Chapter XIX: Part 19

_Syphilitic Laryngitis._--Invasion of the larynx in syphilis is very common. It may occur in both stages of the disease and in the inherited form. In the secondary stage the damage is superficial, and the symptoms those of a slight acute laryngitis. The injury in the tertiary stage is much more serious, the deeper structures are invaded with the formation of deep ulcers, which may when they heal form strong cicatrices, which produce a narrowing of the air-passage which may eventually require surgical interference. Occasionally a fatal oedema may arise. The treatment consists of administering constitutional remedies, local treatment being of comparatively slight importance.

_Paroxysmal Laryngitis_, or _Laryngismus stridulus_, is a nervous affection of the larynx that occurs in infants. It appears to be associated with adenoids. The disease consists of a reflex spasm of the glottis, which causes a complete blocking of the air-passages. The attacks, which are recurrent, cause acute asphyxiation. They may cease for no obvious reason, or one may prove fatal. The whole attack is of such short duration that the infant has either recovered or succumbed before assistance can be called. After an attack, careful examination should be made, and the adenoids, if present, removed by operation.

LA SABLIÈRE, MARGUERITE DE (c. 1640-1693), friend and patron of La Fontaine, was the wife of Antoine Rambouillet, sieur de la Sablière (1624-1679), a Protestant financier entrusted with the administration of the royal estates, her maiden name being Marguerite Hessein. She received an excellent education in Latin, mathematics, physics and anatomy from the best scholars of her time, and her house became a meeting-place for poets, scientists and men of letters, no less than for brilliant members of the court of Louis XIV. About 1673 Mme de la Sablière received into her house La Fontaine, whom for twenty years she relieved of every kind of material anxiety. Another friend and inmate of the house was the traveller and physician François Bernier, whose abridgment of the works of Gassendi was written for Mme de la Sablière. The abbé Chaulieu and his fellow-poet, Charles Auguste, marquis de La Fare, were among her most intimate associates. La Fare sold his commission in the army to be able to spend his time with her. This liaison, which seems to have been the only serious passion of her life, was broken in 1679. La Fare was seduced from his allegiance, according to Mme de Sévigné by his love of play, but to this must be added a new passion for the actress La Champmeslé. Mme de la Sablière thenceforward gave more and more attention to good works, much of her time being spent in the hospital for incurables. Her husband's death in the same year increased her serious tendencies, and she was presently converted to Roman Catholicism. She died in Paris on the 8th of January 1693.

LA SALE (or LA SALLE), ANTOINE DE (c. 1388-1462?), French writer, was born in Provence, probably at Arles. He was a natural son of Bernard de la Salle,[1] a famous soldier of fortune, who served many masters, among others the Angevin dukes. In 1402 Antoine entered the court of Anjou, probably as a page, and in 1407 he was at Messina with Duke Louis II., who had gone there to enforce his claim to the kingdom of Sicily. The next years he perhaps spent in Brabant, for he was present at two tournaments given at Brussels and Ghent. With other gentlemen from Brabant, whose names he has preserved, he took part in the expedition of 1415 against the Moors, organized by John I. of Portugal. In 1420 he accompanied Louis III. on another expedition to Naples, making in that year an excursion from Norcia to the Monte della Sibilla, and the neighbouring Lake of Pilate. The story of his adventures on this occasion, and an account, with some sceptical comments, of the local legends regarding Pilate, and the Sibyl's grotto,[2] form the most interesting chapter of _La Salade_, which is further adorned with a map of the ascent from Montemonaco. La Sale probably returned with Louis III. of Anjou, who was also comte de Provence, in 1426 to Provence, where he was acting as _viguier_ of Aries in 1429. In 1434 René, Louis's successor, made La Sale tutor to his son Jean d'Anjou, duc de Calabre, to whom he dedicated, between the years 1438 and 1447, his _La Salade_, which is a text-book of the studies necessary for a prince. The primary intention of the title is no doubt the play on his own name, but he explains it on the ground of the miscellaneous character of the book--a salad is composed "of many good herbs." In 1439 he was again in Italy in charge of the castle of Capua, with the duc de Calabre and his young wife, Marie de Bourbon, when the place was besieged by the king of Aragon. René abandoned Naples in 1442, and Antoine no doubt returned to France about the same time. His advice was sought at the tournaments which celebrated the marriage of the unfortunate Margaret of Anjou at Nancy in 1445; and in 1446, at a similar display at Saumur, he was one of the umpires. La Sale's pupil was now twenty years of age, and, after forty years' service of the house of Anjou, La Sale left it to become tutor to the sons of Louis de Luxembourg, comte de Saint Pol, who took him to Flanders and presented him at the court of Philippe le Bon, duke of Burgundy. For his new pupils he wrote at Châtelet-sur-Oise, in 1451, a moral work entitled _La Salle_.

