[1] The castle was largely rebuilt in the reign of Francis I., and is
one of the finest specimens of the Renaissance architecture in
France.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, FRANÇOIS DE (1613-1680), the greatest maxim writer of
France, one of her best memoir writers, and perhaps the most complete
and accomplished representative of her ancient nobility, was born at
Paris in the Rue des Petits Champs on the 15th of September 1613. The
author of the _Maxims_, who during the lifetime of his father (see
above) and part of his own most stirring years bore the title of prince
de Marcillac, was somewhat neglected in the matter of education, at
least of the scholastic kind; but he joined the army before he was
sixteen, and almost immediately began to make a figure in public life.
He had been nominally married a year before to Andrée de Vivonne, who
seems to have been an affectionate wife, while not a breath of scandal
touches her--two points in which La Rochefoucauld was perhaps more
fortunate than he deserved. For some years Marcillac continued to take
part in the annual campaigns, where he displayed the utmost bravery,
though he never obtained credit for much military skill. Then he passed
under the spell of Madame de Chevreuse, the first of three celebrated
women who successively influenced his life. Through Madame de Chevreuse
he became attached to the queen, Anne of Austria, and in one of her
quarrels with Richelieu and her husband a wild scheme seems to have been
formed, according to which Marcillac was to carry her off to Brussels on
a pillion. These caballings against Richelieu, however, had no more
serious results (an eight days' experience of the Bastille excepted)
than occasional exiles, that is to say, orders to retire to his father's
estates. After the death of the great minister (1642), opportunity
seemed to be favourable to the vague ambition which then animated half
the nobility of France. Marcillac became one of the so-called
_importants_, and took an active part in reconciling the queen and Condé
in a league against Gaston of Orleans. But the growing credit of Mazarin
came in his way, and the _liaison_ in which about this time (1645) he
became entangled with the beautiful duchess of Longueville made him
irrevocably a Frondeur. He was a conspicuous figure in the siege of
Paris, fought desperately in the desultory engagements which were
constantly taking place, and was severely wounded at the siege of
Mardyke. In the second Fronde Marcillac followed the fortunes of Condé,
and the death of his father, which happened at the time (1650), gave
rise to a characteristic incident. The nobility of the province gathered
to the funeral, and the new duke de La Rochefoucauld took the
opportunity of persuading them to follow him in an attempt on the
royalist garrison of Saumur, which, however, was not successful. We have
no space to follow La Rochefoucauld through the tortuous cabals and
negotiations of the later Fronde; it is sufficient to say that he was
always brave and generally unlucky. His run of bad fortune reached its
climax in the battle of the Faubourg Saint Antoine (1652), where he was
shot through the head, and it was thought that he would lose the sight
of both eyes. It was nearly a year before he recovered, and then he
found himself at his country seat of Verteuil, with no result of twenty
years' fighting and intriguing except impaired health, a seriously
embarrassed fortune, and some cause for bearing a grudge against almost
every party and man of importance in the state. He spent some years in
this retirement, and he was fortunate enough (thanks chiefly to the
fidelity of Gourville, who had been in his service, and who, passing
into the service of Mazarin and of Condé, had acquired both wealth and
influence) to be able to repair in some measure the breaches in his
fortune. He did not, however, return to court life much before Mazarin's
death, when Louis XIV. was on the eve of assuming absolute power, and
the turbulent aristocratic anarchy of the Fronde was a thing utterly of
the past.
Somewhat earlier, La Rochefoucauld had taken his place in the salon of
Madame de Sablé, a member of the old Rambouillet coterie, and the
founder of a kind of successor to it. It was known that he, like almost
all his more prominent contemporaries, had spent his solitude in writing
memoirs, while the special literary employment of the Sablé salon was
the fabrication of _Sentences_ and _Maxims_. In 1662, however, more
trouble than reputation, and not a little of both, was given to him by a
surreptitious publication of his memoirs, or what purported to be his
memoirs, by the Elzevirs. Many of his old friends were deeply wounded,
and he hastened to deny flatly the authenticity of the publication, a
denial which (as it seems, without any reason) was not very generally
accepted. Three years later (1665) he published, though without his
name, the still more famous _Maxims_, which at once established him high
among the men of letters of the time. About the same date began the
friendship with Madame de la Fayette, which lasted till the end of his
life. The glimpses which we have of him henceforward are chiefly derived
from the letters of Madame de Sévigné, and, though they show him
suffering agonies from gout, are on the whole pleasant. He had a circle
of devoted friends; he was recognized as a moralist and man of letters
of the first rank; he might have entered the Academy for the asking; and
in the altered measure of the times his son, the prince de Marcillac, to
whom some time before his death he resigned his titles and honours,
enjoyed a considerable position at court. Above all, La Rochefoucauld
was generally recognized by his contemporaries from the king downward as
a type of the older noblesse as it was before the sun of the great
monarch dimmed its brilliant qualities. This position he has retained
until the present day. He died at Paris on the 17th of March 1680, of
the disease which had so long tormented him.
