[1] For his career, see Paul Durrieu, _Les Gascons en Italie_ (Auch,
1885, pp. 107-71).
[2] For the legend of the Sibyl current in Italy at the time, given
by La Sale, and its inter-relation with the Tannhäuser story, see W.
Soederhjelm, "A. de la Salle et la légende de Tannhäuser" in
_Mémoires de la soc. néo-philologique d'Helsingfors_ (1897, vol.
ii.); and Gaston Paris, "Le Paradis de la Reine Sibylle," and "La
Légende du Tannhäuser," in the _Revue de Paris_ (Dec. 1897 and March
1898).
LASALLE, ANTOINE CHEVALIER LOUIS COLLINET, COUNT (1775-1809), French
soldier, belonged to a noble family in Lorraine. His grandfather was
Abraham Fabert, marshal of France. Entering the French army at the age
of eleven, he had reached the rank of lieutenant when the Revolution
broke out. As an aristocrat, he lost his commission, but he enlisted in
the ranks, where his desperate bravery and innate power of command soon
distinguished him. By 1795 he had won back his grade, and was serving as
a staff-officer in the army of Italy. On one occasion, at Vicenza, he
rivalled Seydlitz's feat of leaping his horse over the parapet of a
bridge to avoid capture, and, later, in Egypt, he saved Davout's life in
action. By 1800 he had become colonel, and in one combat in that year he
had two horses killed under him, and broke seven swords. Five years
later, having attained the rank of general of brigade, he was present
with his brigade of light cavalry at Austerlitz. In the pursuit after
Jena in 1806, though he had but 600 hussars and not one piece of
artillery with him, he terrified the commandant of the strong fortress
of Stettin into surrender, a feat rarely equalled save by that of
Cromwell on Bletchingdon House. Made general of division for this
exploit, he was next in the Polish campaign, and at Heilsberg saved the
life of Murat, grand duke of Berg. When the Peninsular War began,
Lasalle was sent out with one of the cavalry divisions, and at Medina de
Rio Seco, Gamonal and Medellin broke every body of troops which he
charged. A year later, at the head of one of the cavalry divisions of
the _Grande Armée_ he took part in the Austrian war. At Wagram he was
killed at the head of his men. With the possible exception of Curély,
who was in 1809 still unknown, Napoleon never possessed a better leader
of light horse. Wild and irregular in his private life, Lasalle was far
more than a _beau sabreur_. To talent and experience he added that power
of feeling the pulse of the battle which is the true gift of a great
leader. A statue of him was erected in Lunéville in 1893. His remains
were brought from Austria to the Invalides in 1891.
LA SALLE, RENÉ ROBERT CAVELIER, SIEUR DE (1643-1687), French explorer in
North America, was born at Rouen on the 22nd of November 1643. He taught
for a time in a school (probably Jesuit) in France, and seems to have
forfeited his claim to his father's estate by his connexion with the
Jesuits. In 1666 he became a settler in Canada, whither his brother, a
Sulpician abbé, had preceded him. From the Seminary of St Sulpice in
Montreal La Salle received a grant on the St Lawrence about 8 m. above
Montreal, where he built a stockade and established a fur-trading post.
In 1669 he sold this post (partly to the Sulpicians who had granted it
to him) to raise funds for an expedition to China[1] by way of the
Ohio,[2] which he supposed, from the reports of the Indians, to flow
into the Pacific. He passed up the St Lawrence and through Lake Ontario
to a Seneca village on the Genesee river; thence with an Iroquois guide
he crossed the mouth of the Niagara (where he heard the noise of the
distant falls) to Ganastogue, an Iroquois colony at the head of Lake
Ontario, where he met Louis Joliet and received from him a map of parts
of the Great Lakes. La Salle's missionary comrades now gave up the quest
for China to preach among the Indians. La Salle discovered the Ohio
river, descended it at least as far as the site of Louisville, Kentucky,
and possibly, though not probably, to its junction with the Mississippi,
and in 1669-1670, abandoned by his few followers, made his way back to
Lake Erie. Apparently he passed through Lake Erie, Lake Huron and Lake
Michigan, and some way down the Illinois river. Little is known of these
explorations, for his journals are lost, and the description of his
travels rests only on the testimony of the anonymous author of a
_Histoire de M. de la Salle_. Before 1673 La Salle had returned to
Montreal. Becoming convinced, after the explorations of Marquette and
Joliet in 1673, that the Mississippi flowed into the Gulf of Mexico, he
conceived a vast project for exploring that river to its mouth and
extending the French power to the lower Mississippi Valley. He secured
the support of Count Frontenac, then governor of Canada, and in 1674 and
1677 visited France, obtaining from Louis XIV. on his first visit a
patent of nobility and a grant of lands about Fort Frontenac, on the
site of the present Kingston, Ontario, and on his second visit a patent
empowering him to explore the West at his own expense, and giving him
the buffalo-hide monopoly. Late in the year 1678, at the head of a small
party, he started from Fort Frontenac. He established a post above
Niagara Falls, where he spent the winter, and where, his vessel having
been wrecked, he built a larger ship, the "Griffon," in which he sailed
up the Great Lakes to Green Bay (Lake Michigan), where he arrived in
September 1679. Sending back the "Griffon" freighted with furs, by which
he hoped to satisfy the claims of his creditors, he proceeded to the
Illinois river, and near what is now Peoria, Illinois, built a fort,
which he called Fort Crèvecoeur. Thence he detached Father Hennepin,
with one companion, to explore the Illinois to its mouth, and, leaving
his lieutenant, Henri de Tonty (c. 1650-c. 1702),[3] with about fifteen
men, at Fort Crèvecoeur, he returned by land, afoot, to Canada to obtain
needed supplies, discovering the fate of the "Griffon" (which proved to
have been lost), thwarting the intrigues of his enemies and appeasing
his creditors. In July 1680 news reached him at Fort Frontenac that
nearly all Tonty's men had deserted, after destroying or appropriating
most of the supplies; and that twelve of them were on their way to kill
him as the surest means of escaping punishment. These he met and
captured or killed. He then returned to the Illinois, to find the
country devastated by the Iroquois, and his post abandoned. He formed a
league of the Western Indians to fight the Iroquois, then went to
Michilimackinac, where he found Tonty, proceeded again to Fort Frontenac
to obtain supplies and organize his expedition anew, and returned in
December 1681 to the Illinois. Passing down the Illinois to the
Mississippi, which he reached in February 1682, he floated down that
stream to its mouth, which he reached on the 9th of April, and, erecting
there a monument and a cross, took formal possession in the name of
Louis XIV., in whose honour he gave the name "Louisiana" to the region.
