killed at the battle of Essling.
BkXIX:Chap14:Sec1 Went with Napoleon on the Egyptian Campaign.
BkXIX:Chap16:Sec2 Wounded in the head at Acre in 1799.
BkXIX:Chap18:Sec1 Supported Murat at Aboukir in July 1799.
BkXIX:Chap18:Sec2 Returned to France with Napoleon in 1799.
BkXX:Chap2:Sec1 Lannes beat the Austrians at Montebello in the province of Pavia on 9th June 1800. He was then in action at Marengo on the 14th June.
BkXX:Chap10:Sec1 Died after losing a leg to a cannonball at Aspern-Essling.
Lannes, Napoléon-Auguste, Comte then Duc de Montebello
1801-1874. The son of Marshal Lannes, he was made a Peer in 1827, and arrived in Rome in November 1828 with Madame Salvage. He pursued a diplomatic career.
BkXXIX:Chap17:Sec1 BkXXX:Chap3:Sec1 BkXXX:Chap5:Sec1 Attaché to the Rome Embassy in 1829.
Lansdowne, Henry Charles Keith Petty Fitz-Maurice, 5th Marquis
1780-1863. A British politician and Irish peer who served successively as Governor General of Canada, Viceroy of India, Secretary of State for War, and Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. He had the distinction of holding senior positions in both Liberal and Conservative governments.
BkXXVII:Chap5:Sec1 Chateaubriand goes to an evening at his house in 1822.
Lante, Duchess
She was a member of the Roman nobility in 1828.
BkXXIX:Chap8:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lantier, Étienne François de
1734-1826. Author of Voyages d’Antenor en Grèce et en Asie, avec des Notions sur l'Égypte, Manuscrit Grec trouvé à Herculanum (1798). Lantier’s work of fiction was a tremendous popular success, and of considerable influence. Basically it is an imitation of Barthelemy’s Anacharsis but lacks his detailed knowledge. For this reason Lantier’s work was referred to as ‘Anacharsis des Boudoirs’.
BkXIX:Chap15:Sec1 Mentioned.
Laocoon
He was a Trojan priest who tried to warn the Trojans of the Greek threat. See Virgil’s Aeneid II.
BkXXIX:Chap7:Sec1 The sculpture of Laocoon and his sons, found in 1506 in Rome, and now in the Vatican is Hellenistic early 1st century.
Laon, France
A city and commune of France, capital of the Aisne département, the town was of strategic importance in Roman times. During the Hundred Years’ War it was attacked and taken by the Burgundians, who gave it up to the English, to be retaken by the French after the consecration of Charles VII. Under the League, Laon took the part of the Leaguers, and was taken by Henri IV. During the campaign of 1814 Napoleon tried in vain to dislodge Blücher from it in the Battle of Laon.
BkXXIII:Chap14:Sec1 Napoleon’s army assembled there during the Hundred Days.
Lapanouze (La Panouse), César, Comte de
1764-1836. A Paris banker he was Deputy of the Seine 1822-1827. Named a Peer in 1827, he retired to his estate (Thoiry) in the Dordogne after the July Revolution.
BkXXXIV:Chap7:Sec1 The villa was the villa Bartholoni, demolished in 1920 to make way for the Palais des Nations.
Laplace, Pierre-Simon, Marquis de
1749-1827. The French astronomer and mathematician, went to Paris at 18, and proved his gift for mathematical analysis to Jean le Rond d’Alembert. He was made professor of mathematics in the École militaire de Paris. He had a seat in the senate (1799) and became its vice president and (1803) chancellor. He was elected to the French Academy in 1816. He investigated the variations of the moon's motions, especially as affected by the eccentricity of the earth's orbit; the inequalities in the motions of Jupiter and Saturn; the motion of the satellites of Jupiter; the aberration in the movements of comets; and the theory of the tides. With J. L. Lagrange he established Newton’s theory of gravitation. The results of his researches were published in his famous Mécanique céleste (1799–1825). In the more popular work, Exposition du système du monde (1796), a summary of the history of astronomy is included. This work contains also a statement of the nebular hypothesis of the origin of the solar system. His Théorie des attractions des sphéroides et de la figure des planètes (1785) introduced ‘Laplace's coefficients’ and the potential function, two means of applying analysis to physical problems. The Théorie analytique des probabilités (1812), a mathematical classic, was followed by Essai philosophique sur les probabilités (1814).
BkXIII:Chap11:Sec2 Became a supporter of Napoleon.
Laporte
Minister under Louis XVI.
BkV:Chap8:Sec1 Replaced La Luzerne as Minister of Marine in 1789.
Laporte, Marie-François-Sébastien-Christophe Delaporte, called
1760-1823. Member of the Convention. Under the Consulate retired to practise law at Lure.
BkXIX:Chap9:Sec2 After 9th Thermidor (27th July 1794) he sat in the Thermidorean Convention. Active at Lyons.
Lapoype (or La Poype), Jean-François Cornu, Marquis and General
1758-1851. A Revolutionary, and Imperial general, his wife was Fréron’s sister. He fought at Marengo.
BkXIX:Chap9:Sec1 Involved in the siege of Toulon in 1793.
Larcanowitz, Prince Michael
Russian noble in 1812.
BkXXI:Chap4:Sec3 Mentioned.
Lares
Beneficent Roman spirits, they watched over the household, fields, public areas etc. Each house had a Lararium where the image of the Lar was kept. The Lares are usually coupled with the Penates the gods of the larder. They represented the family and moved where the family hearth moved.
BkXII:Chap6:Sec1 BkXXII:Chap11:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lariboisière, Jean Ambroise Baston, Comte de
1759-1812. A Napoleonic General, he was killed at Konisberg.
BkXXI:Chap2:Sec1 Mentioned.
Larive, (Jean Mauduit)
1747-1827. An actor, he commenced his career in 1770, famously playing Orestes in Iphigénie in 1775. He was arrested and released in 1793, and then toured the provinces, returning to Paris but retiring in 1800 due to Talma’s dominance of the theatre. In 1804 he opened a school for speech-training. In 1806 he was employed by Joseph, King of Naples, returning to France in 1808. He retired to Montlignon (Val d'Oise) where he became mayor, dying there in 1827.
BkIV:Chap11:Sec1 Acted at the Théâtre-Français.
Larivière, Pierre-François Henri
1761-1838. A royalist agent in London, a collaborator of Peltier’s. He had been banished after Fructidor.
BkXVIII:Chap7:Sec1 Mentioned.
BkXVIII:Chap7:Sec2 Armand was transmitting letters to him.
Larrey, Dominique-Jean, Baron
1766-1842. Chief Surgeon of the Grand Army, he is regarded by many as the most outstanding surgeon of the Napoleonic era and one of the founders of military surgery. When war broke out in 1792 he became assistant surgeon to the French army on the Rhine. He was the first to take first aid treatment to casualties on the battlefield with the introduction of ambulances and introduced the concept of triage in the evacuation of his patients. He saw service in Corsica and Spain before becoming professor of surgery at the medical school at Val-de-Grace. Larrey accompanied Napoleon on his expeditions to Egypt, Palestine and Syria and in 1805 was appointed Surgeon-in-Chief to the French army. He followed Napoleon to Germany, Poland and Moscow, and in 1810 he was made a Baron. At Waterloo he was shot and left for dead. He was eventually captured by the Prussians and sentenced to death. Having been recognised by the Prussian Field Marshall, Blucher, he was freed and given safe passage to Belgium having earlier saved the life of Blucher’s son.
BkXIX:Chap16:Sec1 A witness to the atrocity at Jaffa, related in his account of the Expedition to the East (1803).
Larrey, Félix-Hippolyte, Baron
1808-1895. The son of Dominique-Jean, he was a surgeon at the Gros-Caillou hospital in Paris in 1830.
BkXXXII:Chap3:Sec1 Chateaubriand confuses him with his father.
Las Cases, Emmanuel Augustin-Dieudonné-Joseph, Comte de
1766-1842. The French historian who accompanied Napoleon into exile on St. Helena where the emperor dictated to him a part of his Memoirs. His famous Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène (tr. 1823) is a primary source, although not always an accurate one, for Napoleon’s last years and his judgment of himself. The Mémorial became something of a bible to Napoleon-worshippers.
BkXVI:Chap8:Sec1 Chateaubriand cites Chapter 11 of the Memorial (20th November 1816).
BkXIX:Chap1:Sec1 Chateaubriand refers again to the Memorial where Las Cases derides the foolish legends of Napoleon’s birth.
BkXIX:Chap3:Sec1 BkXXI:Chap5:Sec3 Las Cases quoted.
BkXIX:Chap16:Sec3 BkXXIV:Chap5:Sec1 Las Cases referred to.
BkXX:Chap13:Sec1 Memorial, 5th March 1816.
BkXXIV:Chap4:Sec1 BkXXIV:Chap10:Sec1 Accompanied Napoleon to St Helena in 1815.
BkXXIV:Chap11:Sec1 Compelled to leave St Helena in December 1816, after corresponding with Lucien, he stayed in forced residence at the Cape until 10th August 1817.
Las Cases, Emmanuel
1800. Son of Emmanuel.
BkXXIV:Chap10:Sec1 Accompanied his father to St Helena.
Lasalle, Joseph-Henri
1759-1833. Former professor of statistics at the Collège de France, he was a member of the Paris police bureau from November 1798 to June 1799. He was on the commission in charge of émigrés after the 18th Brumaire (9th November 1799) when Bonaparte came to power. He was a collaborator on the Journal des Débats.
BkXIII:Chap3:Sec1 Chateaubriand met him at Mrs Lindsay’s house in May 1800.
Lasaudre for Le Fer de la Saudre, Pierre et François de
Wealthy merchants of Saint-Malo in the eighteenth century.
BkV:Chap5:Sec1 Mentioned. Their luxurious château, Bonaban (at La Gouesnière), the building of which started in 1776.
Lassagne
An assumed identity of Chateaubriand’s, that of a Swiss clockmaker from Neuchâtel.
BkXII:Chap6:Sec1 BkXXVII:Chap11:Sec1 Chateaubriand’s pseudonym on his false passport in 1800. The principality of Neuchâtel was under Prussian jurisdiction. The passport was delivered on the 21st April by the Baron de Kloest, and gave Chateaubriand’s height as 1.62 metres.
BkXIII:Chap3:Sec2 Chateaubriand obtained a document to support his false identity at the Prussian embassy in Paris, and obtained his permit to stay on Tuesday the 13th May 1800.
BkXIII:Chap7:Sec1 Chateaubriand was removed from the list of émigrés who had fought against the Republic in July 1801. He was helped by Madame de Staël and Madame Bacciochi, as well as by Fouché’s attitude.
BkXIII:Chap8:Sec1 Chateaubriand’s sister first sought him out under that name.
Latapie, Colonel
An adventurer, he contemplated abducting Napoleon from St Helena in 1817.
BkXXIV:Chap11:Sec1 Mentioned.
Latil, Jean-Baptiste-Marie, Cardinal, Comte then Duc de
1761-1839. Archbishop of Rheims from 1824, he was a Cardinal from 1826, and a moderate. He was chaplain to Charles X from 1804, and joined him in exile in England.
BkXXX:Chap3:Sec1 BkXXX:Chap4:Sec1 BkXXX:Chap6:Sec1
BkXXX:Chap11:Sec1 Mentioned.
BkXXX:Chap4:Sec1 He arrives at the Conclave of 1829.
BkXXXVI:Chap10:Sec1 Mentioned.
BkXXXVII:Chap2:Sec1 A member of the Prague ‘triumvirate’.
BkXXXVII:Chap5:Sec1 At dinner in the Hradschin Palace.
BkXXXVIII:Chap4:Sec1 Unpopular with Henri.
BkXLI:Chap5:Sec1 Mentioned.
Latinus, King
The King of Latium is a character in Virgil’s Aeneid.
BkXXXIX:Chap3:Sec1 Mentioned.
Latouche, Hyacinthe-Joseph Alexandre Thabaud de, known as Henri de
1785-1851. The French poet and novelist is known for his publication of Andre Chénier (in 1819) and early encouragement of George Sand. (His family name is also spelt ‘de la Touche’ and ‘Delatouche’.) The Constitutionnel was suppressed in 1817 by the government for an obscure political allusion in an article by Latouche. He then undertook the management of the Mercure du XIXe siècle, and began a bitter warfare against the monarchy. After 1830 he edited Le Figaro, and spared neither the liberal politicians nor the romanticists who triumphed under the monarchy of July. The last twenty years of his life were spent in retirement at Aulnay.
BkXXII:Chap15:Sec2 The reference is to his Republican liberalism and probably to his novel Fragoletta (1829).
Lauderdale, James Maitland, 8th Earl
1759-1839. Member of Parliament (1780) rose to the House of Lords after acceding to the Earldom of Lauderdale on the death of his father. He was renowned for his hostility and temper and adopted a radical stance, for example supporting the French Revolution and indeed trying to negotiate a peace treaty with France in the early years of the 19th C. He was created Baron Lauderdale of Thirlestane in 1806. He was also a noted economist, writing an Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Public Wealth (1804).
BkXII:Chap5:Sec3 Chateaubriand heard him speak.
BkXX:Chap5:Sec3 Negotiator in Paris in 1806.
Launay, Bernard-René Jordan, Marquis de
1740-1789. Governor, and son of a Governor, of the Bastille.
BkV:Chap8:Sec2 His death after the storming of the Bastille.
Launay de la Bliardière, David-Joseph-Marie
b.1766. Son of Gilles.
Launay de la Bliardière, Gilles-Marie de
Tobacco-bonder at Combourg.
Laura de Noves
1310-1348. The wife of Hugues II de Sade, and the possible identity of the lady celebrated in Petrarch’s sonnets. He first saw her in the Church of Sainte-Claire in Avignon (April 6th 1327).
BkXIV:Chap2:Sec2 Her reputed tomb (1348) in the Church of the Cordeliers (mostly destroyed 1806) in Avignon, supposedly opened by Maurice Scève in 1533.
Laurent Giustiniani (San Lorenzo Giustiniani) Saint
1381-1456. He was the first patriarch of Venice.
BkXXXIX:Chap18:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lauriston, Marquis de, Marshal of France
1768-1828. French soldier and diplomatist, he became brigadier of artillery in 1795. Resigning in 1796 he was brought back into the service in 1800 as aide-de-camp to Napoleon with whom as a cadet Lauriston had been on friendly terms. In 1805, having risen to the rank of general of division, he took part in the war against Austria. He occupied Venice and Ragusa in 1806, was made governor-general of Venice in 1807, took part in the Erfurt negotiations of 1808, was made a count, served with the emperor in Spain in 1808-1809 and held commands under the viceroy Eugene Beauharnais in the Italian campaign and the advance to Vienna in the same year. At the battle of Wagram he commanded the guard artillery in the famous ‘artillery preparation’ which decided the battle. In 1811 he was made ambassador to Russia; in 1812 he held a command in the Grande Army and won distinction by his firmness in covering the retreat from Moscow. He commanded the V army corps at Liitzen and Bautzen and the V and XI in the autumn campaign, falling into the hands of the enemy in the disastrous retreat from Leipzig. He was held a prisoner of war until the fall of the empire, and then joined Louis XVIII, to whom he remained faithful in the Hundred Days. His reward was a seat in the house of peers and a command in the royal guard. In 1817 he was created marquis and in 1823 marshal of France. During the Spanish War he commanded the corps which besieged and took Pamplona.
BkXX:Chap13:Sec1 Sent as Ambassador to St Petersburg in 1811.
BkXXI:Chap4:Sec3 Sent to Kutuzov in 1812.
Lausanne
A city in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, situated on the shores of Lake Geneva (French: Lac Léman), and facing Évian-les-Bains (France) and with the Jura hills to its north, it is located some 37 miles northeast of Geneva.
BkXXVIII:Chap10:Sec1 The Chateaubriands there May to July 1826.
BkXXIX:Chap2:Sec1 The Chateaubriands were there 20th-24th September 1828.
BkXXXIV:Chap7:Sec1 BkXXXV:Chap24:Sec1 Mentioned.
BkXXXIX:Chap3:Sec1 Chateaubriand there in September 1833.
Lautrec, Odet de Foix, Vicomte de, Marshal of France
1485-1528. Hero of the wars of Louis XII, then Francis I, in Italy, his brother Thomas appears in Chateaubriand’s tale of Le Dernier Abencérage; his sister Françoise de Foix, was the Countess of Chateaubriand loved by Francis I.
BkXIV:Chap7:Sec1 Mentioned as a flower of chivalry.
BkXIX:Chap13:Sec1 BkXXIX:Chap2:Sec2 His victory at Ravenna in 1512.
Lautrec de Saint-Simon
A noble, the friend of Mirabeau the Younger.
BkV:Chap13:Sec1 At the National Assembly.
Lauzun, Armand-Louis de Gontaut-Biron, Duc de, then Duc de Biron
1747-1793. He took part in the American Revolution, with his Hussars de Lauzun, under Rochambeau. He led at Yorktown in 1781. Appointed to the States-general he embraced the Revolution. A Lieutenant-general in 1792, he ordered the armies of Ouest against those of the Vendée in 1793. Accused of treason, he was guillotined on December 31st 1793.