La Rochefoucauld's character, if considered without the prejudice which
a dislike to his ethical views has sometimes occasioned, is thoroughly
respectable and even amiable. Like almost all his contemporaries, he saw
in politics little more than a chessboard where the people at large were
but pawns. The weight of testimony, however, inclines to the conclusion
that he was unusually scrupulous in his conduct, and that his
comparative ill-success in the struggle arose more from this
scrupulousness than from anything else. He has been charged with
irresolution, and there is some ground for admitting the charge so far
as to pronounce him one of those the keenness of whose intellect,
together with their apprehension of both sides of a question, interferes
with their capacity as men of action. But there is no ground whatever
for the view which represents the Maxims as the mere outcome of the
spite of a disappointed intriguer, disappointed through his own want of
skill rather than of fortune.
His importance as a social and historical figure is, however, far
inferior to his importance in literature. His work in this respect
consists of three parts--letters, _Memoirs_ and the _Maxims_. His
letters exceed one hundred in number, and are biographically valuable,
besides displaying not a few of his literary characteristics; but they
need not further detain us. The _Memoirs_, when they are read in their
proper form, yield in literary merit, in interest, and in value to no
memoirs of the time, not even to those of Retz, between whom and La
Rochefoucauld there was a strange mixture of enmity and esteem which
resulted in a couple of most characteristic "portraits." But their
history is unique in its strangeness. It has been said that a pirated
edition appeared in Holland, and this, despite the author's protest,
continued to be reprinted for some thirty years. It has been now proved
to be a mere cento of the work of half a dozen different men, scarcely a
third of which is La Rochefoucauld's, and which could only have been
possible at a time when it was the habit of persons who frequented
literary society to copy pell-mell in commonplace books the MS.
compositions of their friends and others. Some years after La
Rochefoucauld's death a new recension appeared, somewhat less incorrect
than the former, but still largely adulterated, and this held its ground
for more than a century. Only in 1817 did anything like a genuine
edition (even then by no means perfect) appear. The _Maxims_, however,
had no such fate. The author re-edited them frequently during his life,
with alterations and additions; a few were added after his death, and it
is usual now to print the whole of them, at whatever time they appeared,
together. Thus taken, they amount to about seven hundred in number, in
hardly any case exceeding half a page in length, and more frequently
confined to two or three lines. The view of conduct which they
illustrate is usually and not quite incorrectly summed up in the words
"everything is reducible to the motive of self-interest." But though not
absolutely incorrect, the phrase is misleading. The _Maxims_ are in no
respect mere deductions from or applications of any such general theory.
They are on the contrary independent judgments on different relations of
life, different affections of the human mind, and so forth, from which,
taken together, the general view may be deduced or rather composed.
Sentimental moralists have protested loudly against this view, yet it is
easier to declaim against it in general than to find a flaw in the
several parts of which it is made up. With a few exceptions La
Rochefoucauld's maxims represent the matured result of the reflection of
a man deeply versed in the business and pleasures of the world, and
possessed of an extraordinarily fine and acute intellect, on the conduct
and motives which have guided himself and his fellows. There is as
little trace in them of personal spite as of _forfanterie de vice_. But
the astonishing excellence of the literary medium in which they are
conveyed is even more remarkable than the general soundness of their
ethical import. In uniting the four qualities of brevity, clearness,
fulness of meaning and point, La Rochefoucauld has no rival. His
_Maxims_ are never mere epigrams; they are never platitudes; they are
never dark sayings. He has packed them so full of meaning that it would
be impossible to pack them closer, yet there is no undue compression; he
has sharpened their point to the utmost, yet there is no loss of
substance. The comparison which occurs most frequently, and which is
perhaps on the whole the justest, is that of a bronze medallion, and it
applies to the matter no less than to the form. Nothing is left
unfinished, yet none of the workmanship is finical. The sentiment, far
from being merely hard, as the sentimentalists pretend, has a vein of
melancholy poetry running through it which calls to mind the traditions
of La Rochefoucauld's devotion to the romances of chivalry. The maxims
are never shallow; each is the text for a whole sermon of application
and corollary which any one of thought and experience can write. Add to
all this that the language in which they are written is French, still at
almost its greatest strength, and chastened but as yet not emasculated
by the reforming influence of the 17th century, and it is not necessary
to say more. To the literary critic no less than to the man of the world
La Rochefoucauld ranks among the scanty number of pocket-books to be
read and re-read with ever new admiration, instruction and delight.