He was nearly seventy years of age when he wrote the work that has made him famous, _L'Hystoire et plaisante cronicque du petit Jehan de Saintré et de la jeune dame des Belles-Cousines, Sans autre nom nommer_, dedicated to his former pupil, Jean de Calabre. An _envoi_ in MS. 10,057 (nouv. acq. fr.) in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, states that it was completed at Châtelet on the 6th of March 1455 (i.e. 1456). La Sale also announces an intention, never fulfilled, apparently, of writing a romance of _Paris et Vienne_. The MSS. of _Petit Jehan de Saintré_ usually contain in addition _Floridam et Elvide_, translated by Rasse de Brunhamel from the Latin of Nicolas de Clamange, and dedicated to La Sale; also _Addiction extraite des Cronicques de Flandres_, of which only a few lines are original. Brunhamel says in his dedication that La Sale had delighted to write honourable histories from the time of his "florie jeunesse," which confirms a reasonable inference from the style of _Petit Jehan de Saintré_ that its author was no novice in the art of romance-writing. The _Réconfort à Madame de Neufville_, a consolatory epistle including two stories of parental fortitude, was written at Vendeuil-sur-Oise about 1458, and in 1459 La Sale produced his treatise _Des anciens tournois et faictz d'armes_ and the _Journée d'Onneur et de Prouesse_. He followed his patron to Genappe in Brabant when the Dauphin (afterwards Louis XI.) took refuge at the Burgundian court.

La Sale is generally accepted as the author of one of the most famous satires in the French language, _Les Quinze Joyes de mariage_, because his name has been disengaged from an acrostic at the end of the Rouen MS. He is also supposed to have been the "acteur" in the collection of licentious stories supposed to be narrated by various persons at the court of Philippe le Bon, and entitled the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_. One only of the stories is given in his name, but he is credited with the compilation of the whole, for which Louis XI. was long held responsible. A completed copy of this was presented to the Duke of Burgundy at Dijon in 1462. If then La Sale was the author, he probably was still living; otherwise the last mention of him is in 1461.

_Petit Jehan de Saintré_ gives, at the point when the traditions of
chivalry were fast disappearing, an account of the education of an
ideal knight and rules for his conduct under many different
circumstances. When Petit Jehan, aged thirteen, is persuaded by the
Dame des Belles-Cousines to accept her as his lady, she gives him
systematic instruction in religion, courtesy, chivalry and the arts of
success. She materially advances his career until Saintré becomes an
accomplished knight, the fame of whose prowess spreads throughout
Europe. This section of the romance--apparently didactic in
intention--fits in with the author's other works of edification. But
in the second part this virtuous lady falls a victim to a vulgar
intrigue with Damp Abbé. One of La Sale's commentators, M. Joseph
Nève, ingeniously maintains that the last section is simply to show
how the hero, after passing through the other grades of education,
learns at last by experience to arm himself against coquetry. The book
may, however, be fairly regarded as satirizing the whole theory of
"courteous" love, by the simple method of fastening a repulsive
conclusion on an ideal case. The contention that the _fabliau_-like
ending of a romance begun in idyllic fashion was due to the corrupt
influences of the Dauphin's exiled court, is inadmissible, for the
last page was written when the prince arrived in Brabant in 1456. That
it is an anti-clerical satire seems unlikely. The profession of the
seducer is not necessarily chosen from that point of view. The
language of the book is not disfigured by coarseness of any kind, but,
if the brutal ending was the expression of the writer's real views,
there is little difficulty in accepting him as the author of the
_Quinze Joyes de mariage_ and the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles._--Both
these are masterpieces in their way and exhibit a much greater
dramatic power and grasp of dialogue than does _Petit Jehan_. Some
light is thrown on the romance by the circumstances of the duc de
Calabre, to whom it was dedicated. His wife, Marie de Bourbon, was one
of the "Belles-Cousines" who contended for the favour of Jacques or
Jacquet de Lalaing in the _Livre des faits de Jacques Lalaing_ which
forms the chief source of the early exploits of Petit Jehan.