BkII:Chap3:Sec2 Seen by Chateaubriand at the camp at Saint-Malo.
BkV:Chap14:Sec1 His power waning.
BkV:Chap15:Sec3 BkXII:Chap5:Sec2 Mentioned.
BkXXXVI:Chap1:Sec1 His mansion in Montrouge.
Laval, Agnès de
She was the second wife of Geoffroy IV de Chateaubriand.
BkI:Chap1:Sec6 Chateaubriand claims her as the grand-daughter of the Count of Anjou and Mathilde, daughter of Henry I.
Laval, Duc de, see Montmorency, Anne-Pierre-Adrien de
Lavalette, Madame
The wife of Hyacinthe.
BkXXII:Chap1:Sec1 Chateaubriand staying with her in October 1812.
Lavalette, Hôtel de, Paris
The house at 2 Quai des Celestins, built in 1671.
BkXVIII:Chap5:Sec1 Owned by Hyacinthe de Lavalette.
BkXXII:Chap1:Sec1 Chateaubriand there in October 1812.
Lavalette, Hyacinthe de
Ex cup-bearer in the Royal Palace.
BkXVIII:Chap5:Sec1 Owner of the Hôtel where Chateaubriand lived during his visits to Paris prior to the Restoration.
BkXXII:Chap1:Sec1 Chateaubriand staying with him in October 1812.
Lavalette, Antoine-Marie Chamans, Comte de
1769-1830. Aide-de-Camp to Bonaparte, he married Emilie de Beauharnais (1781-1855) niece of Josephine in 1798. He was a Councillor of State, and Minister of Posts under Napoleon. Condemned to death after the Hundred Days, he made a daring escape from the Conciergerie, by exchanging clothes with his wife, eventually reaching Bavaria.
BkXIX:Chap16:Sec3 His escape was aided by Sir Robert Wilson.
BkXXII:Chap 26:Sec1 Part of the intrigue of the escape from Elba.
BkXXIII:Chap18:Sec2 With Napoleon after the Hundred Days.
Lavandier, Maitre Noël Le
The local chemist at Combourg, he was apothecary-surgeon there from 1751.
BkII:Chap4:Sec3 Mentioned.
Lavarde
La Pointe de La Varde, a headland near Saint-Malo. The fort there was rebuilt in 1748.
BkIII:Chap14:Sec2 A childhood haunt of Chateaubriand.
Lavater, Johann Kaspar
1741-1801. Poet and physiognomist, he was born in Zurich. His patriotic conduct during the French occupation of Switzerland brought about his tragic death. On the taking of Zürich by the French in 1799, Lavater was shot by an infuriated grenadier; he died over a year later, after long sufferings borne with great fortitude.
BkXXXV:Chap18:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lavergne, Léonce Gilhaud de
1809-1880. Economist, Senator, and Member of the Academy of Sciences, he assisted at Madame de Recamier’s in a reading of sections of Chateaubriand’s Memoirs in 1834.
BkXIV:Chap2:Sec5 Mentioned.
Lavigne, Alexis-Jacques-Buisson de
Father-in-law of Chateaubriand. Director of the Compagnie des Indes at Lorient.
BkIX:Chap1:Sec2 Mentioned.
Lavigne, Céleste de, see Chateaubriand, Céleste Buisson de Lavigne, Vicomtesse de
Wife of Chateaubriand.
Lavigne, Céleste Rapion de la Placelière, Madame Buisson de
Wife of Alexis. Mother-in-law of Chateaubriand.
BkIX:Chap1:Sec2 Mentioned.
Lavigne, François-André Buisson de
Son of Jacques. Uncle by marriage of Chateaubriand.
BkIX:Chap1:Sec2 Mentioned.
Lavigne, Jacques-Pierre-Guillaume Buisson de
1713-1793. Ship’s captain for the Compagnie des Indes. Decorated for actions against the English in the Seven Years’ War, then named Commander of the port of Lorient for the King, and ennobled by Louis XVI. He retired to Saint-Malo, his birthplace, where he lived with his grand-daughter Céleste in a house facing the port of Dinan, now 10 Rue d’Orléans, which Madame de Chateaubriand sold in 1804.
BkIX:Chap1:Sec2 Chateaubriand’s wife’s grandfather.
Lavillatte, Joseph Bouyonnet de
1780-1858. A Royalist he was imprisoned at Vincennes until 1810 following the Pichegru conspiracy. He was a grenadier officer in the Royal Guard after the Restoration and later became the Duc de Bordeaux’s First Valet of the Chamber. He retired to his native Auvergne at the end of 1833.
BkXXXVII:Chap2:Sec1 In Prague in May 1833.
BkXXXVII:Chap6:Sec1 Described.
BkXLI:Chap5:Sec1 Waiting to leave Prague.
Laville de Villastellone, Comte Gaëtan Joseph Prosper César de
1775-1848. He was from Piedmont, an Italian (naturalised Frenchman) Napoleonic General, aide-de-camp to Bessieres at Aspern-Essling who also fought at Wagram. He was later Secretary General to the Minister of War during the Hundred Days.
BkXX:Chap10:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lavinia
The daughter of King Latinus is a character in Virgil’s Aeneid.
BkXXXIX:Chap3:Sec1 Mentioned.
Law, John
1671-1729. The Scottish economist believed money was only a means of exchange that did not constitute wealth in itself, and that national wealth depended on trade. He is said to have been responsible for the wide-spread adoption of paper money or bills. He became Controller General of Finances in France and set up the Royal Bank. In August 1717, he bought the Mississippi Company, to help the French colony in Louisiana. Law’s pioneering note-issuing bank was at first extremely successful but later collapsed causing an economic crisis in France and across Europe. The speculation ‘bubble’ based on over-valued Lousiana land burst in 1720 when opponents of the financier attempted en masse to convert their notes into coin. By the end of 1720 Philippe II dismissed Law, who then fled from France.
BkXXXIX:Chap16:Sec1 Law subsequently moved between London and Venice where he contracted pneumonia and died a poor man in 1729.
BkXLII:Chap10:Sec1 A protégé of the Duc d’Orléans.
Laya, Jean-Louis
1761-1833. Academician and former playwright, known for his Amis des lois (1793) who taught literature.
BkXVIII:Chap7:Sec2 Armand was transmitting royalist letters to him.
Laibach (Lyublyana)
The Congress of Laibach was a conference of the allied sovereigns or their representatives, held as part of the so-called Concert of Europe, which was the decided attempt of the Great Powers to settle international problems through discussion and collective weight rather than on the battlefield. The Congress was held in Ljubljana (Laibach is the German name of the city), in what is now Slovenia but was then a part of Austrian Empire, from January 26 until May 12, 1821.
BkXXVII:Chap8:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lazarus
The brother of Mary of Bethany, who was raised from the dead, see John XI.
BkXV:Chap6:Sec1 Mentioned. Chateaubriand quotes John XI:44
Lazarini, Alessandro
Not identified. (Gregorio Lazzarini 1655-1730 was a noted Venetian Painter).
BkXXXIX:Chap18:Sec1 Mentioned.
Le Borgne, Guy
He was a seventeenth century genealogist.
BkI:Chap1:Sec3 A source of information regarding Chateaubriand’s family.
Le Chapelier, se Chapelier
Le Corvaisier, Julien
Tax-collector at Combourg.
BkII:Chap2:Sec2 Mentioned.
Le Douarin de Trevelac
A gentleman of the neighbourhood of Combourg.
BkIV:Chap5:Sec1 Signatory to Chateaubriand’s father’s death certificate.
Le Gobien, Charles, Le Père
1671-1708. French Jesuit and founder (in 1702) of the famous collection of ‘Lettres édifiantes et curieuses écrites des missions étrangéres par quelques missionnaires de la Compagnie de Jésus’ one of the most important sources of information for the history of the Catholic missions. The first eight series were by Pére le Gobien, the latter ones by Fathers Du Halde, Patouillet, Geoffroy, and Maréchal. The collection was printed in thirty-six volumes (Paris, 1703-76).
BkVII:Chap10:Sec1 His description of the Canadian Indians.
Le Gobbien
A school friend of Chateaubriand’s at Dol College.
BkII:Chap4:Sec1 Mentioned.
Le Havre
The port in northern France in the Seine-Maritime department, is on the English Channel, at the mouth of the Seine.
BkIV:Chap10:Sec1 The first battalion of Chateaubriand’s regiment was stationed there.
BkVIII:Chap7:Sec1 Chateaubriand set out for Le Havre when returning from America, on 10th December 1791. He landed on the 2nd January 1792.
BkIX:Chap1:Sec1 Chateaubriand’s mother cleared his debts allowing him to leave Le Havre.
BkXIII:Chap1:Sec1 Madame de Longueville took ship from there in 1650.
BkXXIII:Chap3:Sec1 Suggested as a refuge for Louis XVIII in 1815, and by Chateaubriand for the later Charles X.
BkXXIV:Chap16:Sec1 Napoleon’s remains landed there in 1840.
Le Lavandier, see Lavandier
Le Motha, for Lemotheux, Captain Armand
1795-1830. He was a Captain of Carabineers in July 1830 in Paris.
BkXXXII:Chap12:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lemoyne, Lemoine Saint-Paul
1789-1873. A French sculptor, he settled in Rome in 1825, and worked in the style of Canova. He carried out a number of neo-classical funerary works.
BkXXIX:Chap14:Sec1 His work on the Poussin monument in 1829.
Le Normant Fils
Le Normant, the younger, was Chateaubriand’s publisher in Paris. (He and his father at various times had premises at 17 and 42 Rue des Prêtres Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, and at 8 Rue de Seine near the Pont des Arts). La Maison Lenormant and then Lenormant Fils edited and published all Chateaubriand’s works from Les Martyrs in 1809 to the Mémoire sur la captivité de Mme la duchesse de Berry in 1832.
BkXXIII:Chap6:Sec1 He reprinted Chateaubriand’s report as a pamphlet: Rapport sur l’état de la France, in Paris in 1815.
BkXXV:Chap2:Sec1 He printed La Monarchie selon la Charte in 1816.
BkXXV:Chap9:Sec1 He printed the Conservateur from the 8th of October 1818 to the 30th of March 1820. It had a stable circulation of about six thousand copies.
BkXXXII:Chap9:Sec1 His premises mentioned at 8 Rue de la Seine, 30th July 1830. They lay on the route from the Palais Royal to the Luxembourg (via the Rue de Rivoli, the Rue de l’Amiral de Coligny, the Quai du Louvre, the Pont des Arts, the Quai Malaquais, the Rue de Seine, and the Rue de Tournon).
Le Plessis, see Chateaubriand
Le Plessis-l’Épine
A village in Brittany, it was part of the titled estates of Chateaubriand’s father.
BkIV:Chap5:Sec1 Mentioned.
Le Sage, Alain-René
1668-1747. A French novelist and dramatist, his masterpiece, Gil Blas de Santillane (1715–35), is a rambling story in the style of Spanish picaresque romances, though unlike them in conception. It was a major influence in the development of the realistic novel. Smollett drew heavily on it, especially in Roderick Random. Of Le Sage’s lesser novels, Le Diable boiteux (1707) is an adaptation of a Spanish novel, and Le Bachelier de Salamanque (1736, tr. 1737) is an imitation of Gil Blas. Le Sage made his living by writing light pieces for the theatres of Paris; his best dramatic work is Turcaret (1709), a comedy of character, which bitterly satirizes tax farmers and the world of finance in general.
BkX:Chap5:Sec1 BkX:Chap7:Sec1 Gil Blas mentioned.
Le Sillon
The ‘Furrow’, a causeway connecting Saint-Malo to the mainland, 650feet long and originally 46 feet wide, but now three times that width.
BkI:Chap3:Sec4 Mentioned.
Le Sueur
1617-1655. He was the son of Cathelin Le Sueur, a turner and sculptor in wood, who placed his son with Vouet, in whose studio he rapidly distinguished himself. Admitted at an early age into the guild of master-painters, he left them to take part in establishing the academy of painting and sculpture, and was one of the first twelve professors of that body.
BkXVII:Chap5:Sec1 His famous series of the ‘Life of St Bruno,’ was executed in the cloister of La Grande-Chartreux. These last have a more personal character than anything else which Le Sueur produced, and much of their original beauty survives in spite of injuries and restorations and removal from the wall to canvas.
Lear, King
A mythical British King (Leir). The protagonist in Shakespeare’s tragedy of that name.
BkXII:Chap5:Sec3 His madness.
Lebeschu, Mathilde
She was the Duchesse de Berry’s maidservant who had pretended to be the Duchess when the Carlo-Alberto, carrying the Duchess, was boarded and searched in April 1832 in the port of La Ciotat, near Marseille. Those captured on board were tried at Montbrison between February 25th and March 9th 1833. Various of those acquitted joined Marie de Berry at Ferrara.
BkXL:Chap4:Sec1 In Ferrara, in September 1833.
Lebon, Guislain-François-Joseph
1765-1795. A defrocked priest, and a member of the National Convention and the Committee of General Security, he is best remembered for his activities of 1793-1794, when he was representative on mission to the departments of the Pas-de-Calais and the Nord, where he organized the agencies of revolutionary government under the Law of 14 Frimaire (4 December 1793), and applied its principles with energy and zeal. During the Thermidorian Reaction, he was imprisoned for several months, tried for terrorism, and guillotined at Amiens on 16 October 1795.
BkXIX:Chap10:Sec1 Tried in 1795.
BkXXV:Chap2:Sec1 A revolutionary priest.
Lebrun, Marie-Louise-Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Madame
1755-1842. French portrait painter; pupil of her father, Louis Vigée, she was influenced by Greuze. Summoned to Versailles in 1779 to paint Marie Antoinette, she embarked upon a long and successful career. She became painter and friend to the queen; two of her best-known portraits are of Marie Antoinette—one holding a rose and the other with her two children (Versailles). At the outbreak of the Revolution, she escaped to Italy and in the following years visited Vienna, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Dresden, and London, finding acclaim and prominent sitters everywhere. Her representations show great elegance and facility of execution. Well known are her portraits of Mme de Staël, C. J. Vernet, and two of herself and her daughter (Louvre). She is also highly esteemed for her work in pastel.
BkXIII:Chap7:Sec1 Her portrait of Madame de Beaumont. This may be the portrait of 1788 (in private collection, Paris). There was an earlier portrait of 1776, when Lebrun also painted Pauline’s mother.
Lebrun, Ponce-Denis Écouchard
1729-1807. Called Lebrun-Pindare. French poet, noted for his odes and epigrams. Past sixty, he paid poetic court to Lucile, with Julie’s agreement in 1789/90.
BkIV:Chap12:Sec3 Supported by his friend Ginguené who later (1811) edited his complete works.
BkXIII:Chap10:Sec1 An epigram of his against Laharpe’s attempts to diminish Corneille’s fame.
BkXXII:Chap15:Sec2 Used the common linguistic style of the age.
BkXXIX:Chap10:Sec1 A quotation from his Ode ‘To Monsieur Buffon, on his detractors’, the third line altered by Chateaubriand.
Lech, River
From its source in the Alps to the point where it flows into the Danube, the River Lech flows through three states, Vorarlberg, Tyrol and Bavaria.
BkXX:Chap5:Sec1 Napoleon addressed the Army on the bridge over the Lech on the 12th October 1805.
Leczinska, Marie-Catherine-Sophie-Felicité, Queen of France
1703-1768. The Daughter of Stanislas Leczinski (King of Poland as Stanislas I, 1704), she was the wife of Louis XV.
BkXVII:Chap2:Sec1 Mentioned.
Leda
The daughter of Thestius and wife of the Spartan king Tyndareus, she had twin sons Castor and Polydeuces (Pollux), the Tyndaridae, following her rape by Zeus in the form of a swan.
BkXXXIX:Chap5:Sec1 A statue of the rape.
BkXXXIX:Chap15:Sec1 Chateaubriand attributes a Leda to Canova.
Ledoux
A French military man, he is mentioned in 1798.
BkXIX:Chap15:Sec1 Mentioned.
Ledru, Charles
A Republican lawyer.
BkXXXV:Chap7:Sec1 BkXXXV:Chap26:Sec1 Mentioned.
Leena (Leaena = ‘Lioness’)
6th century BC. The concubine of Aristogeiton who was a conspirator with his friend Harmodius against the tyrants Hippias and Hipparchus; despite torture, she did not betray her lover, and the Athenians erected a statue of a tongueless lion to commemorate her name and courageous silence.
BkXLII:Chap7:Sec1 See Athenaeus’ Deipnosophists XIII, where he makes her Harmodius’ mistress.