The editions of La Rochefoucauld's _Maxims_ (as the full title runs,
_Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales_) published in his
lifetime bear the dates 1665 (_editio princeps_), 1666, 1671, 1675,
1678. An important edition which appeared after his death in 1693 may
rank almost with these. As long as the _Memoirs_ remained in the state
above described, no edition of them need be mentioned, and none of the
complete works was possible. The previous more or less complete
editions are all superseded by that of MM Gilbert and Gourdault
(1868-1883), in the series of "Grands Écrivains de la France," 3 vols.
There are still some puzzles as to the text; but this edition supplies
all available material in regard to them. The handsomest separate
edition of the _Maxims_ is the so-called _Édition des bibliophiles_
(1870); but cheap and handy issues are plentiful. See the English
version by G. H. Powell (1903). Nearly all the great French critics of
the 19th century have dealt more or less with La Rochefoucauld: the
chief recent monograph on him is that of J. Bourdeau in the _Grands
écrivains français_ (1893). (G. Sa.)
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD-LIANCOURT, FRANÇOIS ALEXANDRE FRÉDÉRIC, DUC DE
(1747-1827), French social reformer, was born at La Roche Guyon on the
11th of January 1747, the son of François Armand de La Rochefoucauld,
duc d'Estissac, grand master of the royal wardrobe. The duc de Liancourt
became an officer of carbineers, and married at seventeen. A visit to
England seems to have suggested the establishment of a model farm at
Liancourt, where he reared cattle imported from England and Switzerland.
He also set up spinning machines on his estate, and founded a school of
arts and crafts for the sons of soldiers, which became in 1788 the École
des Enfants de la Patrie under royal protection. Elected to the
states-general of 1789 he sought in vain to support the cause of royalty
while furthering the social reforms he had at heart. On the 12th of
July, two days before the fall of the Bastille, he warned Louis XVI. of
the state of affairs in Paris, and met his exclamation that there was a
revolt with the answer, "_Non, sire, c'est une révolution._" On the 18th
of July he became president of the Assembly. Established in command of a
military division in Normandy, he offered Louis a refuge in Rouen, and,
failing in this effort, assisted him with a large sum of money. After
the events of the 10th of August 1792 he fled to England, where he was
the guest of Arthur Young, and thence passed to America. After the
assassination of his cousin, Louis-Alexandre, duc de La Rochefoucauld
d'Enville, at Gisors on the 14th of September 1792 he assumed the title
of duc de La Rochefoucauld. He returned to Paris in 1799, but received
small favour from Napoleon. At the Restoration he entered the House of
Peers, but Louis XVIII. refused to reinstate him as master of the
wardrobe, although his father had paid 400,000 francs for the honour.
Successive governments, revolutionary and otherwise, recognized the
value of his institutions at Liancourt, and he was for twenty-three
years government inspector of his school of arts and crafts, which had
been removed to Châlons. He was one of the first promoters of
vaccination in France; he established a dispensary in Paris, and he was
an active member of the central boards of administration for hospitals,
prisons and agriculture. His opposition to the government in the House
of Peers led to his removal in 1823 from the honorary positions he held,
while the vaccination committee, of which he was president, was
suppressed. The academies of science and of medicine admitted him to
their membership by way of protest. Official hostility pursued him even
after his death (27th of March 1827), for the old pupils of his school
were charged by the military at his funeral. His works, chiefly on
economic questions, include books on the English system of taxation,
poor-relief and education.
