and the title of Louviers le Franc for the bravery of its inhabitants
in driving the English from Pont de l’Arche, Verneuil and Harcourt.
It passed through various troubles successively at the period of the
League of the Public Weal under Louis XI., in the religious wars
(when the parlement of Rouen sat for a time at Louviers) and in the
wars of the Fronde.
See G. Petit, Hist. de Louviers (Louviers, 1877).
LOUVOIS, FRANÇOIS MICHEL LE TELLIER, Marquis de
(1641–1691), French statesman, war minister of Louis XIV.,
was born at Paris on the 18th of January 1641. His father,
Michel le Tellier (q.v.), married him to an heiress, the marquise
de Courtenvaux, and instructed him in the management of state
business. The young man won the king’s confidence, and in 1666
he succeeded his father as war minister. His talents were perceived
by Turenne in the war of Devolution (1667–68), who gave
him instruction in the art of providing armies. After the peace
of Aix-la-Chapelle, Louvois devoted himself to organizing the
French army. The years between 1668 and 1672, says Camille
Rousset, “were years of preparation, when Lionne was labouring
with all his might to find allies, Colbert to find money, and
Louvois soldiers for Louis.” The work of Louvois in these years
is bound up with the historical development of the French army
and of armies in general (see Army). Here need only be mentioned
Louvois’s reorganization of the military orders of merit,
his foundation of the Hôtel des Invalides, and the almost forcible
enrolment of the nobility and gentry of France, in which Louvois
carried out part of Louis’s measures for curbing the spirit of
independence by service in the army or at court. The success
of his measures is to be seen in the victories of the great war of
1672–78. After the peace of Nijmwegen Louvois was high in
favour, his father had been made chancellor, and the influence of
Colbert was waning. The ten years of peace between 1678 and
1688 were distinguished in French history by the rise of Madame
de Maintenon, the capture of Strassburg and the revocation of
the Edict of Nantes, in all of which Louvois bore a prominent
part. The surprise of Strassburg in 1681 in time of peace was not
only planned but executed by Louvois and Monclar. A saving
clause in the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which provided
for some liberty of conscience, if not of worship, Louvois sharply
annulled with the phrase “Sa majesté veut qu’on fasse sentir
les dernières rigueurs à ceux qui ne voudront pas se faire de sa
religion.” He claimed also the credit of inventing the dragonnades,
and mitigated the rigour of the soldiery only in so far as
the licence accorded was prejudicial to discipline. Discipline,
indeed, and complete subjection to the royal authority was the
political faith of Louvois. Colbert died in 1683, and had been
replaced by Le Pelletier, an adherent of Louvois, in the controller-generalship
of finances, and by Louvois himself in his ministry
for public buildings, which he took that he might be the minister
able to gratify the king’s two favourite pastimes, war and building.
Louvois was able to superintend the successes of the first
years of the war of the League of Augsburg, but died suddenly of
apoplexy after leaving the king’s cabinet on July 16, 1691.
His sudden death caused a suspicion of poison. Louvois was one
of the greatest of the rare class of great war ministers. French
history can only point to Carnot as his equal. Both had to
organize armies out of old material on a new system, both were
admirable contrivers of campaigns, and both devoted themselves
to the material well-being of the soldiers. In private life and
in the means employed for gaining his ends, Louvois was unscrupulous
and shameless.
The principal authority for Louvois’s life and times is Camille Rousset’s Histoire de Louvois (Paris, 1872), a great work founded on the 900 volumes of his despatches at the Depôt de la Guerre. Saint Simon from his class prejudices is hardly to be trusted, but Madame de Sévigné throws many side-lights on his times. Testament politique de Louvois (1695) is spurious.
LOUŸS, PIERRE (1870– ), French novelist and poet, was
born in Paris on the 10th of December 1870. When he was
nineteen he founded a review, La Conque, which brought him
into contact with the leaders of the Parnassians, and counted
Swinburne, Maeterlinck, Mallarmé and others among its contributors.