Lefebvre, see Dantzig, Duc de
Lefebvre-Desnouettes, Charles, Comte
1773-1822. A French cavalry general, at Marengo he won promotion, and at Austerlitz was made colonel, serving also in the Prussian campaigns of 1806-1807. In 1808 he was made general of brigade and created a count of the Empire. Sent with the army into Spain, towards the end of 1808, he was taken prisoner in the action at Benavente. For over two years he remained a prisoner in England, living on parole at Cheltenham. In 1811 he escaped, and in the invasion of Russia in 1812 was again at the head of his cavalry. In 1813 and 1814 his men distinguished themselves in most of the great battles, especially La Rothire and Montmirail. He joined Napoleon in the Hundred Days and was wounded at Waterloo. For his part in these events he was condemned to death, but he escaped to the United States, and spent the next few years farming in Louisiana. His frequent appeals to Louis XVIII eventually obtained his permission to return, but the Albion, the vessel on which he was returning to France, went down off the coast of Ireland with all on board on the 22nd of May 1822.
BkXXII:Chap 26:Sec1 Involved in the pro-Bonaparte conspiracy in 1815.
Lefranc
A Republican exiled to the Seychelles in 1801.
BkXXIV:Chap10:Sec1 He escaped and reached St Helena.
Legendre, Louis
1752-1797. A Paris butcher, known as Legendre de Paris, he was President of the National Convention (October 1794). Though uneducated, he was a great natural leader. Legendre played important parts in the taking of the Bastille, the massacre of the Champs-du-Mars and the August 10th overthrow of the monarchy. As a delegate to the National Assembly, he voted for the death of the King. He survived the Terror by turning against Danton but became an important reactionary after 9th Thermidor. He forced the closing of the Jacobin Clubs and prosecuted Carrier.
BkXIX:Chap10:Sec1 Mentioned.
Leghorn, Livorno
Leghorn (Italian Livorno), in Tuscany, is the capital of the smallest of the provinces of Italy. The city is situated on marshy ground, and is in consequence intersected by many canals hence it has been called ‘Little Venice’. A larger canal puts it in communication with Pisa. It has two ports, the old, or Medici, port, and the new port constructed in 1854.
BkXX:Chap2:Sec1 Desaix held there.
BkXXII:Chap 26:Sec1 Napoleon concluded a commercial treaty between Elba and Leghorn.
BkXXIX:Chap2:Sec2 Mentioned.
Leibnitz, Gottfried Wilhelm
1646-1716 The German philosopher and mathematician, he invented differential and integral calculus independently of Newton, and proposed an optimistic metaphysical theory that included the notion that we live in ‘the best of all possible worlds.’
BkXIX:Chap18:Sec1 Suggested an Egyptian colony to Louis XIV.
BkXXIX:Chap15:Sec1 His work for religious unification.
Leipzig
A city of east-central Germany south-southwest of Berlin, it was originally a Slavic settlement called Lipsk, and developed by the early Middle Ages into a major commercial and cultural centre. The battle of Leipzig, October 16–19, 1813, also called the Battle of the Nations, was a decisive victory of the Austrian, Russian, and Prussian forces over Napoleon I. On October 16 the Prussians under General Blücher defeated the French under Auguste de Marmont at Möckern, near Leipzig. A peace offer by the vastly outnumbered French army was rejected on the following day while the Allies closed in. On October 18th the French were driven to the gates of Leipzig, and most of their Saxon and Württemberg auxiliaries (but not the king of Saxony himself) passed over to the enemy camp. Leipzig was stormed on October 19, and Napoleon’s forces began their flight across Germany and beyond the Rhine. It is estimated that 120,000 men (on both sides) were killed or wounded in the battle.
BkXX:Chap6:Sec1 Taken by Davout in October 1806.
BkXXII:Chap6:Sec1 BkXXIV:Chap5:Sec1 BkXXXII:Chap3:Sec1
BkXXXII:Chap3:Sec1 The Battle of the Nations or the Battle of Leipzig of 16th-19th October 1813. the largest conflict in Europe before World War I, with over 500,000 troops involved. It was also the most decisive defeat suffered by Napoleon in the Napoleonic Wars.
Lelièvre
A royalist informant, he identified Armand de Chateaubriand in 1809.
BkXVIII:Chap7:Sec2 Mentioned.
Léman, Lake
The area around Lake Leman (Lake Geneva) dominated by the Alps to the north. The lake is on the Rhone, lying partly in Switzerland and partly in France. Geneva, Lausanne and Montreux are on the Swiss shore. Evian is on the south shore.
BkXVII:Chap3:Sec1 Barante its Prefect in 1805.
Lemercier, Louis-Jean Népomucène
1771-1840. A Poet and dramatist, he was a late proponent of classical tragedy over Romanticism, and the originator of French historical comedy. An accident caused him lifelong partial paralysis. He made a precocious literary debut, his first tragedy, Méléagre, being produced at the Comédie-Française before he was 16. His Tartuffe révolutionnaire (1795) created a succès de scandale and was quickly suppressed because of its bold political allusions. The orthodox tragedy Agamemnon (1794) was probably his most celebrated play. He had no sympathy with the Romantics, and in the Académie Française, to which he was elected in 1810, he consistently opposed them, refusing to vote for Victor Hugo’s election. He also wrote a number of philosophical epic poems. His reputation as a writer declined long before his death.
BkXIII:Chap11:Sec2 An exemplar of the new nineteenth century literary style.
BkXXII:Chap15:Sec2 BkXXII:Chap15:Sec3 Used the common linguistic style of the age, as a defender of freedom.
Lemière, for Lemierre, Antoine-Marin
1733-1793. A Poet and dramatist, Lemierre revived his earlier play Guillaume Tell in 1786 with enormous success. After the Revolution he professed great remorse for the production of a play inculcating revolutionary principles. He published La Peinture (1769), based on a Latin poem by the abbé de Marsy, and a poem in six cantos. Les Fastes, ou les usages de lannie (779), an unsatisfactory imitation of Ovid’s Fasti.
BkXI:Chap2:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lemière, for Lemierre, Auguste-Jacques
Nephew of Antoine. Translator of Gray.
BkXI:Chap2:Sec1 BkXIII:Chap3:Sec2 Mentioned.
Lemoine (Le Moine), Jean-Baptiste
1751-1829. He managed the Chateaubriand’s finances from 1814 and was a faithful table companion of the couple.
BkXXXVI:Chap1:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lemoine, Pierre, Le Père
1602-1671. A Jesuit poet of Langres (Haute-Marne), he was the author of an epic poem on Saint Louis and of the work ‘La dévotion aisée’.
BkXIX:Chap14:Sec3 Chateaubriand misquotes from his Saint Louis (1653).
Lemontey, Pierre-Édouard
1762-1826. He published a study of the Plague in Marseilles and Provence in the years 1720 and 1721, which was published in 1821. He was a friend of Madame Récamier in Lyons.
BkXXXIV:Chap14:Sec1 Chateaubriand quotes from his work.
Lenglet-Dufresnoy, Nicolas, Abbé
1674-1755. He was a French historian.
BkXL:Chap1:Sec1 His error in taking the name Cataio to be that of Cathay (China).
Lenoir-Laroche, Jean-Jacques, Comte
1749-1825. Born in Grenoble, lawyer, journalist (editor of Le Moniteur from 1795-98), he was Minister of Police in 1797. Senator of the Empire, he was a senior Freemason and Martinist. He became a Peer of France under the Restoration.
BkXIV:Chap1:Sec2 Saint-Martin died at his house La Colinière, at Aulnay.
Lenormant, Charles
1802-1859. A French archaeologist, he travelled in Egypt, and the Morea. In 1836 he was appinted Curator of printed books in the Royal Library, and in 1839 was elected member of the Academy. In 1840 he was made Curator of the Cabinet of Medals. After a further mission to Greece, he studied Christian civilisation and became a devout Catholic. In 1848 he was named Director of the commission of historical monuments, and in 1849 an almost unanimous vote of the members of the Academy appointed him to the chair of archaeology in the Collège de France. From that time he devoted himself entirely to the teaching of Egyptian archaeology.
BkXXXI:Chap6:Sec1 Mentioned indirectly.
BkXXXIV:Chap6:Sec1 He had sailed the Mediterranean a few years earlier.
BkXXXV:Chap7:Sec1 He visits Chateaubriand under house arrest in 1832.
Lenormant, Marie-Josephine (Amélie) Syvoct, Madame
1804-1894. The wife (1826) of Charles, and niece and ward of Madame Récamier from 1811, she inherited Madame Récamier’s papers and was the first edit of her Mémoires de ma vie.
BkXXIX:Chap16:Sec1 BkXXXI:Chap6:Sec1 Her husband had travelled with Champollion to Egypt (August 1828-January 1829) and returned to France in February 1829, but was preparing to leave for the Morea. She intended to join him, and Madame Récamier had considered going with her.
Lens, Belgium, Battle of
August 20th 1648. a French victory under Louis II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, the Great Condé, against the Spanish army under Archduke Leopold in the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). It was the last major battle of the war. Lens in Flanders was at that time a fortified city. The battle was won by superior French cavalry.
BkXVI:Chap9:Sec1 BkXVI:Chap11:Sec1 Mentioned.
Leo III, Pope and Saint
d.816. Pope 795-816. After his election he was opposed by a Roman faction and forced to flee to Charlemagne who supported his return to Rome. There in 1800 he crowned Charlemagne Emperor of the West.
BkIX:Chap8:Sec2 Consecrated the cathedral at Aix-la-Chapelle.
Leo IV, Saint and Pope
d.855. Pope from 847 to 855, he was unanimously chosen to succeed Sergius II. When he was elected, on April 10, 847, he was cardinal of Santi Quattro Coronati, and had been subdeacon of Gregory IV and archpriest under his predecessor. His pontificate was chiefly distinguished by his efforts to repair the damage done by the Saracens during the reign of his predecessor to various churches of the city, especially those of St Peter and St Paul.
BkXXX:Chap2:Sec1 Mentioned.
Leo X, Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici, Pope
1475-1521. The second son of Lorenzo de’ Medici, he was Pope from 1513. He is known primarily for his failure to stem the Protestant Reformation, which began during his reign. He was a patron of Michelangelo.
BkXXIX:Chap2:Sec2 Michelangelo’s request, of 1519, reads: ‘I Michelangelo, sculptor, address the same request to Your Holiness, offering to make a tomb for the divine poet worthy of him, in a location in the city which would do him honour.’ Giovanni was present at the Battle of Ravenna in 1512 where he was taken prisoner temporarily.
BkXXX:Chap12:Sec1 Raphael’s proposal to him for clearing the Roman Forum.
BkXXXV:Chap11:Sec1 Mentioned.
Leo XII, Annibale Francesco Clemente Melchiore Girolamo Nicola della Genga, Pope
1760-1829. Pope 1823-29. He was generally reactionary and repressive. His election had been opposed by France
BkXV:Chap5:Sec1 BkXXIX:Chap6:Sec1 Prayed at Madame de Beaumont’s tomb.
BkXV:Chap7:Sec2 Mentioned.
BkXX:Chap9:Sec3 Chateaubriand received by him.
BkXXIX:Chap2:Sec3 He was of a family from Genga in Ancona province. He was born in Genga, Ancona, or Spoleto. He was crowned Pope on the 5th October 1823.
BkXXIX:Chap4:Sec1 BkXXIX:Chap14:Sec1 BkXXIX:Chap15:Sec1
Chateaubriand has an audience with him in October 1828, and on the 2nd of January 1829. There had been a dispute over new laws limiting the rights of Bishops which Charles X and the Pope had amicably resolved, the French bishops then submitting to the new laws.
BkXXIX:Chap17:Sec1 BkXXX:Chap1:Sec1 He was taken ill on the 5th of February 1829, after a private audience with Bernetti and died on the 10th.
BkXXX:Chap1:Sec1 His election in 1823 had been a compromise.
BkXXXVI:Chap1:Sec1 Chateaubriand inherited his cat.
BkXXXVII:Chap5:Sec1 Mentioned.
BkXXXVII:Chap7:Sec1 The Pope’s 1833 Jubilee celebrated the eighteen hundredth anniversary of the death of Christ, and in Prgaue as in other cities a traverse of the churches or stations of the Cross was prescribed.
Leoben, Austria
A city in Styria, in central Austria, it is located on the Mur river.
BkXIX:Chap12:Sec2 BkXIX:Chap13:Sec1 The armistice preliminary to the Treaty of Campo Formio, the Peace of Leoben, was signed there in 1797.
BkXLI:Chap3:Sec1 BkXLI:Chap6:Sec1 The Bourbon royal family leaving Prague for Leoben in September 1833.
Leonardo da Vinci
1452-1519. Italian painter, engineer, musician, and scientist, he was the most versatile genius of the Renaissance. As a painter Leonardo is best known for The Last Supper (c. 1495) and Mona Lisa (c. 1503).
BkXIV:Chap2:Sec2 Francis I was his friend and patron.
BkXIX:Chap13:Sec1 Napoleon shipped artworks back to France.
BkXXIX:Chap6:Sec1 Leonardo settled in France, at Clos Luce near Amboise, at the invitation of Francis I, in 1516, and died there in 1519.
BkXXX:Chap5:Sec1 The choir frescoes of the Life of Mary in Sant’Onorio referred to are by Peruzzi not Leonardo.
BkXXXIX:Chap7:Sec1 Drawings by him in the Accademia in Venice.
Leonidas I, King of Sparta
d.480BC. Leonidas was the hero of the Battle of Thermopylae in which he held the pass against the Persians.
BkXXIX:Chap16:Sec1 Chateaubriand was in Sparta in 1806.
Leonora
She was a singer whom Milton heard at Cardinal Barberini’s house in Rome (On his Italian Tour 1638-1639). See Milton’s Latin verses ‘Ad Leonoram Romae canentem’. She also sang (‘una virtuosa, qui avait la voix belle’) at the French Court see the Memoirs of Madame de Motteville.
BkXXIX:Chap7:Sec1 Mentioned.
Leonora (Eleonora) d’Este
1537-1581. The sister of Alfonso II d’Este reputedly loved by Tasso.
BkXXXVI:Chap6:Sec1 BkXL:Chap2:Sec1 BkXL:Chap2:Sec3
BkXL:Chap4:Sec1 Mentioned.
Léonore, see Montaigne
Leopold II, Emperor of Germany
1747-1792. Father of Francis II of Germany, as Holy Roman Emperor he was also King of Hungary and Bohemia.
BkIX:Chap2:Sec1 His death on March 1st 1792.
BkIX:Chap3:Sec1 His successor Francis II was not elected as Emperor until 17th July 1792.
Léotaud
A police guard in 1832.
BkXXXV:Chap4:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lepanto
The Battle of Lepanto took place on 7 October 1571 when a galley fleet of the Holy League, a coalition of the Papacy (under Pope Pius V), Spain Venice, the Republic of Genoa, the Duchy of Savoy, the Knights of Malta and others, defeated a force of Ottoman galleys. The 5-hour battle was fought at the northern edge of the Gulf of Patras, off western Greece. The League’s forces were ably commanded by Don John (Don Juan) of Austria, the illegitimate son of Emperor Charles V and halfbrother of King Philip II of Spain.
BkXXXIX:Chap4:Sec1 BkXXXIX:Chap8:Sec1 BkXXXIX:Chap10:Sec1
Mentioned.
Lepelletier
BkXXXII:Chap11:Sec1 A member of the Republican Municipal Commission in July 1830.
Leprince, Abbé Réne-Jacques-Joseph
d.1782. Master at Dol College. The last curé of Saint-Samson de la Roque, appointed l5 December 1781.
BkII:Chap1:Sec1 Chateaubriand’s teacher at Dol.
BkII:Chap4:Sec3 He was dying of consumption (September 1779).
BkII:Chap6:Sec3 Appointed to the living near Rouen, where he died.
Lérin
The Mediterranean islands lie off Cannes. The largest is Ile Sainte-Marguerite, with a classic coastal fortress designed by Vauban, where the mysterious Man in the Iron Mask and Marshal Bazaine were imprisoned. On Saint-Honorat, the abbey, founded early in the 5th century by Honoratus following the collapse of Roman power in the north of Gaul is one of the oldest in France. The abbey adapted the Benedictine rules early-on, and had many illustrious Bishops and Saints. Honoratus himself was Bishop of Arles for the last two years of his life (429-430). The abbey was destroyed in 730 by the Saracens.
BkXIX:Chap2:Sec1 BkXXIV:Chap17:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lerva
Gendarme.
BkXVI:Chap2:Sec3 Present at the interrogation of the Duc d’Enghien in 1804.
Lesbia
She was a mistress of Catullus addressed in his poems.
BkXXXVIII:Chap5:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lescarbot, Marc
c1565-c1629. French lawyer, writer, and historian. His curiosity to see the New World prompted him to follow Poutrincourt to Port-Royal, in Acadia, in 1606. His proficiency in Christian doctrine enabled him to instruct the Indians of the neighbourhood of Port-Royal. His material aid to the settlers was no less efficient: he built a grist-mill for their wheat, a still to produce tar, and ovens for making charcoal. After his return to France (1607), he published (1609), under the title of ‘Histoire de la Nouvelle-France’, a narrative of his voyage which made him famous.
BkVII:Chap10:Sec1 His description of the Canadian Indians.