His eldest son, François, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1765-1848),
succeeded his father in the House of Peers. The second, Alexandre,
comte de La Rochefoucauld (1767-1841), married a San Domingo heiress
allied to the Beauharnais family. Mme de La Rochefoucauld became dame
d'honneur to the empress Josephine, and their eldest daughter married
a brother-in-law of Pauline Bonaparte, Princess Borghese. La
Rochefoucauld became ambassador successively to Vienna (1805) and to
the Hague (1808-1810), where he negotiated the union of Holland with
France. During the "Hundred Days" he was made a peer of France. He
subsequently devoted himself to philanthropic work, and in 1822 became
deputy to the Chamber and sat with the constitutional royalists. He
was again raised to the peerage in 1831.
The third son, Frédéric Gaétan, marquis de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
(1779-1863), was a zealous philanthropist and a partisan of
constitutional monarchy. He took no part in politics after 1848. The
marquis wrote on social questions, notably on prison administration;
he edited the works of La Rochefoucauld, and the memoirs of Condorcet;
and he was the author of some vaudevilles, tragedies and poems.
LA ROCHEJACQUELEIN, DE, the name of an ancient French family of La
Vendée, celebrated for its devotion to the throne during and after the
Revolution. Its original name was Duverger, derived from a fief near
Bressuire in Poitou, and its pedigree is traceable to the 13th century.
In 1505 Gui Duverger married Renée, heiress of Jacques Lemartin,
seigneur de La Rochejacquelein, whose name he assumed. His grandson,
Louis Duverger, seigneur de La Rochejacquelein, was a devoted adherent
of Henry II., and was badly wounded at the battle of Arques; other
members of the family were also distinguished soldiers, and the
seigniory was raised to a countship and marquisate in reward for their
services.
At the outbreak of the Revolution the chief of the family was HENRI
LOUIS AUGUSTE, marquis de La Rochejacquelein, _maréchal de camp_ in the
royal army, who had three sons named after himself--Henri, Louis and
Auguste. The marquis fled abroad with his second son Louis at the time
of the emigration of the nobles. He entered the service of Great
Britain, and died in San Domingo in 1802.
HENRI, comte de La Rochejacquelein, born at Dubertien, near Châtillon,
sur Sèvres, on the 20th of August 1772, did not emigrate with his
father. He served in the constitutional guard of the king, and remained
in Paris till the execution of Louis XVI. He then took refuge with the
marquis de Lescure on his own estates in Poitou. When the anti-clerical
policy of the revolutionary powers provoked the rising of the peasantry
of La Vendée, he put himself at the head of the men of his
neighbourhood, and came rapidly to the front among the gentlemen whom
the peasants took for leaders. In spite of his youth and his reluctance
to assume the responsibility, he was chosen as commander-in-chief after
the defeat of the Vendéans by the republicans at Cholet. His brilliant
personal courage, his amiability and his loyalty to the cause make him a
very attractive figure, but a commander-in-chief of the Vendéans, who
came and went as they pleased, had little real power or opportunity to
display the qualities of a general. The comte de La Rochejacquelein had
in fact to obey his army, and could only display his personal valour in
action. He could not avert the mistaken policy which led to the rout at
Le Mans, and was finally shot in an obscure skirmish at Nouaillé on the
4th of March 1794.
Louis, marquis de La Rochejacquelein, the younger brother of Henri,
accompanied his father in the emigration, served in the army of Condé,
and entered the service of England in America. He returned to France
during the Consulate, and in 1801 married the marquise de Lescure, widow
of his brother's friend, who was mortally wounded at Cholet. Marie
Louise Victoire de Donnissan, born at Versailles on the 25th of October
1772, belonged to a court family and was the god-daughter of Mme
Victoire, daughter of Louis XV. At the age of seventeen she married the
marquis de Lescure, whom she accompanied in the war of La Vendée. After
his death she went through various adventures recorded in her memoirs,
first published at Bordeaux in 1815. They are of extreme interest, and
give a remarkable picture of the war and the fortunes of the royalists.
She saved much of her own property and her first husband's, when a
conciliatory policy was adopted after the fall of the Terrorists. After
her second marriage she lived with her husband on her estates, both
refusing all offers to take service with Napoleon. In 1814 they took an
active part in the royalist movement in and about Bordeaux. In 1815 the
marquis endeavoured to bring about another Vendéan rising for the king,
and was shot in a skirmish with the Imperialist forces at the Pont des
Marthes on the 4th of June 1815. The marquis died at Orleans in 1857.