The incongruities of La Sale's aims appear in his method of
construction. The hero is not imaginary. Jehan de Saintré flourished
in the Hundred Years' War, was taken prisoner after Poitiers, with the
elder Boucicaut, and was employed in negotiating the treaty of
Bretigny. Froissart mentioned him as "le meilleur et le plus vaillant
chevalier de France." His exploits as related in the romance are,
however, founded on those of Jacques de Lalaing (c. 1422-1453), who
was brought up at the Burgundian court, and became such a famous
knight that he excited the rivalry of the "Belles-Cousines," Marie de
Bourbon and Marie de Clèves, duchesse d'Orléans. Lalaing's exploits
are related by more than one chronicler, but M. Gustave Raynaud thinks
that the _Livre des faits de Jacques de Lalaing_, published among the
works of Georges Chastelain, to which textual parallels may be found
in _Petit Jehan_, should also be attributed to La Sale, who in that
case undertook two accounts of the same hero, one historical and the
other fictitious. To complicate matters, he drew, for the later
exploits of Petit Jehan, on the _Livres des faits de Jean Boucicaut_,
which gives the history of the younger Boucicaut. The atmosphere of
the book is not the rough realities of the English wars in which the
real Saintré figured but that of the courts to which La Sale was
accustomed.

The title of _Les Quinze Joyes de mariage_ is, with a profanity
characteristic of the time, borrowed from a popular litany, _Les
Quinze Joies de Notre Dame_, and each chapter terminates with a
liturgical refrain voicing the miseries of marriage. Evidence in
favour of La Sale's authorship is brought forward by M. E. Gossart
(_Bibliophile belge_, 1871, pp. 83-7), who quotes from his didactic
treatise of _La Salle_ a passage paraphrased from St Jerome's treatise
against Jovinian which contains the chief elements of the satire.
Gaston Paris (_Revue de Paris_, Dec. 1897) expressed an opinion that
to find anything like the malicious penetration by which La Sale
divines the most intimate details of married life, and the painful
exactness of the description, it is necessary to travel as far as
Balzac. The theme itself was common enough in the middle ages in
France, but the dialogue of the _Quinze Joyes_ is unusually natural
and pregnant. Each of the fifteen vignettes is perfect in its kind.
There is no redundance. The diffuseness of romance is replaced by the
methods of the writers of the _fabliaux_.

In the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_ the Italian _novella_ is naturalized
in France. The book is modelled on the _Decameron_ of Boccaccio, and
owes something to the Latin _Facetiae_ of the contemporary scholar
Poggio; but the stories are rarely borrowed, and in cases where the
_Nouvelles_ have Italian parallels they appear to be independent
variants. In most cases the general immorality of the conception is
matched by the grossness of the details, but the ninety-eighth story
narrates what appears to be a genuine tragedy, and is of an entirely
different nature from the other _contes_. It is another version of the
story of Floridam et Elvide already mentioned.

Not content with allowing these achievements to La Sale, some critics
have proposed to ascribe to him also the farce of _Maître Pathelin_.

The best editions of La Sale's undoubted and reputed works
are:--_Petit Jehan de Saintré_ by J. M. Guichard (1843); _Les Cent
Nouvelles Nouvelles_ by Thomas Wright (Bibl. elzévérienne, 1858); _Les
Quinze Joyes de mariage_ by P. Jannet (Bibl. elzév., 1857). _La
Salade_ was printed more than once during the 16th century. _La Salle_
was never printed. For its contents see E. Gossart in the _Bibliophile
belge_ (1871, pp. 77 et seq.). See also the authorities quoted above,
and Joseph Nève, _Antoine de la Salle, sa vie et ses ouvrages ...
suivi du Réconfort de Madame de Fresne ... et de fragments et
documents inédits_ (1903), who argues for the rejection of _Les Quinze
Joyes_ and the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_ from La Sale's works; Pietro
Toldo, _Contributo allo studio della novella francese del XV e XVI
secolo_ (1895), and a review of it by Gaston Paris in the _Journal des
Savants_ (May 1895); L. Stern, "Versuch über Antoine de la Salle," in
_Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen_, vol. xlvi.; and G.
Raynaud, "Un Nouveau Manuscrit du Petit Jehan de Saintré," in
_Romania_, vol. xxxi. (M. Br.)

FOOTNOTES:

[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.)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The name La Chine was sarcastically applied to La Salle's
settlement on the St Lawrence.

[2] The Iroquois seem to have used the name Ohio for the Mississippi,
or at least for its lower part; and this circumstance makes the story
of La Salle's exploration peculiarly difficult to disentangle.

[3] Tonty (or Tonti), an Italian, born at Gaeta, was La Salle's
principal lieutenant, and was the equal of his chief in intrepidity.
Before his association with La Salle he had engaged in military
service in Europe, during which he had lost a hand. He accompanied La
Salle to the mouth of the Mississippi, and was in command of Fort St
Louis from the time of its erection until 1702, except during his
journeys down the Mississippi in search of his chief. In 1702 he
joined d'Iberville in lower Louisiana, and soon after was despatched
on a mission to the Chickasaw Indians. This is the last authentic
trace of him.