Lescure, Louis-Marie Joseph, Marquis de
1766-1793. French soldier and anti-revolutionary. Emigrated in 1791. Returned to France, and on the 10th of August 1792 took part in the defence of the Tuileries against the Paris mob. On the outbreak of the Revolt in the Vendée, he was arrested and imprisoned with all his family, as one of the promoters of the rising. He was set at liberty by the Royalists, and became one of their leaders, fighting at Thouars, taking Fontenay and Saumur (May-June 1793), and, after an unsuccessful attack on Nantes, joining Henri de la Rochejaquelein. Their peasant troops, opposed to the republican General F. J. Westermann, sustained various defeats, but finally gained a victory between Tiffauges and Cholet on the 19th of September 1793. The struggle was then concentrated around Châtillon, which was time after time taken and lost by the Republicans. Lescure was killed on the 15th of October 1793 near the château of La Tremblaye between Ernée and Fougères.
BkXI:Chap3:Sec2 Mentioned.
Lesseps, Jean-Baptiste Barthélemy, Baron de
1766-1834. He was the uncle of Ferdinand de Lesseps, creator of the Suez Canal, and went with his father Martin, the Consul-General, to St Petersburg. Sent on La Pérouse’s expedition he was landed on the Russian Kamchatka peninsula in 1787 to carry charts and other materials to Paris. He subsequently had a diplomatic career serving in Constantinople and Russia, leaving with the retreating French Army, and finally in Lisbon.
BkXXI:Chap4:Sec2 Appointed Head of Administration in Moscow in 1812.
Lethe
Lethe is the mythological river of the Underworld, whose waters bring forgetfulness. Ovid, in Metamorphoses Book XI says that its stream flows from the depths of the House of Sleep, and induces drowsiness with its murmuring. (Hence the stream of forgetfulness.)
BkVIII:Chap4:Sec2 BkXVII:Chap1:Sec1 BkXLI:Chap2:Sec1 Mentioned.
Levant
The former name for the lands on the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea: these are now part of Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Israel.
BkVIII:Chap5:Sec1 Chateaubriand’s travels there mentioned.
Levantina, Valley
The Italian Levantina Valley becomes Lake Maggiore, the most westerly of the three large pre-alpine lakes of Europe and the second largest after Lake Garda. Airolo is on the southern flank of the Saint-Gothard, Bellinzona being the capital of the Ticino Canton likewise at the end of the Levantina Valley, at the southern end of the Saint Gothard Pass.
BkXXXV:Chap14:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lévier, France
A village in the Doubs it lies halfway between Salins and Pontarlier, at the edge of the Lévier forest.
BkXXXIX:Chap3:Sec1 Chateaubriand there in September 1833.
Lévis-Ajac, Gaston-Pierre Marc, Duc de
1764-1830. A Member of the Academy (1816), and Peer de France, under the Restoration, he had been a representative at the Estates general in 1789 and belonged to the minority of nobles accepting the principles of the revolution. The events of August 10, 1792, made him an émigré: he was wounded at Quiberon, and exiled in England, and only returned to France in 1799 where he lived in retirement, pursuing his literary works (Maxims and Reflections, 1808). With the Restoration he became a member of the Chamber of Peers and in this assembly he dealt in particular with financial matters. He left behind both political and general writings.
BkXXIII:Chap8:Sec1 BkXXIII:Chap9:Sec1 In Ghent in 1815. His friendship towards Chateaubriand.
BkXXIII:Chap19:Sec1 In Mons in 1815.
BkXXV:Chap9:Sec1 Involved briefly with the Conservateur. He published a ‘Letter regarding Quiberon’.
Lévis, Pauline Charpentier d’Ennery, Duchesse de
d.1819. Wife of Gaston-Pierre (1785).
BkXXII:Chap10:Sec1 At Madame de Chateaubriand’s in 1814.
BkXXIII:Chap9:Sec1 In Ghent in 1815. The Lévis occupied the eighteenth-century Château of Noisiel 25km east of Paris in the Park on the banks of the Marne, near to Champs. The Abbey of Chelles nearby was founded for women of the Royal household in the 6th century by Sainte Bathilde. It was suppressed in 1790 and the Abbey demolished in 1793.
BkXXIII:Chap20:Sec1 At Cambrai in 1815.
BkXXV:Chap8:Sec1 Chateaubriand meets Villèle at her house.
BkXXV:Chap9:Sec1 Chateaubriand there in the summer of 1818.
Lévis, Marie-Catherine d’Aubusson, Duchesse de
1798-1854. The wife of Gaston-François (married 1821), she was the daughter of the Comte de La Feuillade.
BkXXIII:Chap9:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lévis, Gaston-François-Christophe, Duc de Ventadour, then Duc de
1794-1863. The son of Gaston-Pierre, he was aide-de-camp to the Duc d’Angoulême in 1814, and fought under the Restoration in Spain, the Morea etc, finishing his career with the rank of colonel. He followed the Royal family into exile during the July Revolution. He was later a friend of Chambord and his political counsellor.
BkXXIII:Chap9:Sec1 His friendship for the Count de Chambord.
BkXXXII:Chap12:Sec1 At Saint-Cloud on the 30th of July 1830.
BkXXXV:Chap9:Sec1 He went into exile with Charles X at Holyrood in 1832.
Lewis
He was a footman at the London Embassy in 1822.
BkVI:Chap1:Sec2 Mentioned.
Lewis, Matthew-Gregory
1775-1818. English author. In addition to his writing he pursued a diplomatic career and served for a time in Parliament. He was often called ‘Monk’ Lewis from the title of his extravagant Gothic romance The Monk (1796), the writing of which was influenced by the tales of Ann Radcliffe. Of his melodramatic plays the most famous is The Castle Spectre (1797). His ballads, notably Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogene, influenced Sir Walter Scott’s early poetry.
BkXII:Chap2:Sec1 His novel ‘The Monk’.
Lexington
Near Boston, Massachusetts, where the first great battle, of Lexington and Concord, between Americans and the British troops, intending to destroy American stores, took place on the 19th April 1775. The militiamen were alerted by Paul Revere. The British destroyed the stores at Concord were but were forced to retreat to Boston.
BkVII:Chap1:Sec1 Chateaubriand travelled the 340 kilometres from New York to visit the battlefield.
Lherminier, for Lerminier, Jean-Louis-Eugène
1803-1857. A jurist and publicist he was also a Saint-Simonist and Professor of Comparative Law at the Collège du France from 1831.
BkXXXVIII:Chap6:Sec1 Quoted from his article in the Revue des Deux-Mondes of 15th October 1832.
Liancourt, François-Alexandre-Frédéric de la Rochefoucauld, Duc de
1747-1827. A French social reformer, before the French Revolution he established a model farm, two factories, and a trade school on his estate, and in the Constituent Assembly he urged the necessity of public welfare. A royalist during the French Revolution, he was forced to flee to England in 1792. From there he travelled to the United States where he wrote Voyage dans les États-Unis d'Amérique (1799). Upon his return to France (1799), he resumed his philanthropic activities, working especially for health, educational, and economic reforms.
BkXXVIII:Chap15:Sec1 Stripped of his presidency of various charities in 1823 by Corbière. During his funeral (he died March 27th 1827), there was an altercation between pupils of his foundation school at Châlons-sur-Marne, and the military, as to who was to carry his coffin, during which the bier slipped and was damaged, and the insignia of his peerage fell with it.
Libba, or Libbe
She was the deaf-mute mistress of Armand de Chateaubriand in 1792.
BkIX:Chap15:Sec1 BkXVIII:Chap7:Sec1 BkXVIII:Chap7:Sec2
At Thionville.
Liberi, Pietro
1605-1687. A Venetian painter of the Baroque era, he was born in Padua
BkXL:Chap5:Sec1 There are frescoes by him in the Basilica of Sant’Antonio in Padua. He worked elsewhere in Padua.
Libri, Guillaume
1803-1869. Born in Florence, he was a mathematician and scientist and a historian of mathematics and science. He took political refuge in France where he became a professor in the Paris Science Faculty in 1834. He was appointed to the Academy and became Secretary to the commission charged with cataloguing the libraries of France. Accused of stealing books and documents from the libraries, he fled to London. He was defended vigorously by Prosper Mérimée.
BkXIX:Chap4:Sec1 BkXIX:Chap5:Sec1 He lent Chateaubriand documents regarding Napoleon, apparently derived from Cardinal Fesch’s archive, and published details of them in 1842.
Lichtenstein, Prince Johann I von
1760-1836. In 1806, Napoleon accepted the Principality of Liechtenstein into the Rhine Confederation and laid the foundation for the sovereignty of the country. In the wake of the political reorganization of Europe after the Congress of Vienna, Liechtenstein became a member of the German Confederation in 1815. Prince Johann participated as a colonel in the Turkish Wars, fought in the Napoleonic Wars, and also intervened significantly in the fate of Austria at the negotiating table: He was decisively responsible for the achievement of the Peace of Pressburg (1805) and also conducted, far less successfully, the negotiations on the Peace of Schönbrunn (1809). In 1810, he ended his military career with the rank of field marshal and subsequently engaged only in economic activities.
BkXX:Chap10:Sec1 Mentioned in Vienna in 1809.
Liège
The city in Eastern Belgium on the Meuse.
BkIX:Chap8:Sec2 Chateaubriand passed through in 1792.
BkXIX:Chap11:Sec1 Troops from there defended the Tuileries.
Liegnitz
The Battle of Leignitz (Poland) was fought in the early hours of August 15, 1760. The Army of Frederick the Great of Prussia met and defeated the Austrian army under Ernst von Loudon.
BkIV:Chap1:Sec2 Mentioned.
Lieven, Christophe Heinrich, Count, then Prince von
1774-1838. He accompanied Alexander I of Russia during the Battle of Austerlitz and at the signing of the Peace of Tilsit. In 1809 he was sent to represent Russia at the Prussian court and, at the crisis of the Napoleonic Wars in 1812, was transferred as the Minister Plenipotentiary to the court of St. James’, a post which he kept for 22 years (1812-1834). Somewhat overshadowed by his more illustrious wife, Dorothea von Lieven, Prince Lieven took part in the Congress of Vienna and died in Rome when he accompanied the future Alexander II of Russia on his Grand Tour.
BkXXVII:Chap3:Sec2 In London in 1822.
Lieven, Dorothea Benckendorff, Countess, then Princess von
1785-1857. The daughter of the Governor of Riga, she became Princess Lieven, in 1826. Wife of the Prince, she was known for her vivacious personality, and was often seen with her high-profile paramours, such as Metternich, Palmerston and Guizot, whose politics she tried to influence. A salon she maintained in London was the most fashionable in the city. Following her husband's retirement, she moved with her salon to Paris, where it rivaled the circle of Madame Récamier, and she incurred Chateaubriand’s criticism.
BkXXVII:Chap3:Sec2 A frequenter of Almack’s, see Cruikshank’s caricature.
Ligne, Charles Joseph (Fürst von), Prince de
1735-1914. Soldier and writer, came of a princely family of Hainaut, and was born at Brussels. He became the intimate friend and counsellor of the Emperor Joseph II. His Brabant estates were overrun by the French in 1792-1793, and his eldest son Charles Antoine killed in action at La Croix-du-Bois in the Argonne (September 14, 1792).
BkX:Chap2:Sec1 Chateaubriand met with the empty wagons returning from Vienna, where the Prince had heard of his son’s death, to the Prince’s estate.
Lignon, River
The river Lignon du Forez (or du Nord), the 60 km long left-hand tributary of the river Loire.
BkXVII:Chap3:Sec1 Mentioned.
Ligny
Ligny is a village in the municipality of Sombreffe (in the province of Namur), where Napoleon defeated Blücher two days before the battle of Waterloo while Wellington and Marshal Ney were engaged at Quatre Bras.
BkXXIII:Chap17:Sec1 BkXXIII:Chap18:Sec1 Blücher defeated by Napoleon there on 16th June 1816.
Lille
The city in northern France, capital of the Nord department, is on the River Deûle. After a prosperous period under the Dukes of Burgundy in the 14th century, Lille belonged to Austria and Spain before returning to France in 1668.
BkIX:Chap6:Sec2 Chateaubriand and his brother had forged passports for there in 1792.
BkIX:Chap7:Sec1 Chateaubriand’s arrival there in 1792.
BkXXIII:Chap3:Sec1 Chateaubriand suggested the Duc de Berry went there in 1815. Mortier was in command of the garrison there.
BkXXIII:Chap4:Sec1 The king fled in that direction in 1815. Chateaubriand and his wife reached the city on the 23rd of March 1815.
Lima, Peru
The capital of Peru, it lies in the east of the country, near its Pacific port of Callao. It was founded by Pizarro in 1535, and became the main base of Spanish power in Peru. The buildings from the eighteenth century show a strong French influence, as does Mexico City.
BkXXIII:Chap8:Sec1 An example of French influence.
Limoëlan de Cloriviëre, Joseph-Pierre Picot de
1768-1826. A fellow-pupil of Chateaubriand at Rennes and Dinan, he joined the Chouan movement in 1793 to avenge his father’s death. Involved in the Rue Saint-Nicaise conspiracy in December 1799, the aim of which was to assassinate Napoleon, he escaped to America, and became a priest. He died at Georgetown, 1826.
BkII:Chap7:Sec2 BkII:Chap7:Sec3 He and Chateaubriand met at Rennes College. His schoolboy prank.
Limoges, France
The capital of the Haut-Vienne department on the Rivere Vienne in wesrtern France, it is the centre of the French porcelain industry. It was the birthplace of Renoir.
BkXXXI:Chap1:Sec2 Chateaubriand there in 1829.
Limonade, Julien Prevost, Comte de
A talented mulatto, educated in France, Secretary of State and Minister of Foreign Affairs for the new black Kingdom of Haiti (1811), the titles of ministers having been borrowed from plantation names, La Marmelade, La Seringue etc.
BkX:Chap5:Sec1 And Peltier.
Lindsay, Anne Suzanne O’Dwyer, known as Mrs
1764-1820. Daughter of humble Irish immigrants of Calais, she was patronised by the Duchesse de Fitz-James. She became the mistress of Auguste de Lamoignon whom she accompanied to England, and later of Benjamin Constant. She was reputed to be the model for Ellénore in his Adolphe. In 1801 she published an adaptation of a historical novel by Cornelia Knight, Marcus Flaminius (1792), which inspired Les Martyrs.
BkXI:Chap2:Sec1 Chateaubriand introduced to her.
BkXII:Chap6:Sec1 BkXIII:Chap3:Sec1 She returned to France at the end of 1799, and met Chateaubriand and Madame d’Aguesseau on their landing at Calais in May 1800.
BkXIV:Chap1:Sec1 She introduced Chateaubriand to Julie Talma.
BkXVIII:Chap8:Sec2 Her actions on Chateaubriand’s behalf in 1811.
Linné, Carl (Linnaeus)
1707-1778. Swedish botanist and taxonomist, considered the founder of the binomial system of nomenclature and the originator of the modern scientific classification of plants and animals. He studied botany and medicine, and taught both at Uppsala. In Systema naturae (1735) he presented his classification of plants, animals, and minerals, and in Genera plantarum (1737) he explained his system for classifying plants largely on the basis of the number of stamens and pistils in the flower. Despite the artificiality of some of his premises, the Linnaean system has remained the basis of modern taxonomy. Species plantarum (2 vol., 1753) described plants in terms of genera and species, and the 10th edition (1758) of Systema naturae applied this system to animals as well, classifying 4,400 species of animals and 7,700 species of plants. Linnaeus was also known as Karl (or Carl) Linné (of which Carolus Linnaeus is a Latinized version); when he was ennobled in 1761 he formally adopted the name Karl von Linné.
BkV:Chap15:Sec3 Mentioned as the most famous of botanists.
Linz
A city in northeastern Austria, it is on the Danube River. It is the capital of the state of Upper Austria (Oberösterreich).
BkXLI:Chap1:Sec1 Mentioned.
BkXLI:Chap2:Sec1 Chateaubriand there in September 1833. Neubau is now the 7th district of Linz to the south-west of the city.
Lippi, Fra Filippo
c1406-1469. Also called Lippo Lippi, was a Florentine painter. An orphan he was raised by the Carmelite Friars of the Carmine in Florence. Vasari tells various stories about him: that sometime between 1431 and 1437 he was captured by Barbary pirates, that he virtually abducted Lucrezia Buti in 1458 who modelled for him, their son being the painter Filippino Lippi: and that he may have been poisoned by her relatives.
BkXXIX:Chap2:Sec3 His work at Spoleto in the cathedral apse, shows scenes from the Life of the Virgin including an influential Annunciation.
Lippold of Prague
d.1573. A German physician and financier born in Prague, who lived in Berlin, he was in great favour with the elector Joachim II, acting as his financial adviser and as administrator of Jewish affairs. After the sudden death of Joachim (1571), his son and successor, Johann Georg, accused Lippold of having poisoned the elector. After torture, he confessed the crime; and, though he afterward retracted, he was executed January 28th, 1573, the Jews of Berlin and of the province of Brandenburg being expelled from the country in the same year.
BkXXVI:Chap2:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lisbon
The capital and largest city of Portugal, in the western part of the country on the Tagus River estuary, was an ancient Iberian settlement, it was held by the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, taken by the Romans in 205 BC and conquered by the Moors c AD 714. Re-conquered by the Portuguese in 1147, it flourished in the 16th century during the heyday of colonial expansion in Africa and India. The city was devastated by a major earthquake in 1755.