Their eldest son, HENRI AUGUSTE GEORGES, marquis de La Rochejacquelein,
born at Château Citran in the Gironde on the 28th of September 1805, was
educated as a soldier, served in Spain in 1822, and as a volunteer in
the Russo-Turkish War of 1828. During the reign of Louis Philippe he
adhered to the legitimist policy of his family, but he became reconciled
to the government of Napoleon III. and was mainly known as a clerical
orator and philanthropist. He died on the 7th of January 1867.
His son and successor, JULIEN MARIE GASTON, born at Chartres on the 27th
of March 1833, was an active legitimist deputy in the Assembly chosen at
the close of the German War of 1870-1871. He was a strong opponent of
Thiers, and continued to contest constituencies as a legitimist with
varying fortunes till his death in 1897.
AUTHORITIES.--_Henri de La Rochejacquelein et la guerre de la Vendée
d'après des documents_ inédits (Niort, 1890); A. F. Nettement, _Vie de
Mme la Marquise de La Rochejacquelein_ (Paris, 1876). The _Memoirs_ of
the marquise were translated into English by Sir Walter Scott, and
issued as a volume of "Constable's Miscellany" (Edinburgh, 1827).
LA ROCHELLE, a seaport of western France, capital of the department of
Charente-Inférieure, 90 m. S. by E. of Nantes on the railway to
Bordeaux. Pop. (1906) town 24,524, commune 33,858. La Rochelle is
situated on the Atlantic coast on an inlet opening off the great bay in
which lie the islands of Ré and Oléron. Its fortifications, constructed
by Vauban, have a circuit of 3½ m. with seven gates. Towards the sea are
three towers, of which the oldest (1384) is that of St Nicholas. The
apartment in the first storey was formerly used as a chapel. The Chain
Tower, built towards the end of the 14th century, is so called from the
chain which guarded the harbour at this point; the entrance to the tidal
basin was at one time spanned by a great pointed arch between the two
towers. The lantern tower (1445-1476), seven storeys high, is surmounted
by a lofty spire and was once used as a lighthouse. Of the ancient
gateways only one has been preserved in its entirety, that of the
"Grosse Horloge," a huge square tower of the 14th or 15th century, the
corner turrets of which have been surmounted with trophies since 1746.
The cathedral of La Rochelle (St Louis or St Bartholomew) is a heavy
Grecian building (1742-1762) with a dome above the transept, erected on
the site of the old church of St Bartholomew, destroyed in the 16th
century and now represented by a solitary tower dating from the 14th
century. Externally the town-house is in the Gothic style of the latter
years of the 15th century and has the appearance of a fortress, though
its severity is much relieved by the beautiful carving of the two
entrances, of the machicolations and of the two belfries. The buildings
looking into the inner court are in the Renaissance style (16th and
early 17th centuries) and contain several fine apartments. In the old
episcopal palace (which was in turn the residence of Sully, the prince
of Condé, Louis XIII., and Anne of Austria, and the scene of the
marriage of Alphonso VI. of Portugal with a princess of Savoy)
accommodation has been provided for a library, a collection of records
and a museum of art and antiquities. Other buildings of note are an
arsenal with an artillery museum, a large hospital, a special Protestant
hospital, a military hospital and a lunatic asylum for the department.
In the botanical gardens there are museums of natural history. Medieval
and Renaissance houses give a peculiar character to certain districts:
several have French, Latin or Greek inscriptions of a moral or religious
turn and in general of Protestant origin. Of these old houses the most
interesting is one built in the middle of the 16th century and wrongly
known as that of Henry II. The parade-ground, which forms the principal
public square, occupies the site of the castle demolished in 1590. Some
of the streets have side-arcades; the public wells are fed from a large
reservoir in the Champ de Mars; and among the promenades are the Cours
des Dames with the statue of Admiral Duperré, and outside the Charruyer
Park on the west front of the ramparts, and the Mail, a beautiful piece
of greensward. In this direction are the sea-bathing establishments.
La Rochelle is the seat of a bishopric and a prefect, and has tribunals
of first instance and of commerce, a chamber of commerce and a branch of
the Bank of France; its educational establishments include an
ecclesiastical seminary, a lycée and a training college for girls.
Ship-building, saw-milling and the manufacture of briquettes and
chemicals, sardine and tunny-preserving and petroleum-refining are among
the industries. The rearing of oysters and mussels and the exploitation
of salt marshes is carried on in the vicinity.