He won notoriety by his novel Aphrodite (1896),
which gave a vivid picture of Alexandrian morals at the
beginning of the Christian era. His Chansons de Bilitis, roman
lyrique (1894), which purported to be a translation from the
Greek, is a glorification of Sapphic love, which in subject-matter
is objectionable in the highest degree; but its delicate decadent
prose is typical of a modern French literary school, and some
of the “songs” were set to music by Debussy and others. Later
books are: La Femme et le pantin (1898); Les Aventures du roi
Pausole (1900); Sanguines (1903); Archipel (1906). Louÿs
married in 1899 Louise de Heredia, younger daughter of the poet.
LOVAT, SIMON FRASER, 12th Baron (c. 1667–1747), Scottish
chief and Jacobite intriguer, was born about 1667 and was the
second son of Thomas Fraser, third son of the 8th Lord Lovat.
The barony of Lovat dates from about 1460, in the person of
Hugh Fraser, a descendant of Simon Fraser (killed at Halidon
Hill in 1338) who acquired the tower and fort of Lovat near
Beauly, Inverness-shire, and from whom the clan Fraser was
called “Macshimi” (sons of Simon). Young Simon was educated
at King’s College, Aberdeen, and his correspondence afterwards
gives proof, not only of a command of good English and idiomatic
French, but of such an acquaintance with the Latin classics as
to leave him never at a loss for an apt quotation from Virgil or
Horace. Whether Lovat ever felt any real loyalty to the Stuarts
or was actuated by self-interest it is difficult to determine, but
that he was a born traitor and deceiver there can be no doubt.
One of his first acts on leaving college was to recruit three hundred
men from his clan to form part of a regiment in the service of
William and Mary, in which he himself was to hold a command,—his
object being to have a body of well-trained soldiers under his
influence, whom at a moment’s notice he might carry over to
the interest of King James. Among other outrages in which he
was engaged about this time was a rape and forced marriage
committed on the widow of the 10th Lord Lovat with the view
apparently of securing his own succession to the estates; and it
is a curious instance of influence that, after being subjected by
him to horrible ill-usage, she is said to have become seriously
attached to him. A prosecution, however, having been instituted
against him by Lady Lovat’s family, Simon retired first to his
native strongholds in the Highlands, and afterwards to France,
where he found his way in July 1702 to the court of St Germain.
In 1699, on his father’s death, he assumed the title of Lord Lovat.
One of his first steps towards gaining influence in France seems
to have been to announce his conversion to the Catholic faith.
He then proceeded to put the project of restoring the exiled
family into a practical shape. Hitherto nothing seems to have
been known among the Jacobite exiles of the efficiency of the
Highlanders as a military force. But Lovat saw that, as they
were the only part of the British population accustomed to the
independent use of arms, they could be at once put in action
against the reigning power. His plan therefore was to land
five thousand French troops at Dundee, where they might reach
the north-eastern passes of the Highlands in a day’s march, and
be in a position to divert the British troops till the Highlands
should have time to rise. Immediately afterwards five hundred
men were to land on the west coast, seize Fort William or Inverlochy,
and thus prevent the access of any military force from the
south to the central Highlands. The whole scheme indicates
Lovat’s sagacity as a military strategist, and his plan was
continuously kept in view in all future attempts of the Jacobites,
and finally acted on in the outbreak of 1745. The advisers of
the Pretender seem to have been either slow to trust their
coadjutor or to comprehend his project. At last, however,
he was despatched (1703) on a secret mission to the Highlands to
sound those of the chiefs who were likely to rise, and to ascertain
what forces they could bring into the field. He found, however,
that there was little disposition to join the rebellion, and he
then apparently made up his mind to secure his own safety by
revealing all that he knew to the government of Queen Anne.
He persuaded the duke of Queensberry that his rival, the duke
of Atholl, was in the Jacobite plot, and that if Queensberry
supported him he could obtain evidence of this at St Germain.
Queensberry foolishly entered into the intrigue with him against
Atholl, but when Lovat had gone to France with a pass from