[4] Although La Salle and Don Diego de Peñalosa (1624-1687) presented
to the French government independent plans for an expedition against
the Spaniards and Peñalosa afterwards proposed their co-operation,
there is no substantial evidence that this project was adopted.
Parkman is of the opinion that La Salle proposed his expedition
against the Spaniards in the hope that the conclusion of peace
between France and Spain would prevent its execution and that he
might then use the aid he had thus received in establishing a
fortified commercial colony at the mouth of the Mississippi. See E.
T. Miller, "The Connection of Peñalosa with the La Salle Expedition,"
in the _Quarterly_ of the Texas State Historical Association, vol. v.
(Austin, Tex., 1902).

LA SALLE, ST JEAN BAPTISTE DE (1651-1719), founder of the order of Christian Brothers, was born at Reims. The son of a rich lawyer, his father's influence early secured him a canonry in the cathedral; there he established a school, where free elementary instruction was given to poor children. The enterprise soon broadened in scope; a band of enthusiastic assistants gathered round him; he resolved to resign his canonry, and devote himself entirely to education. His assistants were organized into a community, which gradually rooted itself all over France; and a training-school for teachers, the Collège de Saint-Yon, was set up at Rouen. In 1725, six years after the founder's death, the society was recognized by the pope, under the official title of "Brothers of the Christian Schools"; its members took the usual monastic vows, but did not aspire to the priesthood. During the first hundred years of its existence its activities were mainly confined to France; during the 19th century it spread to most of the countries of western Europe, and has been markedly successful in the United States. When La Salle was canonized in 1900, the total number of brothers was estimated at 15,000. Although the order has been chiefly concerned with elementary schools, it undertakes most branches of secondary and technical education; and it has served as a model for other societies, in Ireland and elsewhere, slightly differing in character from the original institute.

LA SALLE, a city of La Salle county, Illinois, U.S.A., on the Illinois river, near the head of navigation, 99 m. S.W. of Chicago. Pop. (1900) 10,446, of whom 3471 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 11,537. The city is served by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, and the Illinois Central railways, and by the Illinois & Michigan Canal, of which La Salle is the western terminus. The city has a public library. The principal industries are the smelting of zinc and the manufacture of cement, rolled zinc, bricks, sulphuric acid and clocks; in 1905 the city's factory products were valued at $3,158,173. In the vicinity large quantities of coal are mined, for which the city is an important shipping point. The municipality owns and operates the waterworks and the electric lighting plant. The first settlement was made here in 1830; and the place which was named in honour of the explorer, René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, was chartered as a city in 1852 and rechartered in 1876.

LASAULX, ARNOLD CONSTANTIN PETER FRANZ VON (1839-1886), German mineralogist and petrographer, was born at Castellaun near Coblenz on the 14th of June 1839. He was educated at Berlin, where he took his Ph. D. in 1868. In 1875 he became professor of mineralogy at Breslau, and in 1880 professor of mineralogy and geology at Bonn. He was distinguished for his researches on minerals and on crystallography, and he was one of the earlier workers on microscopic petrography. He described in 1878 the eruptive rocks of the district of Saar and Moselle. In 1880 he edited _Der Aetna_ from the MSS. of Dr W. Sartorius von Waltershausen, the results of observations made between the years 1834-1869. He was author of _Elemente der Petrographie_ (1875), _Einführung in die Gesteinslehre_ (1885), and _Précis de pétrographie_ (1887). He died at Bonn on the 25th of January 1886.

LASCAR, the name in common use for all oriental, and especially Indian, sailors, which has been adopted in England into the Merchant Shipping Acts, though without any definition. It is derived from the Persian _lashkar_ = army, or camp, in which sense it is still used in India, e.g. Lashkar, originally the camp, now the permanent capital, of Sindhia at Gwalior. It would seem to have been applied by the Portuguese, first to an inferior class of men in military service (cf. "gun-lascars"), and then to sailors as early as the 17th century. The form _askari_ on the east coast of Africa, equivalent to "sepoy," comes from the Arabic '_askar_ = army, which is believed to be itself taken from the Persian.