The inlet of La Rochelle is protected by a stone mole constructed by
Richelieu and visible at low tide. The harbour, one of the safest on the
coast, is entered by a channel 2730 yds. long, and comprises an outer
harbour opening on the one hand into a floating basin, on the other into
a tidal basin with another floating basin adjoining it. Behind the tidal
basin is the Maubec reservoir, the waters of which, along with those of
the Marans canal, help to scour the port and navigable channel. Some 200
sailing ships are engaged in the fisheries, and the fish market of La
Rochelle is the most important on the west coast. The harbour is,
however, inaccessible to the largest vessels, for the accommodation of
which the port of La Pallice, inaugurated in 1891, was created. Lying
about 3 m. W.S.W. of La Rochelle, this port opens into the bay opposite
the eastern extremity of the island of Ré. It was artificially excavated
and affords safe anchorage in all weathers. The outer port, protected by
two jetties, has an area of 29 acres and a depth of 16½ ft. below lowest
tide-level. At the extremity of the breakwater is a wharf where ships
may discharge without entering the basin. A lock connects with the inner
basin, which has an area of 27 acres, with 5900 ft. of quayage, a
minimum depth of 28 ft., and depths of 29½ ft. and 36 ft. at high, neap
and spring tides. Connected with the basin are two graving docks. La
Pallice has regular communication with South America by the vessels of
the Pacific Steam Navigation Company and by those of other companies
with London, America, West Africa, Egypt and the Far East. The port has
petroleum refineries and chemical manure works.
In 1906 there entered the port of La Rochelle, including the dock of La
Pallice, 441 vessels with a tonnage of 629,038, and cleared 468 vessels
with a tonnage of 664,861 (of which 235 of 241,146 tons cleared with
ballast). These figures do not include vessels entering from, or
clearing for, other ports in France. The imports (value, £1,276,000 in
1900 as compared with £1,578,000 in 1907) include coal and patent fuel,
superphosphates, natural phosphates, nitrate of soda, pyrites,
building-timber, wines and alcohol, pitch, dried codfish, petroleum,
jute, wood-pulp. Exports (value, £1,294,000 in 1900; £1,979,000 in 1907)
include wine and brandy, fancy goods, woven goods, garments, skins, coal
and briquettes, furniture, potatoes.
La Rochelle existed at the close of the 10th century under the name of
Rupella. It belonged to the barony of Châtelaillon, which was annexed
by the duke of Aquitaine and succeeded Châtelaillon as chief town in
Aunis. In 1199 it received a communal charter from Eleanor, duchess of
Guienne, and it was in its harbour that John Lackland disembarked when
he came to try to recover the domains seized by Philip Augustus.
Captured by Louis VIII. in 1224, it was restored to the English in
1360 by the treaty of Brétigny, but it shook off the yoke of the
foreigner when Du Guesclin recovered Saintonge. During the 14th, 15th
and 16th centuries La Rochelle, then an almost independent commune,
was one of the great maritime cities of France. From its harbour in
1402 Jean de Béthencourt set out for the conquest of the Canaries, and
its seamen were the first to turn to account the discovery of the new
world. The salt-tax provoked a rebellion at Rochelle which Francis I.
repressed in person; in 1568 the town secured exemption by the payment
of a large sum. At the Reformation La Rochelle early became one of the
chief centres of Calvinism, and during the religious wars it armed
privateers which preyed on Catholic vessels in the Channel and on the
high seas. In 1571 a synod of the Protestant churches of France was
held within its walls under the presidency of Beza for the purpose of
drawing up a confession of faith. After the massacre of St
Bartholomew, La Rochelle held out for six and a half months against
the Catholic army, which was ultimately obliged to raise the siege
after losing more than 20,000 men. The peace of the 24th of June 1573,
signed by the people of La Rochelle in the name of all the Protestant
party, granted the Calvinists full liberty of worship in several
places of safety. Under Henry IV. the town remained quiet, but under
Louis XIII. it put itself again at the head of the Huguenot party. Its
vessels blockaded the mouth of the Gironde and stopped the commerce of
Bordeaux, and also seized the islands of Ré and Oléron and several
vessels of the royal fleet. Richelieu then resolved to subdue the town
once for all. In spite of the assistance rendered by the English
troops under Buckingham and in spite of the fierce energy of their
mayor Guiton, the people of La Rochelle were obliged to capitulate
after a year's siege (October 1628). During this investment Richelieu
raised the celebrated mole which cut off the town from the open sea.