BkXX:Chap7:Sec1 Wellington landed near Lisbon in August 1808.
BkXXIX:Chap13:Sec1 English presence there in 1827 to suppress a revolt against the Portuguese constitutional government.
BkXLII:Chap10:Sec1 The 1755 earthquake.
Lisieux, France
A commune of the Calvados département, in the Basse-Normandie région, Lisieux lies in the bottom of the valley of the river Touques and on the road from Paris to Caen.
BkXXXI:Chap4:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lissa
The Battle of Leuthen (Lissa) December 5, 1757. After defeating the French at the battle of Rossbach (November 5, 1757) and still smarting from his defeat at Kolin (June 18), Frederick II set out to Silesia in search of the Austrians and found them arrayed in a 4-mile-long battle line near the town of Leuthen. Of 65,000 Austrian soldiers engaged, 22,000 were lost (12,000 of them taken prisoner). Leuthen was Frederick’s most brilliant victory and the century's greatest military achievement. (‘A masterpiece of manoeuvre and resolution.’ - Napoleon.)
BkIV:Chap1:Sec2 Mentioned.
Liverpool, Charles Jenkinson, 1st Earl of
1727-1808. Made Under-Secretary of State by Lord Bute; he won the favour of George III, and when Bute retired Jenkinson became the leader of the King's Friends in the House of Commons. From 1778 until the close of Lord North’s ministry in 1782 he was Secretary of War. From 1786 to 1803 he was President of the Board of Trade and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and he was popularly regarded as enjoying the confidence of the king to a special degree. In 1786 he was created Baron Hawkesbury and ten years later Earl of Liverpool. His eldest son, Robert, become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
BkXXVII:Chap6:Sec1 Romney’s portrait of him (c1786-1788) is in the National Portrait Gallery.
Liverpool, Robert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of
1770-1828. British Tory Prime Minister (1812-1827). Elected as an MP in 1790, he was successively Foreign Secretary, Home Secretary and War Secretary. He is remembered for his unenlightened response to the unrest that followed the Napoleonic Wars. In 1817 he suspended habeas corpus, and following the Peterloo Massacre introduced the repressive Six Acts (1819). He also opposed Catholic Emancipation.
BkVI:Chap1:Sec1 Visited by Chateaubriand, French Ambassador, in 1822.
BkXII:Chap5:Sec3 Chateaubriand dined with him at his country mansion, Coombe House, near Kingston on Thames.
BkXXVII:Chap6:Sec1 A portrait of him.
BkXXVII:Chap11:Sec1 His fears for the future.
Liverpool, England
A major port and city on the Mersey estuary, it started life as a port trading with Ireland, and grew rapidly in the eighteenth century superseding Bristol as the chief west coast port trading in sugar, tobacco, cotton and slaves with the Americas. Britain’s first wet dock was built there in 1715.
BkVI:Chap7:Sec1 Mentioned.
Livorel, Monsieur
b 1735. He was steward of the Chateaubourg estate from 1777.
BkV:Chap6:Sec1 His adventure with a ghost.
Livy
Titus Livius. 59BC-AD17. The Roman Historian, born in Padua, settled in Rome c29BC. 35 of the original 142 books of his monumental history of Rome survive. They cover the early history up to the 4th Century BC, the second Punic war against Hannibal, and the wars against Macedonia.
BkI:Chap5:Sec1 Mentioned as a chronicler of famous deeds and men.
BkXXIX:Chap2:Sec2 BkXXXIII:Chap4:Sec1 BkXLII:Chap2:Sec1 As a famous Roman historian.
BkXL:Chap1:Sec1 BkXL:Chap5:Sec1 BkXLI:Chap7:Sec1 He was born and died in Padua.
Lloyd, Henry, Major-General
1720?-1783. A Welsh soldier-of-fortune who served in the armies of France, Prussia, Austria, Russia, and Britain.
BkXX:Chap10:Sec1 His historical accounts of Frederick the Great’s campaigns.
Lobau, Georges Mouton, Comte de
1770-1838. A Republican officer, he was aide to camp to Napoleon in 1805, then Count of Lobau after the action at Essling in 1809. A prisoner after Dresden in 1813, he returned to France in May 1814. Banished after Waterloo he returned to France in 1818. A Deputy from 1830 he rallied to the Orléanists and became a Marshal of France in 1831.
BkXXXII:Chap6:Sec1 Appointed a member of the Municipal Commission on the 29th July 1830.
Lobineau, Dom,
1666-1727. A Benedictine historian, he was the author of Histoire de Bretagne (1702).
BkI:Chap1:Sec3 A source of information regarding Chateaubriand’s family.
Lobkowitz, Bohuslas Hassenstein von (Bohuslav Hasištejnský z Lobkovic)
1461-1510. A nobleman, writer and humanist from an old Bohemian family (later the princes) of Lobkovic, he studied in Bologna and Ferrara (Doctor of Law, 1482) and converted to Catholicism there. After 1483 he was provost of Vyšehrad in Prague and between 1490 and 1491 travelled to the Holy Land and Egypt.
BkXXXVII:Chap11:Sec1 Mentioned.
BkXXXVIII:Chap2:Sec1 From his Latin ode On the Thermal Baths of Charles IV.
Locmaria, Monsieur de
A Breton gentleman, he was a contemporary of Madame de Sévigné.
BkV:Chap2:Sec 2 Mentioned.
Lodi, Battle of
May 10th 1796. A small but dramatic engagement in Bonaparte’s first Italian campaign, in which he earned the confidence and loyalty of his men, who nicknamed him ‘The Little Corporal’ in recognition of his personal courage. It was fought at the Lodi Bridge, over the Adda River, 19 miles (31 km) southeast of Milan, between 5,000 troops of Napoleon’s Army of Italy and Sebottendorf's 10,000 troops, the rear guard of Jean-Pierre Beaulieu’s Austrian army.
BkXIX:Chap12:Sec1 BkXIX:Chap18:Sec2 The bridge was taken on the 10th May. Napoleon reports it on the 11th.
BkXIX:Chap13:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lodin
Mayor of Combourg.
BkIV:Chap5:Sec1 Issued a collation of extracts concerning Combourg in 1812.
Loevenhielm (Lowenhielm), Comte Gustave de
He was Swedish ambassador to Paris from 1818.
BkXXXIII:Chap1:Sec1 Mentioned.
Logan, Indian Chief
Tachnedorus (c.1725–1780), usually known as Chief Logan or John Logan in historical records, was a Mingo Native American leader in the era before the American Revolutionary War, whose revenge for the brutal killing of his family members by white frontiersmen helped spark the conflict known as Dunmore’s War.
BkVIII:Chap5:Sec3 Chateaubriand quotes from his famous speech to Lord Dunmore, known as Logan’s Lament.
Lointier
A Republican group met at Lointier’s in July 1830 and called itself the Réunion Lointier. Lointier is described as a restaurateur (restaurant-owner or restorer)
BkXXXII:Chap14:Sec1 Mentioned.
Loiret
Loiret is a département in north-central France named after the Loiret River. Loiret was one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790. It was created from the former province of Orléanais. Orléans is its capital.
BkXXV:Chap2:Sec1 Chateaubriand was named as a Minister of State on 9th July 1815 the day after Louis XVIII’s return to Paris. The Chamber of Deputies having been dissolved on the 13th, he was designated as the President of the Electoral College of Loiret on the 26th July. The decree of 17th August 1815 named him a Peer along with 94 others. Chateaubriand knew of it at Orléans on the 19th.
Lombard, Charles
Pilgrim to the Holy Land in 1669.
BkVII:Chap7:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lombardi (Lombardo), Pietro
1435-1515. A leading sculptor and architect in Venice, he built churches and designed tombs, including that of Dante in Ravenna. From 1498 to 1515 he was master mason for the Ducal Palace.
BkXXXIX:Chap19:Sec1 His work on the wings of the Torre del’Orologio. The existing central tower was built by Mauro Codussi between 1496 and 1499.
Loménie de Brienne, Archbishop of Sens
1727–94, French statesman, and cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He was archbishop of Toulouse (1763–88) and of Sens (1788) and a member of the French Academy. In the Assembly of the Notables (1787) he worked against the minister of finance Calonne and, though King Louis XVI looked with disfavour on his notorious immorality, he succeeded (1787) Calonne in control of finances. Thereupon he adopted Calonne’s plans for a direct land tax, for calling of provincial assemblies to apportion the tax, and for other reforms. The opposition of the Parlement of Paris to the land tax led him to exile the parlement to Troyes for a time and finally resulted in the calling of the fateful States-General. Having done nothing to relieve the financial ills of France, Brienne was forced out of office (Aug., 1788). He was made a cardinal. Brienne was one of the few French prelates to swear to the civil constitution of the clergy, promulgated in 1790; for this he was deprived of the cardinalship. Arrested by the revolutionary government (1793), he died in prison.
BkV:Chap1:Sec2 Mentioned.
London, England
The capital of the UK on the River Thames was founded by the Romans at the highest point at which the Thames could be forded and at the river’s tidal limit on what was later Cornhill and Ludgate Hill.
BkVI:Chap1:Sec1 BkVII:Chap1:Sec1 BkVIII:Chap1:Sec1 BkIX:Chap1:Sec1 BkX:Chap1:Sec1 BkXI:Chap1:Sec1 BkXII:Chap1:Sec1 This chapter, and succeeding chapters of this book where indicated, were written in London. Chateaubriand was appointed ambassador on the 9th January 1822. He reached England on the 4th April 1822.
BkX:Chap10:Sec1 Chateaubriand returned to London in June 1796, after two and a half fairly obscure years in Suffolk.
BkXXXVI:Chap6:Sec1 Its river, the Thames, is mentioned.
London Tavern, London
The City of London Tavern in Bishopsgate Street (Within). This imposing old tavern and public meeting-house, home of many charitable initiatives, used to stand opposite the top of Threadneedle Street. It was rebuilt in 1765, seated 355, and was famous for its excellent meals.
BkX:Chap7:Sec1 Peltier drags Chateaubriand off to dine there.
Londonderry, Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, Marquis of
1769-1822. British Foreign Secretary 1812-1822. He fought a famous duel with Canning. He played an important part in the Congress of Vienna, and subsequent congresses. Generally unpopular, London rejoiced when he committed suicide (during Chateaubriand’s embassy) in the belief that he was being blackmailed for homosexual acts.
Preface:Sect1 Chateaubriand mentions meeting him.
BkVI:Chap1:Sec2 Mentioned. He committed suicide on the 12th August 1822: Chateaubriand is presumably writing in April.
BkX:Chap7:Sec1 Present at Chateaubriand’s reception on the 8th July 1822.
BkX:Chap11:Sec1 Chateaubriand sought his help on behalf of Lady Sutton.
BkXXIII:Chap17:Sec1 His comments on Waterloo.
BkXXVII:Chap1:Sec1 His estate at North Cray Place in the village of North Cray (on the River Cray in Kent) about twenty miles from London. Chateaubriand invited to dine there.
BkXXVII:Chap3:Sec1 Chateaubriand dined with him on St George’s Day, 23rd April, 1822 to celebrate the King’s birthday which was actually the 12th of August.
BkXXVII:Chap4:Sec1 Chateaubriand meets with him in May 1822.
BkXXVII:Chap6:Sec1 A portrait of the man.
BkXXVII:Chap7:Sec1 His position regarding Spain. Ferdinand VII had abolished the Constitution of March 1812, but an insurrection in 1820 caused its re-instatement. There were ongoing disturbances, resulting in the left taking power in 1822, causing concern across Europe.
BkXXVII:Chap9:Sec1 His suicide on the 12th August 1822, the King’s sixtieth birthday.
BkXXVII:Chap11:Sec1 His death represented a sea-change in British politics.
Londonderry, Amelia Anne Hobart, Marchioness of
1769-1822. The wife of Castlereagh, she married him in 1794.
BkXXVII:Chap1:Sec1 Chateaubriand met her on the 10th of April 1822.
BkXXVII:Chap9:Sec1 Her husband’s suicide.
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
1807-1882. The American poet, descended from an established New England family, after college he spent the next three years in Europe, preparing himself for a professorship of modern languages at Bowdoin, where he taught from 1829 to 1835. After the death of his young wife in 1835, Longfellow travelled again to Europe, where he met Frances Appleton, who was to become his second wife after a long courtship. She was the model for the heroine of his prose romance, Hyperion (1839). From 1836 to 1854, Longfellow was professor of modern languages at Harvard, and during these years he became one of an intellectual triumvirate that included Oliver Wendell Holmes and James Russell Lowell. He achieved great fame with long narrative poems such as Evangeline (1847), The Song of Hiawatha (1855), The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858), and Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863), which included “Paul Revere’s Ride.” In all of these works he used unusual, “antique” rhythms to weave myths of the American past. His best-known shorter poems include “The Village Blacksmith,” “Excelsior,” “The Wreck of the Hesperus,” “A Psalm of Life,” and “A Cross of Snow.” Longfellow made a poetic translation of Dante's Divine Comedy (1867), for which he wrote a sequence of six outstanding sonnets. After his death, he was the first American whose bust was placed in the Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey.
BkVIII:Chap5:Sec3 Title of a poem by him.
Longhena, Baldassare
1598-1682. He was a Venetian Baroque architect, he completed Vincento Scamozzi, his master’s, Procuratie Nuove in St Mark’s Square. He designed many churches including the cathedral at Chioggia.
BkXXXIX:Chap19:Sec1 His church of Santa Maria della Salute in Venice was built to commemorate the end of the plague of 1630.
Longueville, Marie d’Orléans-Longueville, Duchesse de Nemours
1625-1707. The daughter of Henry II of Orléans, duke of Longueville, she married Henry, Duke of Nemours in 1657, and when he died in 1659, leaving her childless, the rest of her life was mainly spent in contesting her inheritance with her stepmother the Duchesse de Longueville.
BkXXVIII:Chap4:Sec1 Neuchâtel, which she owned, passed out of French hands at her death.
Longueville, Anne-Geneviève de Bourbon, Duchesse de
1619-1679. She was the daughter of Henry II de Condé and sister of the Great Condé. A noted beauty, she maintained a long liaison with the Duc de La Rochefoucauld and joined him as a leader of the Fronde. A determined enemy of Cardinal Mazarin, she obtained the assistance of her brother Armand de Bourbon, Prince de Conti, during the first Fronde, and that of the Vicomte de Turenne and her brother, the Great Condé, during the second Fronde. She made her peace with the court in 1653. Much of her remaining life was spent in convents, notably that of Port-Royal which through her influence was saved from persecution in her lifetime.
BkXIII:Chap1:Sec1 Introduced into society in 1635 she soon became one of the stars of the Hôtel Rambouillet, at that time the centre of all that was learned and witty in France. She fled to Stenay to meet Turenne in 1650.
BkXIII:Chap7:Sec2 Madame de Vintimille might have lived in her company.
BkXL:Chap1:Sec1 Mentioned.
Longus
A Greek novelist and romancer, and author of Daphnis and Chloe. Very little is known of his life, and it is assumed that he lived on the isle of Lesbos during the 2nd century AD, which is the setting of Daphnis and Chloe a pastoral love tale which was the model for La Sireine by Honoré d'Urfé, the Diana enamorada of Montemayor, the Aminta of Tasso, and The Gentle Shepherd of Allan Ramsay. The celebrated Paul et Virginie is an echo of the same story. Maurice Ravel adapted it for his ballet, Daphnis et Chloé. Longus found an incomparable translator in Jacques Amyot, bishop of Auxerre, whose French version, as revised by Paul Louis Courier, is better known than the original. It appeared in 1559.
BkXXVIII:Chap5:Sec1 Quoted, I:9
Longwood
Longwood House on St Helena was the summer residence of the Lieutenant Governor, John Skelton. Other houses had been inspected and deemed unsuitable. After being shown Longwood, Napoleon on returning to Jamestown, noticed a pleasant house called The Briars and it was agreed he stay there until Longwood was complete. Coincidentally Wellington had stayed at The Briars when visiting the island.
BkXXIV:Chap10:Sec1 Described.
BkXXIV:Chap11:Sec2 The storm there on the eve of Napoleon’s death.
BkXXIV:Chap15:Sec1 Longwood was abandoned but later bought (1858) by France and restored.
Longwy
The town in Lorraine, France, near the Belgian and Luxembourg borders. It was ceded to France by the County of Luxembourg in the Peace of the Pyrenees (1659).
BkIX:Chap16:Sec1 Birthplace of François de Mercy. The town fell to the anti-Revolutionary allies on 23rd August 1792.
BkIX:Chap16:Sec1 Chateaubriand left on the 16th October 1792. Four days later on the 20th it fell to Kellermann’s army.
Loo-Choo (Lewchew, Luchu), Islands
The Ryukyu Islands or Nansei Islands, are an island chain in the western Pacific Ocean, forming the eastern limit of the East China Sea. It stretches southwestward from the island of Kyushu in Japan.