LASCARIS, CONSTANTINE (d. 1493 or 1500), Greek scholar and grammarian, one of the promoters of the revival of Greek learning in Italy, was born at Constantinople. He was a member of the noble Bithynian family, which had furnished three emperors of Nicaea during the 13th century. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, he took refuge first in Corfu and then in Italy, where Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan, appointed him Greek tutor to his daughter. Here was published his _Grammatica Graeca, sive compendium octo orationis partium_, remarkable as being the first book entirely in Greek issued from the printing press. After leaving Milan, Lascaris taught in Rome under the patronage of Cardinal Bessarion, and in Naples, whither he had been summoned by Ferdinand I. to deliver a course of lectures on Greece. Ultimately, on the invitation of the inhabitants, he settled in Messina, Sicily, where he continued to teach publicly until his death. Among his numerous pupils here was Pietro Bembo. Lascaris bequeathed his library of valuable MSS. to the senate of Messina; the collection was afterwards carried to Spain and lodged in the Escurial.

The _Grammatica_, which has often been reprinted, is the only work of
value produced by Lascaris. Some of his letters are given by J.
Iriarte in the _Regiae Bibliothecae Matritensis codices Graeci
manuscripti_, i. (Madrid, 1769). His name is known to modern readers
in the romance of A. F. Villemain, _Lascaris, ou les Grecs du
quinzième siècle_ (1825). See also J. E. Sandys, _Hist. Class.
Schol._, ed. 2, vol. ii. (1908), pp. 76 foll.

LASCARIS, JOANNES [JOHN], or JANUS (c. 1445-1535), Greek scholar, probably the younger brother of Constantine Lascaris, surnamed Rhyndacenus from the river Rhyndacus in Bithynia, his native province. After the fall of Constantinople he was taken to the Peloponnese, thence to Crete, and ultimately found refuge in Florence at the court of Lorenzo de' Medici, whose intermediary he was with the sultan Bayezid II. in the purchase of Greek MSS. for the Medicean library. On the expulsion of the Medici from Florence, at the invitation of Charles VIII. of France, Lascaris removed to Paris (1495), where he gave public instruction in Greek. By Louis XII. he was several times employed on public missions, amongst others to Venice (1503-1508), and in 1515 he appears to have accepted the invitation of Leo X. to take charge of the Greek college he had founded at Rome. We afterwards (1518) find Lascaris employed along with Budaeus (Budé) by Francis I. in the formation of the royal library at Fontainebleau, and also again sent in the service of the French crown to Venice. He died at Rome, whither he had been summoned by Pope Paul III., in 1535. Among his pupils was Musurus.

Amongst other works, Lascaris edited or wrote: _Anthologia
epigrammatum Graecorum_ (1494), in which he ascribed the collection of
the Anthology to Agathias, not to Planudes; _Didymi Alexandrini
scholia in Iliadem_ (1517); Porphyrius of Tyre's _Homericarum
quaestionum liber_ (1518); _De veris Graecarum litterarum formis ac
causis apud antiquos_ (Paris, 1556). See H. Hody, _De Graecis
illustribus_ (London, 1742); W. Roscoe, _Life of Leo X._ ii. (1846);
C. F. Börner, _De doctis hominibus Graecis_ (Leipzig, 1750); A.
Horawitz in Ersch & Gruber's _Allgemeine Encyclopädie_; J. E. Sandys,
_Hist. Class. Schol._, ed. 2, vols. ii. (1908), p. 78.