La Rochelle then became the principal port for the trade between
France and the colony of Canada. But the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes (1685) deprived it of some thousands of its most industrious
inhabitants, and the loss of Canada by France completed for the time
the ruin of its commerce. Its privateers, however, maintained a
vigorous struggle with the English during the republic and the empire.
See P. Suzanne, _La Rochelle pittoresque_ (La Rochelle, 1903), and E.
Couneau, _La Rochelle disparue_ (La Rochelle, 1904).
LA ROCHE-SUR-YON, a town of western France, capital of the department of
Vendée, on an eminence on the right bank of the Yon, 48 m. S. of Nantes
on the railway to Bordeaux. Pop. (1906) town 10,666, commune 13,685. The
castle of La Roche, which probably existed before the time of the
crusades, and was frequently attacked or taken in the Hundred Years' War
and in the wars of religion, was finally dismantled under Louis XIII.
When Napoleon in 1804 made this place, then of no importance, the chief
town of a department, the stones from its ruins were employed in the
erection of the administrative buildings, which, being all produced at
once after a regular plan, have a monotonous effect. The equestrian
statue of Napoleon I. in an immense square overlooking the rest of the
town; the statue of General Travot, who was engaged in the
"pacification" of La Vendée; the museum, with several paintings by P.
Baudry, a native artist, of whom there is a statue in the town, are the
only objects of interest. Napoleon-Vendée and Bourbon-Vendée, the names
borne by the town according to the dominance of either dynasty, gave
place to the original name after the revolution of 1870. The town is the
seat of a prefect and a court of assizes, and has a tribunal of first
instance, a chamber of commerce, a branch of the Bank of France, a lycée
for boys and training colleges for both sexes. It is a market for
farm-produce, horses and cattle, and has flour-mills. The dog fairs of
La Roche are well known.
LAROMIGUIÈRE, PIERRE (1756-1837), French philosopher, was born at
Livignac on the 3rd of November 1756, and died on the 12th of August
1837 in Paris. As professor of philosophy at Toulouse he was
unsuccessful and incurred the censure of the parliament by a thesis on
the rights of property in connexion with taxation. Subsequently he came
to Paris, where he was appointed professor of logic in the École Normale
and lectured in the Prytanée. In 1799 he was made a member of the
Tribunate, and in 1833 of the Academy of Moral and Political Science. In
1793 he published _Projet d'éléments de metaphysique_, a work
characterized by lucidity and excellence of style. He wrote also two
_Mémoires_, read before the Institute, _Les Paradoxes de Condillac_
(1805) and _Leçons de philosophie_ (1815-1818). Laromiguière's
philosophy is interesting as a revolt against the extreme physiological
psychology of the natural scientists, such as Cabanis. He distinguished
between those psychological phenomena which can be traced directly to
purely physical causes, and the actions of the soul which originate from
within itself. Psychology was not for him a branch of physiology, nor on
the other hand did he give to his theory an abstruse metaphysical basis.
A pupil of Condillac and indebted for much of his ideology to Destutt de
Tracy, he attached a fuller importance to Attention as a psychic
faculty. Attention provides the facts, Comparison groups and combines
them, while Reason systematizes and explains. The soul is active in its
choice, i.e. is endowed with freewill, and is, therefore, immortal. For
natural science as a method of discovery he had no respect. He held that
its judgments are, at the best, statements of identity, and that its
so-called discoveries are merely the reiteration, in a new form, of
previous truisms. Laromiguière was not the first to develop these views;
he owed much to Condillac, Destutt de Tracy and Cabanis. But, owing to
the accuracy of his language and the purity of his style, his works had
great influence, especially over Armand Marrast, Cardaillac and Cousin.
A lecture of his in the École Normale impressed Cousin so strongly that
he at once devoted himself to the study of philosophy. Jouffroy and
Taine agree in describing him as one of the great thinkers of the 19th
century.
See Damiron, _Essai sur la philosophie en France au XIX^e siècle_;
Biran, _Examen des leçons de philosophie_; Victor Cousin, _De Methodo
sive de Analysi_; Daunou, _Notice sur Laromiguière_; H. Taine, _Les
Philosophes classiques du XIX^e siècle_; Gatien Arnoult, _Étude sur
Laromiguière_; Compayré, _Notice sur Laromiguière_; Ferraz,
_Spiritualisme et Libéralisme_; F. Picavet, _Les Idéologues_.