BkXXIV:Chap10:Sec1 Captain Hall had travelled to them.
Lope de Vega, Lope Félix de Carpio
1562-1635. A Spanish poet and dramatist, after serving with the Spanish Armada in 1588, he became secretary to the Duke of Alba settling in Madrid in 1610. He was ordained in 1614, but. His later life was saddened by the deaths of his wife, children and mistresses. His numerous plays such as El caballero de Olmeda (1615-1626) were based on Spanish history.
BkIX:Chap10:Sec1 Mentioned.
BkXXXVI:Chap1:Sec1 Dorothea is the leading character in La Niña de Plata (1607-1612), The Girl with Money, a comedy.
Lopez, Dom Fernando
A Portuguese renegade, on a homeward bound journey, he jumped ship at St Helena in 1516, and lived on the island for almost 30 years.
BkXXIV:Chap9:Sec1 Mentioned.
Loreto, Italy
A hilltown and comune of the Italian province of Ancona, in the Marche. on the right bank of the Musone river
BkXXIX:Chap2:Sec3 Notre-Dame-de-Lorette is a famous church in Paris whose name refers to the Italian city of Loreto and its Chiesa della Casa Santa (Basilica of the Holy House), a centre of Marianism.
Lorgeril, Comte Louis de
1778-1843. Mayor of Rennes and a keen agriculturalist, he became deputy for Ille-et-Villaine from 1828, resigning in 1830.
BkXXXI:Chap7:Sec1 His attempted amendment in March 1830.
Lorient, France
The port in north-west France, in the Morbihan department, it is on the Bay of Biscay, and was formerly the principal naval shipyard in France.
BkIX:Chap1:Sec2 Monsieur de Lavigne was Commander of Lorient.
Lormois, France
The Château of Lormois, 15 miles from Paris near Saint-Michel-sur-Orge, was the seat of the Duc de Maillé.
BkXXIX:Chap14:Sec1 Madame de Castries’ childhood there.
Lothon, Monsieur
A student at the École Polytechnique in July 1830.
BkXXXII:Chap5:Sec1 Mentioned.
Loudon or Loudoun, John Campbell, 4th Earl of
1705-1782. An English general defeated by Montcalm in Canada, he was Commander in Chief of his Majesty’s Forces in America during the French and Indian War.
BkVII:Chap5:Sec1 Mentioned.
Louis I, Louis the Debonair
778-840. Emperor and King of the Franks (814-840), he succeeded his father Charlemagne, and was also known as Louis the Fair, and Louis the Pious.
BkXXX:Chap2:Sec1 BkXLII:Chap9:Sec1 Mentioned.
Louis II, Prince de Condé, see Condé
Louis VI, Le Gros, King of France
1081-1137. Son of Philippe I. King of France 1108-1137.
BkI:Chap1:Sec6 Grandfather of Margaret de Lusignan.
BkXXI:Chap6:Sec1 The cruelties of his reign.
Louis IX, or St Louis, King of France
1215-1270. King 1226-1270. Son of Louis VIII and Blanche of Castile, born at Poissy, 25 April, 1215; died near Tunis, 25 August, 1270. Louis took the cross in 1244, but did not leave on the crusade to Egypt (the Seventh Crusade) until 1248. Defeated and captured (1250) at al-Mansurah, he was ransomed but remained in the Holy Land until 1254, helping to strengthen the fortifications of the Christian colonies. In 1270, Louis undertook the Eighth Crusade, but he died soon after landing in Tunis.
BkI:Chap1:Sec3 BkI:Chap4:Sec2 Chateaubriand’s ancestor, Geoffroy IV, travelled with him to the Holy Land.
BkIV:Chap8:Sec4 BkXVI:Chap5:Sec1 BkXIX:Chap13:Sec1
BkXXI:Chap5:Sec3 BkXXII:Chap 21:Sec1 BkXXV:Chap6:Sec1
BkXXV:Chap11:Sec1 BkXXIX:Chap15:Sec1 BkXXXIII:Chap8:Sec1 The Bourbon Kings were the heirs of Saint Louis.
BkV:Chap2:Sec 2 BkIX:Chap9:Sec1 BkXVII:Chap2:Sec1
BkXXX:Chap1:Sec1 BkXXXV:Chap11:Sec1 Mentioned.
BkV:Chap10:Sec1 BkXXII:Chap 25:Sec1 Louis XVI as a descendant of Saint-Louis. The oriflamme, aurea flamma, which was the standard given to the ancient Kings of France by the Angel Gabriel, represented a flame on a golden ground. Those who fought under it were supposedly invincible.
BkIX:Chap1:Sec2 BkX:Chap5:Sec1 BkXX:Chap2:Sec2 The Order of Saint Louis ("ordre royal et militaire de Saint-Louis") was a military Order of Chivalry founded on the 5 April 1696 by Louis XIV. It was intended as a reward for exceptional officers, and is notable as the first decoration that non-nobles could be granted. It is roughly the ancestor of the Légion d'honneur (Legion of Honour), with which it shares the red ribbon (though the Légion d'honneur is awarded to military and civilians alike).
BkIX:Chap3:Sec2 The Church of the Cordeliers built during his reign. The Sire de Coucy was the guilty party.
BkXIV:Chap1:Sec1 He married Margaret of Provence.
BkXIV:Chap2:Sec4 He had Aigues-Mortes built as a port in the Camargue and left from there in 1248, and fatally in 1270.
BkXV:Chap5:Sec1 The church of San Luigi dei Francesi, the French National Church in Rome, is dedicated to him. Cardinal Giulio de Medici, later Pope Clement VII, commissioned Jean de Chenevière to build a church for the French community here in 1518. Building was halted when Rome was sacked in 1527, and it was finally completed in 1589 by Domenico Fontana. The church contains frescoes by Caravaggio and Domenichino, and the painter Claude Lorraine (1600-1682) is buried there.
BkXV:Chap7:Sec3 Saint Louis asked to be placed on a bed of ashes as he lay dying.
BkXVIII:Chap2:Sec1 BkXXV:Chap2:Sec1 BkXXXI:Chap6:Sec1
BkXXXVI:Chap8:Sec1 His death in Tunis.
BkXIX:Chap14:Sec2 In 1249, Louis was defeated and taken prisoner in Mansoura, Egypt. Louis and his companions were then released in return for the surrender of the French army and a large ransom.
BkXIX:Chap16:Sec1 Chateaubriand quotes from the Annals of the Reign of King Louis by Guillaume de Nangis, cited by Joinville.
BkXXII:Chap2:Sec1 His use of Fontainebleau as a royal site. He founded a convent there for the Trinitaires.
BkXXIV:Chap17:Sec1 Mourned at his death, the death of an age.
BkXXVII:Chap10:Sec1 His feast day is August 25th.
BkXXXIII:Chap4:Sec1 He was buried at Saint-Denis, though the tomb was destroyed during the Revolution and only a finger-relic remains.
BkXXXVII:Chap13:Sec1 His piety.
Louis XI, The Prudent, King of France
1423-1483. King of France (1461 - 1483). He was the son of Charles VII of France and Mary of Anjou. He was a member of the Valois Dynasty and was one of the most successful kings of France in terms of uniting the country. His 22-year reign was marked by political machinations, resulting in his being given the nickname of the ‘ubiquitous spider’.
BkIX:Chap8:Sec2 BkXXIII:Chap12:Sec1 Having visited Péronne for an interview with Charles the Bold, Louis was made (1468) a prisoner and forced to sign a treaty granting important concessions and compelling him to participate in suppressing the revolt of Liège, which he had helped instigate.
BkXI:Chap3:Sec1 In 1477 he captured Arras and incorporated the Burgundian territories in France by the treaty of Arras of 1482, when the leading citizens were harshly treated.
BkXXXVI:Chap12:Sec1 Mentioned.
BkXXXIX:Chap4:Sec1 Philippe de Comines was his Ambassador to Venice.
BkXLII:Chap1:Sec1 His cynicism, and cunning.
Louis XII, King of France
1462-1515. King 1498-1515. His reign was dominated by the wars his father Charles VIII had initiated in Italy, and he suffered major defeats (1511-1513) on several fronts at the hands of the Holy League.
BkV:Chap2:Sec1 BkV:Chap14:Sec1 Mentioned.
BkXIX:Chap13:Sec1 Louis XII defeated the Venetians at Agnadello in Lombardy in 1509.
BkXXXVII:Chap13:Sec1 His compassion and sense of justice.
Louis XIII, King of France
1601-1643. King 1610-1643. His reign was dominated by the chief minister Cardinal de Richelieu. He was the son of the assassinated Henri IV and Marie de Médicis, who was regent during his minority. He defeated two Huguenot uprisings in 1622 and 1628 taking their fortress at La Rochelle in 1628.
BkI:Chap4:Sec4 Assisted at La Rochelle by Saint-Malo.
BkXXXIX:Chap1:Sec1 His comment after his father’s death.
Louis XIV, King of France
1638-1715. King 1643-1715. Born at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 16 September, 1638; died at Versailles, 1 September, 1715. The son of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, he became king at the age of 4, on the death of his father, 14 May 1643. Anne of Austria ruled on his behalf until 1651. Until 1661 the government was largely in the hands of the Italian Cardinal Mazarin, thereafter Louis controlled the State, built Versailles, and fought numerous wars, and his long reign left France politically strong but financially weak, requiring economic and social reform. He was nick-named Louis-le-Grand (Louis the Great).
BkI:Chap1:Sec4 His reform of the nobility in Brittany, 1669.
BkI:Chap1:Sec11 Anecdotes of his court, related to Chateaubriand’s mother.
BkI:Chap4:Sec4 Saint-Malo lent Louis money for the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14).
BkIII:Chap1:Sec3 BkIII:Chap8:Sec1 BkIV:Chap3:Sec1 BkIV:Chap9:Sec2
BkIV:Chap10:Sec2 BkXI:Chap3:Sec1 BkXIII:Chap11:Sec2
BkXIV:Chap2:Sec4 BkXXII:Chap7:Sec1 BkXXV:Chap11:Sec1
BkXXVIII:Chap16:Sec1 BkXXXIII:Chap9:Sec1 BkXXXVI:Chap6:Sec1
Mentioned.
BkIV:Chap1:Sec3 BkIV:Chap9:Sec1 His palace at Versailles.
BkVII:Chap11:Sec1 The language of his time.
BkXIII:Chap4:Sec1 His statues removed from the Place des Victories and the Place Vendôme during the Revolution.
BkXIV:Chap2:Sec3 His monuments at Marseilles.
BkXIV:Chap2:Sec5 His destruction of a roman temple at Bordeaux.
BkXIX:Chap1:Sec1 The legend of his twin brother romanticised in Dumas’ novel The Vicomte de Bragelonne.
BkXIX:Chap3:Sec1 He visited Saint-Cyr in 1689 for Racine’s production of Esther, and again later for Athalie.
BkXIX:Chap5:Sec1 His poor spelling.
BkXIX:Chap17:Sec1 Bossuet recommended he sponsor excavations in Egypt.
BkXX:Chap2:Sec1 BkXXXVI:Chap7:Sec1 The memory of the two defeats at Höchstadt (Blenheim) in 1703/4.
BkXX:Chap5:Sec3 BkXX:Chap11:Sec1 His grandson Philippe, later Philip V of Spain, was born at Versailles.
BkXX:Chap6:Sec1 He invaded the United Provinces (Holland) in 1672.
BkXXII:Chap2:Sec1 His use of Fontainebleau as a royal palace.
BkXXIV:Chap5:Sec1 His expansion of the monarchy. His magnanimity after Ramillies.
BkXXIV:Chap16:Sec1 He commissioned the building of the Invalides.
BkXXIV:Chap17:Sec1 Mourned at his death, the death of an age.
BkXXVII:Chap9:Sec1 Adverse public reaction at his funeral.
BkXXVIII:Chap11:Sec1 His Catholicism.
BkXXXI:Chap6:Sec1 His attack on Algiers in 1681.
BkXXXII:Chap3:Sec1 Turenne’s actions during the Fronde.
BkXXXII:Chap14:Sec1 His brother Philippe I d’Orléans.
BkXXXIV:Chap12:Sec1 His mistresses.
BkXXXV:Chap11:Sec1 His extension of the borders of France.
BkXXXVII:Chap14:Sec1 His long reign and old age.
BkXXXIX:Chap1:Sec1 Louis assumed as his emblem and that of France, the Sun, with the motto Nec pluribus impar: Inferior to none.
BkXLII:Chap1:Sec1 His despotism.
BkXLII:Chap10:Sec1 His death in 1715.
Louis XV, King of France
1710-1774. King 1715-1774. Known as Louis the Well Beloved (Le Bien-Aimé) His weak rule discredited France and led to the Revolution of 1789. Almost all of France’s colonies were lost in the Seven Year’s War (1756-63).
BkI:Chap4:Sec4 During the Seven Year’s War, Saint-Malo lent the King thirty millions.
BkV:Chap14:Sec1 The immorality of his Court.
BkVII:Chap5:Sec1 His ‘shameful’ reign. The War in Canada.
BkXI:Chap2:Sec2 The language of his age.
BkXIII:Chap11:Sec2 The hairstyle of his age.
BkXVII:Chap2:Sec1 Madame de Coislin was a favourite of his. She was thought to have been his mistress. The De Nesle descendants said regarding possibly inherited traits: ‘God forgives, the world forgets, but the nose remains!’
BkXXIV:Chap5:Sec1 His ability in making alliances.
BkXXV:Chap4:Sec1 His free-thinking spirit.
BkXXVI:Chap2:Sec1 His attitude towards Voltaire.
BkXXIX:Chap7:Sec3 He expelled Bonnie Prince Charlie from France in accordance with a provision of the second Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748).
BkXXXIV:Chap12:Sec1 His mistresses.
BkXLII:Chap1:Sec1 His corruption.
BkXLII:Chap10:Sec1 Mentioned.
Louis XVI, King of France
1754-1793. King from 1774, he was guillotined on the 21st January 1793. The opposition of his wife, Marie Antoinette, and the aristocracy thwarted he reforms of Turgot and Necker. The consequent economic crisis forced the king to summon the States General of 1789 whose disaffected Third Estate precipitated the Revolution. The Royal family was confined to the Tuileries Palace from which they attempted to flee in 1791, reaching Varennes. Louis was deposed after the people stormed the Tuileries, and was executed in 1793.
Preface:Sect1 BkI:Chap1:Sec3 BkI:Chap1:Sec5 BkI:Chap3:Sec1 Chateaubriand mentions his presentation to the King, and his brother’s presentation also in 1787.
BkIV:Chap8:Sec4 Chateaubriand’s presentation in February 1787. Later he was a member of the commission charged with identifying the royal remains, on exhumation from the Madeleine cemetery, on 18th January 1815.
BkIV:Chap9:Sec3 Chateaubriand’s faux pas at the Royal hunt.
BkV:Chap1:Sec1 Louis as an unwitting agent of social change.
BkV:Chap8:Sec2 Popular calls for his abdication in 1789.
BkV:Chap9:Sec1 He addressed the National Assembly after the fall of the Bastille.
BkV:Chap12:Sec3 His awareness of Mirabeau’s royalist sentiments.
BkV:Chap14:Sec1 The immorality of his Court.
BkVI:Chap1:Sec1 BkXV:Chap7:Sec3 BkXVI:Chap2:Sec1
BkXLII:Chap4:Sec2 The anniversary of his death on the 21st January.
BkVI:Chap4:Sec1 Chateaubriand wears His Majesty’s uniform at Santa Cruz.
BkVIII:Chap5:Sec1 News of the flight to Varennes in 1791.
BkVIII:Chap7:Sec1 Doomed to execution.
BkIX:Chap1:Sec1 BkXXII:Chap 25:Sec1 His communications with Germany in December 1791. His nicknames of Monsieur Veto and Monsieur Capet. Louis exercised his powers of royal veto guaranteed by the Constitution of September 1789 on a number of occasions in 1792, for example to block the decree concerning refractory priests in May, and this earned him the first nickname.
BkIX:Chap3:Sec1 The National Assembly became independent of the King’s decrees on 25th June 1791 after the Flight to Varennes. The King’s functions were suspended until his acceptance of the Constitution on the 14th September. Protest in support of the King being tried had resulted in the ‘Massacre of the Champ de Mars’ on the 17th July.
BkIX:Chap4:Sec1 BkX:Chap5:Sec2 BkXXVII:Chap7:Sec1 He met the same fate as Charles I of England.
BkIX:Chap6:Sec2 Chateaubriand had returned from America to serve him.
BkIX:Chap9:Sec1 Responsible for improving the French Navy prior to the Revolution.
BkIX:Chap12:Sec1 BkXXXV:Chap25:Sec1 BkXLII:Chap1:Sec1
Nicknamed Monsieur Capet.
BkIX:Chap14:Sec1 His actions in supporting military action against the Revolution.
BkX:Chap3:Sec1 News of his death reached Jersey in late January.
BkX:Chap8:Sec1 Monsieur de Malesherbes had been a noted royalist. BkXI:Chap3:Sec1 The Memoirs of his valet, Cléry.