LAS CASAS, BARTOLOMÉ DE (1474-1566), for some time bishop of Chiapa in Mexico, and known to posterity as "The Apostle of the Indies," was a native of Seville. His father, one of the companions of Columbus in the voyage which resulted in the discovery of the New World, sent him to Salamanca, where he graduated. In 1498 he accompanied his father in an expedition under Columbus to the West Indies, and in 1502 he went with Nicolás de Ovando, the governor, to Hayti, where in 1510 he was admitted to holy orders, being the first priest ordained in the American colonies. In 1511 he passed over to Cuba to take part in the work of "population and pacification," and in 1513 or 1514 he witnessed and vainly endeavoured to check the massacre of Indians at Caonao. Soon afterwards there was assigned to him and his friend Renteria a large village in the neighbourhood of Zagua, with a number of Indians attached to it in what was known as _repartimiento_ (allotment); like the rest of his countrymen he made the most of this opportunity for growing rich, but occasionally celebrated mass and preached. Soon, however, having become convinced of the injustice connected with the _repartimiento_ system, he began to preach against it, at the same time giving up his own slaves. With the consent of his partner he resolved to go to Spain on behalf of the oppressed natives, and the result of his representations was that in 1516 Cardinal Jimenes caused a commission to be sent out for the reform of abuses, Las Casas himself, with the title of "protector of the Indians," being appointed to advise and report on them. This commission had not been long at San Domingo before Las Casas perceived the indifference of his coadjutors to the cause which he himself had at heart, and July 1517 found him again in Spain, where he developed his scheme for the complete liberation of the Indians--a scheme which not only included facilities for emigration from Spain, but was intended to give to each Spanish resident in the colonies the right of importing twelve negro slaves. The emigration movement proved a failure, and Las Casas lived long enough to express his shame for having been so slow to see that Africans were as much entitled to freedom as were the natives of the New World. Overwhelmed with disappointment, he retired to the Dominican monastery in Haiti; he joined the order in 1522 and devoted eight years to study. About 1530 he appears to have revisited the Spanish court, but on what precise errand is not known; the confusion concerning this period of his life extends to the time when, after visits to Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru and Guatemala, he undertook an expedition in 1537 into Tuzulutlan, the inhabitants of which were, chiefly through his tact, peaceably converted to Christianity, mass being celebrated for the first time amongst them in the newly founded town of Rabinal in 1538. In 1539 Las Casas was sent to Spain to obtain Dominican recruits, and through Loaysa, general of the order, and confessor of Charles V., he was successful in obtaining royal orders and letters favouring his enterprise. During this stay in Europe, which lasted more than four years, he visited Germany to see the emperor; he also (1542) wrote his _Veynte Razones_, in defence of the liberties of the Indians and the _Brevisima Relacion de la Destruycion des las Indias occidentales_, the latter of which was published some twelve years later. In 1543 he refused the Mexican bishopric of Cuzco, but was prevailed upon to accept that of Chiapa, for which he sailed in 1544. Thwarted at every point by the officials, and outraged by his countrymen in his attempt to carry out the new laws which his humanity had procured, he returned to Spain and resigned his dignity (1547). In 1550 he met Sepúlveda in public debate on the theses drawn from the recently published _Apologia pro libro de justis belli causis_, in which the latter had maintained the lawfulness of waging unprovoked war upon the natives of the New World. The course of the discussion may be traced in the account of the _Disputa_ contained in the _Obras_ (1552). In 1565 Las Casas successfully remonstrated with Philip II. against the financial project for selling the reversion of the _encomiendas_--a project which would have involved the Indians in hopeless bondage. In July of the following year he died at Madrid, whither he had gone to urge (and with success) the necessity of restoring a court of justice which had been suppressed in Guatemala. His _Historia de las Indias_ was not published till 1875-1876.

Sir Arthur Helps' _Life of Las Casas_ (London, 1868) has not been
superseded; but see also F. A. MacNutt, _Bartholomew de Las Casas_
(1909).

LAS CASES, EMMANUEL AUGUSTIN DIEUDONNÉ MARIN JOSEPH, MARQUIS (1766-1842), French official, was born at the castle of Las Cases near Revel in Languedoc. He was educated at the military schools of Vendôme and Paris; he entered the navy and took part in various engagements of the years 1781-1782. The outbreak of the Revolution in 1789 caused him to "emigrate," and he spent some years in Germany and England, sharing in the disastrous Quiberon expedition (1795). He was one of the few survivors and returned to London, where he lived in poverty. He returned to France during the Consulate with other royalists who rallied to the side of Napoleon, and stated afterwards to the emperor that he was "conquered by his glory." Not until 1810 did he receive much notice from Napoleon, who then made him a chamberlain and created him a count of the empire (he was marquis by hereditary right). After the first abdication of the emperor (11th of April 1814), Las Cases retired to England, but returned to serve Napoleon during the Hundred Days. The second abdication opened up for Las Cases the most noteworthy part of his career. He withdrew with the ex-emperor and a few other trusty followers to Rochefort; and it was Las Cases who first proposed and strongly urged the emperor to throw himself on the generosity of the British nation. Las Cases made the first overtures to Captain Maitland of H.M.S. "Bellerophon" and received a guarded reply, the nature of which he afterwards misrepresented. Las Cases accompanied the ex-emperor to St Helena and acted informally but very assiduously as his secretary, taking down numerous notes of his conversations which thereafter took form in the famous _Mémorial de Ste Hélène_. The limits of this article preclude an attempt at assessing the value of this work. It should be read with great caution, as the compiler did not scruple to insert his own thoughts and to colour the expressions of his master. In some cases he misstated facts and even fabricated documents. It is far less trustworthy than the record penned by Gourgaud in his _Journal_. Disliked by Montholon and Gourgaud, Las Cases seems to have sought an opportunity to leave the island when he had accumulated sufficient literary material. However that may be, he infringed the British regulations in such a way as to lead to his expulsion by the governor, Sir Hudson Lowe (November, 1816). He was sent first to the Cape of Good Hope and thence to Europe, but was not at first allowed by the government of Louis XVIII. to enter France. He resided at Brussels; but, gaining permission to come to Paris after the death of Napoleon, he took up his residence there, published the _Mémorial_, and soon gained an enormous sum from it. He died in 1842 at Passy.