LARRA, MARIANO JOSÉ DE (1809-1837), Spanish satirist, was born at Madrid
in 1809. His father served as a regimental doctor in the French army,
and was compelled to leave the Peninsula with his family in 1812. In
1817 Larra returned to Spain, knowing less Spanish than French. His
nature was disorderly, his education was imperfect, and, after futile
attempts to obtain a degree in medicine or law, he made an imprudent
marriage at the age of twenty, broke with his relatives and became a
journalist. On the 27th of April 1831 he produced his first play, _No
más mostrador_, based on two pieces by Scribe and Dieulafoy. Though
wanting in originality, it is brilliantly written, and held the stage
for many years. On the 24th of September 1834 he produced _Macias_, a
play based on his own historical novel, _El Doncel de Don Enrique el
Doliente_ (1834). The drama and novel are interesting as experiments,
but Larra was essentially a journalist, and the increased liberty of the
press after the death of Ferdinand VII. gave his caustic talent an
ampler field. He was already famous under the pseudonyms of "Juan Pérez
de Munguía" and "Figaro" which he used in _El Pobrecito Hablador_ and
_La Revista Española_ respectively. Madrid laughed at his grim humour;
ministers feared his vitriolic pen and courted him assiduously; he was
elected as deputy for Ávila, and a great career seemed to lie before
him. But the era of military _pronunciamientos_ ruined his personal
prospects and patriotic plans. His writing took on a more sombre tinge;
domestic troubles increased his pessimism, and, in consequence of a
disastrous love-affair, he committed suicide on the 13th of February
1837. Larra lived long enough to prove himself the greatest prose-writer
that Spain can boast during the 19th century. He wrote at great speed
with the constant fear of the censor before his eyes, but no sign of
haste is discernible in his work, and the dexterity with which he aims
his venomous shafts is amazing. His political instinct, his abundance of
ideas and his forcible, mordant style would have given him a foremost
position at any time and in any country; in Spain, and in his own
period, they placed him beyond all rivalry. (J. F.-K.)
LARSA (Biblical _Ellasar_, Gen. xiv. 1), an important city of ancient
Babylonia, the site of the worship of the sun-god, Shamash, represented
by the ancient ruin mound of Senkereh (Senkera). It lay 15 m. S.E. of
the ruin mounds of Warka (anc. _Erech_), near the east bank of the
Shatt-en-Nil canal. Larsa is mentioned in Babylonian inscriptions as
early as the time of Ur-Gur, 2700 or 2800 B.C., who built or restored
the _ziggurat_ (stage-tower) of E-Babbar, the temple of Shamash.
Politically it came into special prominence at the time of the Elamite
conquest, when it was made the centre of Elamite dominion in Babylonia,
perhaps as a special check upon the neighbouring Erech, which had played
a prominent part in the resistance to the Elamites. At the time of
Khammurabi's successful struggle with the Elamite conquerors it was
ruled by an Elamite king named Eriaku, the Arioch of the Bible, called
Rim-Sin by his Semitic subjects. It finally lost its independence under
Samsu-iluna, son of Khammurabi, c. 1900 B.C., and from that time until
the close of the Babylonian period it was a subject city of Babylon.
Loftus conducted excavations at this site in 1854. He describes the
ruins as consisting of a low, circular platform, about 4½ m. in
circumference, rising gradually from the level of the plain to a central
mound 70 ft. high. This represents the ancient _ziggurat_ of the temple
of Shamash, which was in part explored by Loftus. From the inscriptions
found there it appears that, besides the kings already mentioned,
Khammurabi, Burna-buriash (buryas) and the great Nebuchadrezzar restored
or rebuilt the temple of Shamash. The excavations at Senkereh were
peculiarly successful in the discovery of inscribed remains, consisting
of clay tablets, chiefly contracts, but including also an important
mathematical tablet and a number of tablets of a description almost
peculiar to Senkereh, exhibiting in bas-relief scenes of everyday life.
Loftus found also the remains of an ancient Babylonian cemetery. From
the ruins it would appear that Senkereh ceased to be inhabited at or
soon after the Persian conquest.