He then returned to Michilimackinac, whence, with Tonty, he went again
to the Illinois and established a fort, Fort St Louis, probably on
Starved Rock (near the present Ottawa, Illinois), around which nearly
20,000 Indians (Illinois, Miamis and others seeking protection from the
Iroquois) had been gathered. La Salle then went to Quebec, and La Barre,
who had succeeded Frontenac, being unfriendly to him, again visited
France (1684), where he succeeded in interesting the king in a scheme to
establish a fort at the mouth of the Mississippi and to seize the
Spanish posts in the vicinity. On the 24th of July 1684, with four
vessels under the command of himself and Captain Beaujeu, a naval
officer, he sailed from La Rochelle. Mistaking, it appears, the inlets
of Matagorda Bay (which La Salle called St Louis's Bay) in the present
state of Texas, for the mouth of an arm of the Mississippi, he landed
there, and Beaujeu, soon afterwards returned to France. The expedition
had met with various misfortunes; one vessel had been captured by the
Spaniards and another had been wrecked; and throughout La Salle and
Beaujeu had failed to work in harmony. Soon finding that he was not at
the mouth of the Mississippi, La Salle established a settlement and
built a fort, Fort St Louis, on the Lavaca (he called it La Vache)
river, and leaving there the greater part of his force, from October
1685 to March 1686 he vainly sought for the Mississippi. He also made
two attempts to reach the Illinois country and Canada, and during the
second, after two months of fruitless wanderings, he was assassinated,
on the 19th of March 1687, by several of his followers, near the Trinity
river in the present Texas.
His colony on the Lavaca, after suffering terribly from privation and
disease and being attacked by the Indians, was finally broken up, and a
force of Spaniards sent against it in 1689 found nothing but dead bodies
and a dismantled fort; the few survivors having become domesticated in
the Indian villages near by. Some writers, notably J. G. Shea, maintain
that La Salle never intended to fortify the mouth of the Mississippi,
but was instructed to establish an advanced post near the Spanish
possessions, where he was to await a powerful expedition under a
renegade Spaniard, Peñalosa, with whom he was to co-operate in expelling
the Spaniards from this part of the continent.[4]
La Salle was one of the greatest of the explorers in North America.
Besides discovering the Ohio and probably the Illinois, he was the first
to follow the Mississippi from its upper course to its mouth and thus to
establish the connexion between the discoveries of Radisson, Joliet and
Marquette in the north with those of De Soto in the south. He was stern,
indomitable and full of resource.
The best accounts of La Salle's explorations may be found in Francis
Parkman's _La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West_ (Boston,
1879; later revised editions), in Justin Winsor's _Cartier to
Frontenac_ (Boston, 1894), and in J. G. Shea's _Discovery and
Exploration of the Mississippi Valley_ (New York, 1852); see also P.
Chesnel, _Histoire de Cavelier de La Salle, explorations et conquête
du bassin du Mississippi_ (Paris, 1901). Of the early narratives see
Louis Hennepin, _Description de la Louisiane_ (1683); Joutel, _Journal
historique du dernier voyage que feu M. de la Salle fit dans le Golfe
de Mexique, &c._ (Paris, 1713); and Henri de Tonty, _Derniers
Découvertes dans l'Amérique septentrionale de M. de La Salle_ (Paris,
1697). Original narratives may be found, translated into English, in
_The Journeys of René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, as related
by his Faithful Lieutenant, Henri de Tonty, &c._ (2 vols., New York,
1905), edited by I. J. Cox; in Benjamin E. French's _Historical
Collections of Louisiana_ (6 series, New York, 1846-1853), and in
Shea's _Early Voyages Up and Down the Mississippi_ (Albany, 1861); and
an immense collection of documents relating to La Salle may be found
in Pierre Margry's _Découvertes et établissements des Français dans
l'ouest et dans le sud de l'Amérique septentrionale, 1614-1754;
Mémoires et documents originaux recueillis et publiés_ (6 vols.,
Paris, 1875-1886), especially in vol. ii. (C. C. W.)