See _Mémoires de E. A. D., comte de Las Cases_ (Brussels, 1818);
_Mémorial de Ste Hélène_ (4 vols., London and Paris, 1823; often
republished and translated); _Suite au mémorial de Ste Hélène, ou
observations critiques_, &c. (2 vols., Paris, 1824), anonymous, but
known to be by Grille and Musset-Pathay. See too GOURGAUD, MONTHOLON,
and LOWE, SIR HUDSON. (J. Hl. R.)

LASHIO, the headquarters of the superintendent, northern Shan States, Burma, situated in 22° 56´ N. and 97° 45´ E. at an altitude of 3100 ft., on a low spur overlooking the valley of the Nam Yao. It is the present terminus of the Mandalay-Kun Long railway and of the government cart road from Mandalay, from which it is 178 m. distant. It consists of the European station, with court house and quarters for the civil officers; the military police post, the headquarters of the Lashio battalion of military police; the native station, in which the various nationalities, Shans, Burmans, Hindus and Mahommedans, are divided into separate quarters, with reserves for government servants and for the temporary residences of the five sawbwas of the northern Shan States; and a bazaar. Under Burmese rule Lashio was also the centre of authority for the northern Shan States, but the Burmese post in the valley was close to the Nam Yao, in an old Chinese fortified camp. The Lashio valley was formerly very populous; but a rebellion, started by the sawbwa of Hsenwi, about ten years before the British occupation, ruined it, and it is only slowly approaching the prosperity it formerly enjoyed; pop. (1901) 2565. The annual rainfall averages 54 in. The average maximum temperature is 80.5° and the average minimum 55.5°.

LASKER, EDUARD (1829-1884), German publicist, was born on the 14th of October 1829, at Jarotschin, a village in Posen, being the son of a Jewish tradesman. He attended the gymnasium, and afterwards the university of Breslau. In 1848, after the outbreak of the revolution, he went to Vienna and entered the students' legion which took so prominent a part in the disturbances; he fought against the imperial troops during the siege of the city in October. He then continued his legal studies at Breslau and Berlin, and after a visit of three years to England, then the model state for German liberals, entered the Prussian judicial service. In 1870 he left the government service, and in 1873 was appointed to an administrative post in the service of the city of Berlin. He had been brought to the notice of the political world by some articles he wrote from 1861 to 1864, which were afterwards published under the title _Zur Verfassungsgeschichte Preussens_ (Leipzig, 1874), and in 1865 he was elected member for one of the divisions of Berlin in the Prussian parliament. He joined the radical or _Fortschritts_ party, and in 1867 was also elected to the German parliament, but he helped to form the national liberal party, and in consequence lost his seat in Berlin, which remained faithful to the radicals; after this he represented Magdeburg and Frankfort-on-Main in the Prussian, and Meiningen in the German, parliament. He threw himself with great energy into his parliamentary duties, and quickly became one of its most popular and most influential members. An optimist and idealist, he joined to a fervent belief in liberty an equal enthusiasm for German unity and the idea of the German state. His motion that Baden should be included in the North German Confederation in January 1870 caused much embarrassment to Bismarck, but was not without effect in hastening the crisis of 1870. His great work, however, was the share he took in the judicial reform during the ten years 1867-1877. To him more than to any other single individual is due the great codification of the law. While he again and again was able to compel the government to withdraw or amend proposals which seemed dangerous to liberty, he opposed those liberals who, unable to obtain all the concessions which they called for, refused to vote for the new laws as a whole. A speech made by Lasker on the 7th of February 1873, in which he attacked the management of the Pomeranian railway, caused a great sensation, and his exposure of the financial mismanagement brought about the fall of Hermann Wagener, one of Bismarck's most trusted assistants. By this action he caused, however, some embarrassment to his party. This is generally regarded as the beginning of the reaction against economic liberalism by which he and his party were to be deprived of their influence. He refused to follow Bismarck in his financial and economic policy after 1878; always unsympathetic to the chancellor, he was now selected for his most bitter attacks. Between the radicals and socialists on the one side and the government on the other, like many of his friends, he was unable to maintain himself. In 1879 he lost his seat in the Prussian parliament; he joined the _Sezession_, but was ill at ease in his new position. Broken in health and spirits by the incessant labours of the time when he did "half the work of the Reichstag," he went in 1883 for a tour in America, and died suddenly in New York on the 5th of January 1884.