BkXI:Chap6:Sec1 BkXII:Chap5:Sec2 His execution.
BkXIII:Chap3:Sec1 BkXXII:Chap 25:Sec1 His bones disinterred and removed to Saint Denis in 1815.
BkXIII:Chap7:Sec2 The King’s Musketeers, which Bonald joined in 1773, were dissolved in 1776.
BkXIX:Chap6:Sec1 Paoli presented to him by La Fayette.
BkXIX:Chap8:Sec1 His dethronement in August 1792.
BkXIX:Chap10:Sec1 BkXXII:Chap13:Sec1 His blood treated as that of a martyr.
BkXXII:Chap1:Sec1 The brother of Louis XVIII (and Charles X).
BkXXII:Chap2:Sec1 His planting of trees at Fontainebleau.
BkXXIV:Chap2:Sec1 He bought the Château at Rambouillet as a summer residence.
BkXXIV:Chap11:Sec2 The religious clauses in his will.
BkXXVI:Chap3:Sec1 His note recommending Hippolyte Chamisso.
BkXXIX:Chap7:Sec3 BkXXXVII:Chap13:Sec1 Mentioned.
BkXXXIII:Chap8:Sec1 He visited Cherbourg in July 1786, to inaugurate the construction of the sea-wall, where he was received enthusiastically.
BkXLII:Chap9:Sec1 Mentioned.
Louis XVII
1785-1795. He was recognised by the emigrants as King of France 1793-1795 following the execution of his father Louis XVI during the Revolution. He died in prison.
BkV:Chap8:Sec2 Chateaubriand called the Chamber of Peers’ attention to the neglect of his memory in his speech of 9th January 1816.
BkV:Chap10:Sec1 Appeared at the provocative banquet given by the Guardes du Corps for the officers of the Flanders Regiment, on 1st October 1789.
BkXIV:Chap6:Sec1 Chateaubriand is reminded of his early death.
BkXIX:Chap9:Sec1 Toulon recognised him in 1793.
BkXXVIII:Chap5:Sec1 He had no coronation.
Louis XVIII, King of France
1755-1824. King 1814-1824. Comte de Provence, Monsieur, the elder brother of Louis XVI. He was King in name from 1795 following the death in prison of his nephew Louis XVII, and in fact from 1814 following Napoleon’s overthrow. He fled Paris when Napoleon left Elba, and returned ‘in the baggage train of the Allied armies.’ His attempts to be a moderate monarch were thwarted by the ultra-royalists. His and Louis XVI’s younger brother was Charles X.
Preface:Sect1 Chateaubriand mentions meeting him.
BkII:Chap9:Sec1 Chateaubriand is writing in 1817 during his reign. After a promising start to his career, under the Restoration, which linked his fate to that of the ‘chambre introuvable’ of 1815, he was not long in arousing the mistrust of minister and king. When the administration was dissolved on the 5th September 1816 he protested energetically in a post-script to La Monarchie selon la Charte. The book was seized on publication and the author stripped of his title of Minister of the State on the 21st September. This chapter was written after the spring of 1817 when he had been obliged to sell the Vallée-aux-Loups as well as his library.
BkV:Chap9:Sec1 Called Monsieur in 1789. Mentioned as remaining with the King until the flight to Varennes.
BkV:Chap15:Sec1 He wrote for the Journal de Paris in 1790.
BkVI:Chap1:Sec1 Chateaubriand his ambassador to London in 1822.
BkIX:Chap7:Sec2 Chateaubriand describes him as the last King of the French (in 1821).
BkIX:Chap11:Sec1 At Thionville in September 1792.
BkX:Chap3:Sec1 Chateaubriand accompanied the King during the Hundred Days.
BkX:Chap3:Sec2 Anticipates the Restoration.
BkX:Chap7:Sec1 Chateaubriand gives a reception to celebrate the anniversary of his return to Paris on the 8th July.
BkXIII:Chap3:Sec1 His burial at Saint Denis in 1824.
BkXVI:Chap2:Sec1 Returned his Order of the Golden Fleece to Spain after the death of the Duc d’Enghien. In Warsaw when the Duc d’Enghien was abducted.
BkXVI:Chap6:Sec1 Talleyrand writes a memoir regarding the Duc d’Enghien’s assassination and presents it to him.
BkXVIII:Chap9:Sec1 Chateaubriand’s Essai revived after his restoration.
BkXXII:Chap1:Sec1 BkXXII:Chap 26:Sec1 BkXXVII:Chap10:Sec1 BkXXXVII:Chap9:Sec1 In 1813 he was living at Hartwell House in Buckinghamshire, England. The proclamation was dated 1st February 1813. He occupied Hartwell sixty miles from London between 1809 and 1814.
BkXXII:Chap8:Sec1 His return to Paris in 1814.
BkXXII:Chap15:Sec1 BkXXVIII:Chap17:Sec1 His comment on De Buonaparte et Des Bourbons.
BkXXII:Chap 20:Sec2 Napoleon’s advice for him.
BkXXII:Chap 21:Sec1 He left Dover for Calais on the 24th April 1814. He resurrected the Maison-Rouge, the King’s companies who wore a red uniform.
BkXXIII:Chap4:Sec1 He fled to Ghent in March 1815 during the Hundred Days.
BkXXIII:Chap5:Sec1 BkXXIII:Chap15:Sec1 Occupied the Prinsenhof at Ghent during the Hundred Days.
BkXXV:Chap1:Sec1 His inconsequentiality compared with Napoleon.
BkXXVII:Chap2:Sec1 His concern over Monsieur Decazes.
BkXXVII:Chap10:Sec1 Chateaubriand gives a dinner in his honour in London in 1822, on the feast of Saint Louis, 25th August.
BkXXVIII:Chap4:Sec1 BkXXVIII:Chap5:Sec1 He died on the 16th of September 1824 at four in the morning. The body was transported to St Denis on the 23rd where it lay in state for a month before inhumation.
BkXXVIII:Chap5:Sec1 He had no coronation.
BkXXVIII:Chap18:Sec1 His comment regarding the death of Moreau.
BkXXXIII:Chap9:Sec1 His reign an interlude in the revolutionary trend.
BkXXXVII:Chap13:Sec1 The brother of Charles X (and Louis XVI).
BkXXXVII:Chap14:Sec1 The reasons behind his Restoration.
BkXXXIX:Chap3:Sec1 He died in 1824.
BkXLII:Chap9:Sec1 Mentioned.
Louis XIX. See Duc d’Angoulême
Louis-Philippe-Joseph, Duc d’Orléans, ‘Philippe Egalité’
1747-1793. Father of Louis-Philippe, a cousin of Louis XVI he nevertheless voted for his death. He joined the radical Jacobins in 1791. He was himself executed after his son had joined the Austrian coalition against France.
BkV:Chap8:Sec2 Popular support for him in the streets of Paris in July 1789.
BkV:Chap14:Sec1 His mistress, Marguerite de Buffon.
BkV:Chap15:Sec1 He spent several months in England between October 1789 and July 1790, returning on the 7th July and declaring his obedience to the King.
BkXVII:Chap1:Sec1 His bawdy activities at Monceaux.
BkXXIII:Chap11:Sec1 BkXXXII:Chap14:Sec1 His son’s claims to the throne.
BkXLII:Chap1:Sec1 His execution.
Louis-Philippe III, Duc d’Orléans, King of the French
1773-1850. King of the French 1830-1848. He supported the Revolution until 1793 when he deserted to the Austrians living abroad until 1814. He joined the liberal opposition to the restored Louis XVIII and came to the throne after the July Revolution ousted Louis’ successor Charles X. Called the Citizen King by Thiers he relied on middle class support. He instigated repressions against the many rebellions against his rule, and abdicated in the revolution of 1848. He retired to England, dying at Claremont, in Surrey.
BkXVII:Chap4:Sec1 Charte-Vérité was an ironical allusion to the closing words of Louis-Philippe’s Constitutional Charter of the July monarchy, in 1830 ‘La Charte sera désormais une vérité: the Charter will be a reality from now on.’
BkXX:Chap10:Sec1 He initiated the First French Algerian War (1830-148) It took less than three weeks for the French armed forces to achieve victory in the summer of 1830. French dominion was formalized on July 5 by a surrender agreement which was forced on the Dey (local ruler), Hussein. Five days later Hussein and his family went into exile in Naples. Achieving victory over the forces led by the man now regarded as the first Algerian national hero, Abd al Kedir, who at one time controlled two-thirds of the country and whose army reached the gates of Algiers, however, would require an increase in army numbers to 110,000 before it was generally considered, in 1848, that a degree of effective military control had been established. Even then, that control was only over the most northerly part of the country.
BkXXII:Chap16:Sec1 Chateaubriand writing this chapter during his reign.
BkXXIII:Chap1:Sec1 At the time of Napoleon’s landing from Elba in 1815.
BkXXIII:Chap3:Sec1 Chateaubriand suggested he leave for Metz in 1815.
BkXXIII:Chap11:Sec1 His claims negotiated at the Congress of Vienna.
BkXXV:Chap11:Sec1 At the scene of the Duc de Berry’s assassination in 1820.
BkXXVIII:Chap7:Sec1 BkXXXVIII:Chap4:Sec1 Mentioned.
BkXXIX:Chap1:Sec2 Madame Récamier meets him at the Opera in 1802.
BkXXXII:Chap2:Sec1 In July 1830 he stayed outside Paris during the disturbances.
BkXXXII:Chap3:Sec1 His royalty harmed by his method of reaching power.
BkXXXII:Chap4:Sec1 Mentioned as a possible ruler on 28th July 1830.
BkXXXII:Chap6:Sec1 BkXXXII:Chap11:Sec1 The Orléanists working on his behalf on the 29th of July 1830.
BkXXXII:Chap8:Sec1 BkXXXVI:Chap5:Sec1 Chateaubriand’s refusal to serve under him.
BkXXXII:Chap11:Sec1 He fought at Jemmapes and Valmy.
BkXXXII:Chap13:Sec1 His desire for power.
BkXXXII:Chap14:Sec1 At the Palais-Royal, 30th July 1830 a little before midnight.
BkXXXII:Chap15:Sec1 BkXXXIII:Chap1:Sec1 At the Hôtel de Ville on the 31st of July.
BkXXXIII:Chap3:Sec1 Speaks to the Peers and Deputies on the 3rd of August 1830.
BkXXXIII:Chap5:Sec1 Wishes Chateaubriand to serve under him.
BkXXXIII:Chap7:Sec1 Chateaubriand suggests him as Regent only.
BkXXXIII:Chap8:Sec1 He becomes King of the French in 1830.
BkXXXIV:Chap13:Sec1 Lafayette deceived by him.
BkXXXV:Chap25:Sec1 Mentioned.
BkXXXVII:Chap3:Sec1 BkXXXIX:Chap2:Sec1 His treatment of the Duchess de Berry and his milking the state of cash.
BkXXXVII:Chap14:Sec1 Technically the legitimate heir of Henri V.
BkXL:Chap1:Sec1 Not recognised by the Duke of Modena.
BkXL:Chap3:Sec1 His attempts to have the Duchess of Berry detained, in Italy in 1833.
BkXL:Chap4:Sec1 Mentioned.
BkXL:Chap7:Sec1 In 1831 the Belgians sought a new king. The village of Tegelen near Vanloo proposed Chateaubriand. Leopold of Saxe-Cobourg was elected and in 1832 married Louise, Philippe’s daughter.
BkXLI:Chap3:Sec1 His usurpation of the throne.
BkXLII:Chap1:Sec1 A further description of the man and his reign.
BkXLII:Chap4:Sec1 Mentioned.
Louis I of Bavaria
1786-1868. King of Bavaria from 1825, he was a patron of the arts and an ardent philhellene, who wished to make his capital a ‘New Athens’. The events of 1848 and his liaison with the dancer Lola Montès, forced him to abdicate in favour of his son.
BkXXX:Chap4:Sec1 He visits Chateaubriand in 1829.
Louis, Louis (Ludwig) Joseph Anton Johann, Archduke of Austria, Prince of Hungary, Prince of Bohemia and Prince of Tuscany, Archduke
1784-1864. 15th son of Emperor Leopold II of Austria, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Hungary and Bohemia, Grand Duke of Tuscany and Maria Luisa de Bourbon, Infanta of Spain. He joined the Austrian Imperial Army at an early age and soon gained the rank of General Field Marshal. He retired after the revolution of 1848 and lived quietly until his death in Vienna
BkXX:Chap10:Sec1 Defeated at Abensberg in April 1809.
Louis-Ferdinand of Prussia, Prince
1773-1806. Probably the most gifted Prussian soldier of the post-Frederick era, his promise was never fulfilled because of his tragically early death in action at the battle of Saalfeld. He was commanding 8,300 men against Lannes’ V Corps when the French left-hand column tried to break out from the Thuringerwald passes early in the Campaign of 1806. He was killed by Guindet, quartermaster of the 10th French Hussars. As a prominent leader of the Prussian court war-party, his death was a major blow to Prussia.
BkXVI:Chap9:Sec1 BkXX:Chap6:Sec1 Mentioned.
Louis, Joseph Dominique, Abbé and Baron
1755-1837. French statesman and financier, at the outbreak of the Revolution Abbé Louis (he had earlier taken orders) already had a reputation as a financial expert. In 1792 he emigrated to England, where he spent his time studying English institutions and especially the financial system of Pitt. Returning to France on the establishment of the Consulate he served successively in the ministry of war, the council of state, and in the finance department in Holland and in Paris. Made a baron of the empire in 1809 he nevertheless supported the Bourbon restoration and was minister of finance in 1814-1815. Baron Louis was deputy from 1815 to 1824 and from 1827 to 1832. He resumed the portfolio of finance in 1815, which he held also in the Decazes ministry of 1818; he was the first minister of finance under the government of Louis-Philippe, and held the same portfolio in 1831-1832. In 1832 he was made a peer of France.
BkV:Chap15:Sec1 Assisted at the celebration of the Mass during the Festival of the Federation in July 1790.
BkXXII:Chap 24:Sec1 Minister of Finance, 1814.
BkXXIII:Chap5:Sec1 In Ghent during the Hundred Days.
BkXXIII:Chap19:Sec1 At Mons during the return from Ghent in 1815.
BkXXXII:Chap8:Sec1 Named as Commissioner for Finance of the Municipal Commission, 29th July 1830.
BkXXXIII:Chap7:Sec2 Chateaubriand writes to him in August 1830.
Louise Auguste Wilhelmine Amelie of Mecklenberg-Strelitz, Queen of Prussia
1776-1810. She was born in Hanover where her father, Karl of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, was field marshal of the household brigade. Her mother was Princess Friederike Caroline Luise of Hesse-Darmstadt. In 1793, at Frankfurt, Louise met the crown prince of Prussia, afterwards King Frederick William III. They were married on December 24 of the same year. After the battles of Eylau and Friedland, she made a personal appeal to Napoleon at his headquarters in Tilsit, but without success.
BkXX:Chap6:Sec2 BkXXII:Chap13:Sec1 BkXXVI:Chap6:Sec1
BkXXVI:Chap9:Sec1 During the war Napoleon attempted to destroy the queen’s reputation in his Bulletins of the Grand Army.
BkXXII:Chap5:Sec1 Mentioned.
BkXXVI:Chap6:Sec1 Her death on the 19th of July 1810.
Louise de France, Princesse, Mademoiselle
1819-1870. Elder sister of the Duc de Bordeaux, she married Charles-Louis of Bourbon-Parma in 1845.
BkXXXVII:Chap2:Sec1 BkXXXVII:Chap4:Sec1 BkXXXVII:Chap5:Sec1
In Prague in 1833.
BkXXXVII:Chap9:Sec1 At the Hradschin 27th May 1833.
BkXXXVII:Chap10:Sec1 Chateaubriand compares her to Shakespeare’s Perdita in Bohemia.
BkXXXVII:Chap12:Sec1 At the Hradschin on 29th May 1833.
BkXXXVIII:Chap10:Sec1 Sends Chateaubriand a seal.
BkXLI:Chap3:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lourdes, France
A town in the Hautes-Pyrénées département in France. It is the largest Catholic religious pilgrimage location in France. It is situated in the southwest of the country in the foothills of the Pyrenees mountains.
BkXXXI:Chap2:Sec1 Chateaubriand there in August 1829.
Louvel, Louis-Pierre
1783-1820. A Bonapartist saddler, he assassinated the Duc de Berry on February 13th 1820 as the Duke was leaving the Paris Opera House. He was executed.
BkXXII:Chap 21:Sec1 He told the police he had sworn to kill all the Bourbons, and had gone to Calais in April 1814 intending to stab Louis XVIII.
BkXXV:Chap5:Sec1 His assassination of the Duke caused, indirectly, Decazes’ fall from grace.
BkXXV:Chap11:Sec1 Described.
BkXXVI:Chap10:Sec1 BkXXXIV:Chap11:Sec1 BkXXXV:Chap24:Sec1
His crime mentioned.
Louvois, François Michel Le Tellier, Marquis de
1641-1691. A French statesman and minister during the reign of Louis XIV, he was associated in office after 1654 with his father Michel Le Tellier and from 1666 he functioned as war minister officially replacing his father in 1677. The devastation of the Palatinate (1689) by the French army under his orders during the War of the Grand Alliance earned him condemnation throughout Europe.
BkXXXVIII:Chap9:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lovelace, Richard
1618-1658. The English poet, friend and defender of Charles I, was imprisoned in the Tower of London by Cromwell. He was the author of the famous lines ‘Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage’ from his poem ‘To Althaea: from prison’.
BkXXXV:Chap4:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lovelace, Robert
The character, a libertine and rapist, appears in Samuel Richardson’s novel, Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady (1747-48). The longest novel to have been written in the English language, it is Richardson’s darkest work. Centred round the attempted seduction of a beautiful young woman, Clarissa is a complex, haunting and psychologically compelling exploration of desire, duty and the social dynamics of eighteenth-century culture. Richardson (1689-1761) was admired by Madame de Staël and Denis Diderot, and inspired two important epistolary novels, La nouvelle Héloïse (1761) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Les liaisons dangereuses (1782) by Choderlos de Laclos.
BkV:Chap14:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lowe, Sir Hudson,
1769-1844. A British general, he fought with credit throughout the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, mainly in the Mediterranean region, and served (1816–21) as Governor (appointed by the British Government, the island belonging still to the East India Company) of St. Helena and custodian of Napoleon I. He was criticized severely for his alleged mistreatment of the French exiles on St. Helena. His later years were largely spent in controversy on this score, and he wrote a self-vindication.
BkXXII:Chap 20:Sec3 Mentioned.
BkXXIV:Chap4:Sec1 BkXXIV:Chap10:Sec1 The antagonism between Napoleon and himself. Lowe arrived on St Helena on the 14th of April 1816.
Loyola, Ignacio López de Loyola, St Ignatius of
1491-1556. The principal founder and first Superior General of the Society of Jesus, a religious order of the Catholic Church professing direct service to the Pope in terms of mission. Members of the order are called Jesuits.
BkXXXVII:Chap3:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lozzano, Madame
She was a member of the Roman nobility in 1828.
BkXXIX:Chap8:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lübeck
The second largest city in Schleswig-Holstein, in northern Germany, it was for several centuries the ‘capital’ of the Hanseatic League (‘Queen of the Hanse’)The old part of the town is an island enclosed by the Trave river. It is the largest German port on the Baltic.
BkXX:Chap6:Sec1 Troops under Bernadotte occupied the neutral Lübeck after a battle against Blücher on November 6th, 1806.
BkXXXV:Chap11:Sec1 The thirty metre painting of the Dance of Death by Bernte Notke of 1436: a copy of the painting made in 1701 was destroyed in the Second World War. A second original by Notke exists in Tallinn.
Le Luc en Provence, France
A town in the Var, in 1598, the Edict of Nantes declared Luc one of the three towns in Provence where Protestants could freely exercise their religion. Their temple was destroyed in 1685, after the revocation of the Nantes edict.
BkXXII:Chap 20:Sec2 Austrian hussars there in 1814.
Lucan, Marcus Annaeus Lucanus
39-65 AD. The Latin poet, born in Córdoba, Spain, he was a nephew of the philosopher Seneca. At first in Nero’s favour, he was later forced to commit suicide when his part in a plot against the emperor was discovered. Ten books of his epic Bellum Civile (on the civil war between Caesar and Pompey), erroneously called Pharsalia, survive. Though the poem is written in a severe style and is often digressive and extravagant, it has a kind of vigorous beauty and grandeur, which gave Lucan a high place in the esteem of later writers.
BkXIV:Chap2:Sec3 A reference to Pharsalia, Canto III.
BkXXXIV:Chap14:Sec1 See Pharsalia, Canto VI.
Lucca, Italy
An ancient Etruscan city in Tuscany, northern central Italy, situated on the river Serchio in a fertile plain near (but not on) the Ligurian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Lucca.
BkXXIX:Chap2:Sec1 In 1805 Lucca was taken over by Napoleon, who made his sister Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi ‘Queen of Etruria’. After 1815 it became a Bourbon-Parma duchy, then part of Tuscany in 1847 and finally part of the Italian State.
BkXXX:Chap1:Sec2 Mentioned.
Lucchesi-Palli, Comte Hector
1808-1864. He was the son of the Duca della Grazia, Prince of Campo Franco. A young diplomat he made a morganatic marriage with the Duchess de Berry, the widow of the Duke, which was declared to have taken place on the 14th of December 1831, though the matter is confused, and may have been contrived to legitimise her pregnancy in 1832.
BkXXXVI:Chap2:Sec1 BkXXXVII:Chap3:Sec1 Mentioned.
BkXL:Chap3:Sec1 BkXL:Chap4:Sec1 In Ferrara in September 1833.
Luchesi-Palli, Marie-Caroline de Bourbon, Comtesse de, see Berry
Lucerne
The town in Central Switzerland is on Lake Lucerne. The Lion of Lucerne, a monument to the Swiss Guards who fell in Paris in 1792 is a notable feature. It also has a Benedictine monastery and a 17th century cathedral.
BkXXXV:Chap10:Sec1 Chateaubriand left Paris on the 8th of August 1832, his wife was to join him at Lucerne some weeks later.
BkXXXV:Chap11:Sec2 BkXXXVIII:Chap9:Sec1 Chateaubriand writes his journal there 14th-16th August. The bridge mentioned is the Kappelbrücke, then the Hofbrücke, ornamented with a hundred and twelve historical and saintly pictures. Mount Rigi is to the north of the lake, Mount Pilatus to the south-west. The Bay of Uri is the easterly basin of the lake.
Lucian of Samosate
120-d. later than 180. A Roman rhetorician and satirist, he wrote in Greek. The first printed edition of a selection of his works was issued at Florence in 1499. His best known works are The True History (a romance, with a trip to the moon), and Dialogues of the Gods and Dialogues of the Dead.
BkXXXVII:Chap6:Sec1 His Treatise On Amber and Swans.
BkXLII:Chap7:Sec1 Musarium, and her mother, who speak the dialogue, and Chaereas (Musarium’s admirer) are characters in Lucian’s Dialogues of the Heterae VII, here edited by Chateaubriand.
Lucrèce = Lucrezia Buti
The story goes that in 1458, Filippo Lippi was commissioned to paint a picture for the convent chapel of S. Margherita of Prato, and there saw Lucrezia Buti, the beautiful daughter of a Florentine, Francesco Buti; she was either a novice or a young lady placed under the nuns’ guardianship. Lippi asked that she might be permitted to sit for the figure of the Madonna (or it might rather appear of S. Margherita); he made love to her, abducted her, and kept her despite the utmost efforts of the nuns to reclaim her. A later myth suggests her relatives poinsoned him in a vendetta. Their son was the painter Filippino Lippi.
BkXXIX:Chap2:Sec3 Mentioned.
Lucretius
c98-55BC Titus Lucretius Carus, the Roman philosopher and poet, whose single extant work, De rerum Natura, consists of six books expounding the philosophy of Epicurus, including the atomic theory of phenomena and the materiality and mortality of the soul.
BkII:Chap3:Sec4 Chateaubriand quotes from the first verse of the work, the celebrated invocation to Venus: ‘Aeneadum genitrix, hominum divumque voluptas: Mother of Aeneas, delight of men and of gods’
BkIII:Chap6:Sec1 Chateaubriand quotes De rerum Natura 222-223.
BkVIII:Chap2:Sec1 Chateaubriand quotes De rerum Natura II 578-580. Quoted also in Montaigne’s Essais I.19 from which essay Chateaubriand derives the thoughts utilised here.
BkIX:Chap7:Sec2 Chateaubriand quotes De rerum Natura 828.
BkXXVI:Chap6:Sec1 The quotation is from De rerum Natura 1083. In context it means (some birds with age even modify their raucous) song: thus the crows centuries old (and the flocks of rooks).
BkXXXIV:Chap14:Sec1 See De rerum Natura VI 1138.
Lucrezia Borgia
1480-1519. She was the illegitimate daughter of Rodrigo Borgia, the powerful Renaissance Valencian, who later became Pope Alexander VI and Vannozza dei Cattanei. Her brother was the notorious despot Cesare Borgia. The subject of many tales portraying her as wicked, possibly all apocryphal.
BkXXX:Chap2:Sec2 Mentioned.
Ludwig I of Bavaria
1786-1868. King of Bavaria from 1825 until the 1848 revolutions in the German states, he supported the Greek fight for independence: His second son Otto was elected king of Greece in 1832. After the July Revolution in France 1830, his previous liberal policy became more and more repressive. Ludwig was tainted by scandal associated with one of his mistresses, Lola Montez and he abdicated on March 20, 1848 in favour of his son, Maximilian.
BkXXX:Chap6:Sec2 In Rome in 1829.
Lugano, Lake
A lake in the south-east of Switzerland, at the border between Switzerland and Italy, it is named after the city of Lugano, and situated between Lago Maggiore and Lago di Como.
BkXXXV:Chap14:Sec1 Chateaubriand’s destination in August 1832. The Tremola Valley road, built between 1827 and 1830 on the southern flank of the Gotthard Pass, rises in hair-raising serpentines 1000 meters between the ridge of the Pass and Airolo.
Luke, Saint
d.c 84. The Evangelist is by tradition the author of both the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, the third and fifth books of the New Testament. In Catholicism, he is patron saint of painters, physicians and healers
BkXXXV:Chap21:Sec1 See Luke XXIV:5
BkXXXIX:Chap18:Sec1 For the widow of Nain and her son see Luke VII:11-15. For the woman who touched the border of his garment see Luke VIII:43-48.
BkXL:Chap2:Sec3 See Luke XXIII:46, the last words of Jesus on the Cross.
BkXLII:Chap16:Sec1 See Luke XI:46.
Luna, Pedro de
1328-1422/3. An anti-Pope (illegal claimant to the Papacy) he was elected at the Conclave in Avignon in 1394 and took the name Benedict XIII.
BkXXX:Chap2:Sec2 Mentioned.
Lunéville
The Treaty of Lunéville (in Lorraine) was signed on February 9 1801 between the French Republic and the Holy Roman Empire by Joseph Bonaparte and Louis, Count Cobentzel, respectively. The treaty marked the end of the Second Coalition; Britain was the sole nation still at war with France.
BkXX:Chap2:Sec2 Mentioned.
BkXXXIII:Chap4:Sec1 A major military camp in 1830.
Lusignan, Marguerite de
c1220-1288 Daughter (not widow) of John Lackland, King of England (son of Louis VII Le Jeune) and Isabelle d’Angoulême. Grand-daughter of Louis VI le Gros.
BkI:Chap1:Sec6 Married Geoffroy V de Chateaubriand about 1269.
Luther, Martin
1483-1546. The German Protestant reformer was the founder of Lutheranism. An Augustinian monk and priest, he was professor of theology at Wittenberg in 1511. He attacked the corrupt Papacy and believed in salvation by faith alone, and that human will was incapable of following the good. He appeared before Charles V’s imperial diet at Worms but refused to recant and was outlawed. He married a former nun and opposed the Peasant’s Revolt (1524-1525). With the Augsburg Confession (1530) a separate Protestant church emerged.
BkIV:Chap1:Sec2 His chair in the Protestant Cathedral at Potsdam.
BkXXVI:Chap1:Sec1 His tomb in Wittenberg visited by Chateaubriand in 1821.
BkXXX:Chap2:Sec2 Nominated Pope by the soldiers of the Constable de Bourbon!
BkXXXV:Chap11:Sec1 BkXXXVI:Chap6:Sec1 BkXXXVII:Chap11:Sec1
Mentioned.
Lützen, Battle of
The town lies in the district of Weißenfels, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. It is situated approximately 18 km southwest of Leipzig. The first major engagement of the War of the Sixth Coalition during the Napoleonic Wars was fought there. France’s hastily assembled army consisted of just over 200,000 largely inexperienced recruits and was severely short of horses. Napoleon crossed the Rhine into Germany to link up with remnants of his old Grand Army, and quickly defeat this new alliance before it became too strong. On May 2, 1813, the Russian commander, Prince Peter Wittgenstein, attacked Napoleon’s advanced column near Lützen, in an attempt to undo Napoleon’s capture of Leipzig. After a day of heavy fighting, the combined Prussian and Russian force retreated, but without cavalry the French were unable to follow their defeated enemy.
BkXXII:Chap4:Sec1 BkXXIII:Chap1:Sec1 BkXXIII:Chap14:Sec1 BkXXXII:Chap3:Sec1 Mentioned.
BkXXII:Chap5:Sec1 Körner wounded there.
Lutzow, Count
He was Austrian ambassador in Rome in 1828, having previously served in Constantinople and Turin.
BkXXIX:Chap5:Sec1 BkXXX:Chap1:Sec2 BkXXX:Chap6:Sec1
BkXXX:Chap6:Sec2 Mentioned.
Lutzow, Countess
The wife of the Count.
BkXXIX:Chap5:Sec1 Mentioned.
Luxembourg, François-Henri de Montmorency-Bouteville, Duc de Piney, Marshal, called Duc de
1628-1695. A French general, marshal of France, famous as the comrade and successor of the great Condé. He was Head of the Army of the Rhine in 1676.
BkXXXVIII:Chap9:Sec1 Mentioned.
Luynes, Albert, Duc de
1578-1621. Being adept at training little sporting birds, called butcher-birds (pies grièches, or shrikes), then all the rage, Louis XIII made him his falconer and lived on familiar terms with him.
BkXXXIX:Chap1:Sec1 Mentioned.
Luxor, Egypt
A city in Upper Egypt and the capital of the Al Uqsur governorate, beside the Nile, it is the site of the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes. The ruins of the temple complexes at Karnak and Luxor stand within the modern city.
BkXLII:Chap9:Sec1 Source of the obelisk in the Place de la Concorde in Paris. The obelisk with inscriptions from the reigns of the Pharaohs Ramses II and III once graced the entrance to the Temple of Amon at Luxor.
Lycas, or Lichas
In Greek mythology he was the courier who brought Hercules (Heracles) the poisoned shirt of Nessus and whom Hercules flung into the Euboean Sea where he became a rock avoided by sailors.
BkXXIX:Chap6:Sec1 Mentioned.
Lycurgus
?700-630BC. The legendary lawgiver of Sparta, he established the military-oriented reformation of Spartan society in accordance with the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi. Later he is supposed to have returned to Delphi and on being told that his reforms were good, chose not to return but to end his life there and starved himself to death .
BkXXVI:Chap1:Sec1 See Plutarch Lycurgus LX-LXI. Chateaubriand compares his self-sacrifice with that of Lycurgus.
Lydia
A mistress of Horace addressed in his Odes.
BkXXX:Chap13:Sec1 BkXXXV:Chap15:Sec1 BkXXXVIII:Chap5:Sec1
Mentioned.
Lyon (Lyons), France
The third largest city in France, it is the capital of the Rhone department at the confluence of the Rivers Rhône and Saône.
BkXIV:Chap2:Sec1 Chateaubriand there in 1802.
BkXIV:Chap6:Sec1 Chateaubriand arrived there Saturday 28th May 1803.
BkXVII:Chap3:Sec1 Chateaubriand there in 1805.
BkXVII:Chap4:Sec1 BkXXIII:Chap10:Sec1 BkXXIII:Chap20:Sec3 He returned to Lyons on 31st August 1805. Les Brotteaux is a district of Lyons near the Rhone, urbanised in the eighteenth century. A massacre occurred there during the Revolution.
BkXIX:Chap9:Sec1 BkXXXVIII:Chap8:Sec1 Mentioned.
BkXIX:Chap18:Sec2 Napoleon there in 1799. ‘La Route Bourbonnaise’ runs to Fontainebleau via Nevers.
BkXXII:Chap9:Sec1 Defensive deployments undertaken there in 1814.
BkXXII:Chap 20:Sec1 Napoleon passed through in 1814 on his way to Elba.
BkXXVIII:Chap10:Sec1 The Chateaubriands there in early May 1826.
BkXXIX:Chap1:Sec1 The Jardin des Plantes was established in 1792 by Jean Emmanual Gilbert a Doctor of Botany, above the site of the Gallo-Roman Amphitheatre des Trois Gaules, on the hill of Croix-Rousse in the north of the City. (The Three Gauls were Lugdunenis, Belgica, and Aquitania, Lyons being the Roman capital of the three regions of Gaul.) The Abbaye was an ancient pre-Revolutionary foundation.
BkXXIX:Chap1:Sec3 Madame Récamier was born in Lyons, and so is Chateaubriand’s ‘daughter of the Rhône’.
BkXXIX:Chap1:Sec5 Ballanche came from Lyons.
BkXXIX:Chap17:Sec1 Equipped with a telegraph station in 1829.
BkXXX:Chap2:Sec1 The second Council of Lyons met from 7th May to the 27th July 1274.
BkXXXIV:Chap6:Sec1 Chateaubriand there in May 1831. He and his wife left Paris on the 16th, arriving in Lyons on the 18th, and staying till the 22nd.
BkXLII:Chap1:Sec1 There was republican insurrection in Lyon in November 1831 and again in the spring of 1834.