Lasker's death was the occasion of a curious episode, which caused
much discussion at the time. The American House of Representatives
adopted a motion of regret, and added to it these words: "That his
loss is not alone to be mourned by the people of his native land,
where his firm and constant exposition of, and devotion to, free and
liberal ideas have materially advanced the social, political and
economic conditions of these people, but by the lovers of liberty
throughout the world." This motion was sent through the American
minister at Berlin to the German foreign office, with a request that
it might be communicated to the president of the Reichstag. It was to
ask Bismarck officially to communicate a resolution in which a foreign
parliament expressed an opinion in German affairs exactly opposed to
that which the emperor at his advice had always followed. Bismarck
therefore refused to communicate the resolution, and returned it
through the German minister at Washington.

Among Lasker's writings may be mentioned: _Zur Geschichte der
parlamentarischen Entwickelung Preussens_ (Leipzig, 1873), _Die
Zukunft des Deutschen Reichs_ (Leipzig, 1877) and _Wege und Ziele der_
_Kulturentwickelung_ (Leipzig, 1881). After his death his _Fünfzehn
Jahre parlamentarischer Geschichte 1866-1880_ appeared edited by W.
Cahn (Berlin, 1902). See also L. Bamberger, _Eduard Lasker,
Gedenkrede_ (Leipzig, 1884); A. Wolff, _Zur Erinnerung an Eduard
Lasker_ (Berlin, 1884); Freund, _Einiges über Eduard Lasker_ (Leipzig,
1885); and _Eduard Lasker, seine Biographie und letzte öffentliche
Rede_, by various writers (Stuttgart, 1884). (J. W. He.)

LASKI, the name of a noble and powerful Polish family, is taken from the town of Lask, the seat of their lordship.

JAN LASKI, the elder (1456-1531), Polish statesman and ecclesiastic, appears to have been largely self-taught and to have owed everything to the remarkable mental alertness which was hereditary in the Laski family. He took orders betimes, and in 1495 was secretary to the Polish chancellor Zawisza Kurozwecki, in which position he acquired both influence and experience. The aged chancellor entrusted the sharp-witted young ecclesiastic with the conduct of several important missions. Twice, in 1495 and again in 1500, he was sent to Rome, and once on a special embassy to Flanders, of which he has left an account. On these occasions he had the opportunity of displaying diplomatic talent of a high order. On the accession to the Polish throne in 1501 of the indolent Alexander, who had little knowledge of Polish affairs and chiefly resided in Lithuania, Laski was appointed by the senate the king's secretary, in which capacity he successfully opposed the growing separatist tendencies of the grand-duchy and maintained the influence of Catholicism, now seriously threatened there by the Muscovite propaganda. So struck was the king by his ability that on the death of the Polish chancellor in 1503 he passed over the vice-chancellor Macics Dzewicki and confided the great seal to Laski. As chancellor Laski supported the _szlachta_, or country-gentlemen, against the lower orders, going so far as to pass an edict excluding henceforth all plebeians from the higher benefices of the church. Nevertheless he approved himself such an excellent public servant that the new king, Sigismund I., made him one of his chief counsellors. In 1511 the chancellor, who ecclesiastically was still only a canon of Cracow, obtained the coveted dignity of archbishop of Gnesen which carried with it the primacy of the Polish church. In the long negotiations with the restive and semi-rebellious Teutonic Order, Laski rendered Sigismund most important political services, proposing as a solution of the question that Sigismund should be elected grand master, while he, Laski, should surrender the primacy to the new candidate of the knights, Albert of Brandenburg, a solution which would have been far more profitable to Poland than the ultimate settlement of 1525. In 1513 Laski was sent to the Lateran council, convened by Pope Julius II., to plead the cause of Poland against the knights, where both as an orator and as a diplomatist he brilliantly distinguished himself. This mission was equally profitable to his country and himself, and he succeeded in obtaining from the pope for the archbishops of Gnesen the title of _legati nati_. In his old age Laski's partiality for his nephew, Hieronymus, led him to support the candidature of John Zapolya, the protégé of the Turks, for the Hungarian crown so vehemently against the Habsburgs that Clement VII. excommunicated him, and the shock of this disgrace was the cause of his sudden death in 1531. Of his numerous works the most noteworthy are his collection of Polish statutes entitled: _Statuta provinciae gnesnensis antiqua, &c._ (Cracow, 1525-1528) and _De Ruthenorum nationibus eorumque erroribus_, printed at Nuremberg.

See Heinrich R. von Zeissberg, _Joh. Laski, Erzbischof in Gnesen_
(Vienna, 1874); and Jan Korytkowski, _Jan Laski, Archbishop of Gnesen_
(Gnesen, 1880).