Part 18

From this time forward till the peace of Calatabellota in 1303, Roger de Lauria was the ever victorious leader of fleets in the service of Aragon, both in the waters of southern Italy and on the coast of Catalonia. In the year of his appointment he defeated a French naval force in the service of Charles of Anjou, off Malta. The main object before him was to repel the efforts of the Angevine party to reconquer Sicily and then to carry the war into their dominions in Naples. Although Roger de Lauria did incidental fighting on shore, he was as much a naval officer as any modern admiral, and his victories were won by good manoeuvring and by discipline. The Catalan squadron, on which the Sicilian was moulded, was in a state of high and intelligent efficiency. Its chiefs relied not on merely boarding, and the use of the sword, as the French forces of Charles of Anjou did, but on the use of the ram, and of the powerful cross-bows used by the Catalans either by hand or, in case of the larger ones, mounted on the bulwarks, with great skill. The conflict was in fact the equivalent on the water of the battles between the English bowmen and the disorderly chivalry of France in the Hundred Years' War. In 1284 Roger defeated the Angevine fleet in the Bay of Naples, taking prisoner the heir to the kingdom, Charles of Salerno, who remained a prisoner in the hands of the Aragonese in Sicily, and later in Spain, for years. In 1285 he fought on the coast of Catalonia one of the most brilliant campaigns in all naval history. The French king Philippe le Hardi had invaded Catalonia with a large army to which the pope gave the character of crusaders, in order to support his cousin of Anjou in his conflict with the Aragonese. The king, Peter III., had offended his nobles by his vigorous exercise of the royal authority, and received little support from them, but the outrages perpetrated by the French invaders raised the towns and country against them. The invaders advanced slowly, taking the obstinately defended towns one by one, and relying on the co-operation of a large number of allies, who were stationed in squadrons along the coast, and who brought stores and provisions from Narbonne and Aigues Mortes. They relied in fact wholly on their fleet for their existence. A successful blow struck at that would force them to retreat. King Peter was compelled to risk Sicily for a time, and he recalled Roger de Lauria from Palermo to the coast of Catalonia. The admiral reached Barcelona on the 24th of August, and was informed of the disposition of the French. He saw that if he could break the centre of their line of squadrons, stretched as it was so far that its general superiority of numbers was lost in the attempt to occupy the whole of the coast, he could then dispose of the extremities in detail. On the night of the 9th of September he fell on the central squadron of the French fleet near the Hormigas. The Catalan and Sicilian squadrons doubled on the end of the enemies' line, and by a vigorous employment of the ram, as well as by the destructive shower of bolts from the cross-bows, which cleared the decks of the French, gained a complete victory. The defeat of the enemy was followed, as usually in medieval naval wars, by a wholesale massacre. Roger then made for Rosas, and tempted out the French squadron stationed there by approaching under French colours. In the open it was beaten in its turn. The result was the capture of the town, and of the stores collected there by King Philippe for the support of his army. Within a short time he was forced to retreat amid sufferings from hunger, and the incessant attacks of the Catalan mountaineers, by which his army was nearly annihilated. This campaign, which was followed up by destructive attacks on the French coast, saved Catalonia from the invaders, and completely ruined the French naval power for the time being. No medieval admiral of any nation displayed an equal combination of intellect and energy, and none of modern times has surpassed it. The work had been so effectually done on the coast of Catalonia that Roger de Lauria was able to return to Sicily, and resume his command in the struggle of Aragonese and Angevine to gain, or to hold, the possession of Naples.

He maintained his reputation and was uniformly successful in his battles at sea, but they were not always fought for the defence of Sicily. The death of Peter III. in 1286 and of his eldest son Alphonso in the following year caused a division among the members of the house of Aragon. The new king, James, would have given up Sicily to the Angevine line with which he made peace and alliance, but his younger brother Fadrique accepted the crown offered him by the Sicilians, and fought for his own hand against both the Angevines and his senior. King James tried to force him to submission without success. Roger de Lauria adhered for a time to Fadrique, but his arrogant temper made him an intolerable supporter, and he appears, moreover, to have thought that he was bound to obey the king of Aragon. His large estates in Valencia gave him a strong reason for not offending that sovereign. He therefore left Fadrique, who confiscated his estates in Sicily and put one of his nephews to death as a traitor. For this Roger de Lauria took a ferocious revenge in two successive victories at sea over the Sicilians. When the war, which had become a ravening of wild beasts, was at last ended by the peace of Calatabellota, Roger de Lauria retired to Valencia, where he died on the 2nd of January 1305, and was buried, by his express orders, in the church of Santas Creus, a now deserted monastery of the Cistercians, at the feet of his old master Peter III. In his ferocity, and his combination of loyalty to his feudal lord with utter want of scruple to all other men, Roger belonged to his age. As a captain he was far above his contemporaries and his successors for many generations.

Signor Amari's _Guerra del Vespro Siciliano_ gives a general picture of these wars, but the portrait of Roger de Lauria must be sought in the _Chronicle_ of the Catalan Ramon de Muntaner who knew him and was formed in his school. There is a very fair and well "documented" account of the masterly campaign of 1285 in Charles de la Roncière's _Histoire de la marine française_, i. 189-217. (D. H.)

LAURIA, or LORIA, a city of Basilicata, Italy, in the province of Potenza, situated near the borders of Calabria, 7½ m. by road S. of Lagonegro. Pop. (1901) 10,470. It is a walled town on the steep side of a hill with another portion in the plain below, 1821 ft. above sea-level. The castle was the birthplace of Ruggiero di Loria, the great Italian admiral of the 13th century. It was destroyed by the French under Masséna in 1806.

LAURIER, SIR WILFRID (1841- ), Canadian statesman, was born on the 20th of November 1841, at St Lin in the province of Quebec. The child of French Roman Catholic parents, he attended the elementary school of his native parish and for eight or nine months was a pupil of the Protestant elementary school at New Glasgow in order to learn English; his association with the Presbyterian family with whom he lived during this period had a permanent influence on his mind. At twelve years of age he entered L'Assomption college, and was there for seven years. The college, like all the secondary schools in Quebec then available for Roman Catholics, was under direct ecclesiastical control. On leaving it he entered a law office at Montreal and took the law course at McGill University. At graduation he delivered the valedictory address for his class. This, like so many of his later utterances, closed with an appeal for sympathy and union between the French and English races as the secret of the future of Canada. He began to practise law in Montreal, but owing to ill-health soon removed to Athabaska, where he opened a law office and undertook also to edit _Le Défricheur_, a newspaper then on the eve of collapse. At Athabaska, the seat of one of the superior courts of Quebec, the population of the district was fairly divided between French- and English-speaking people, and Laurier's career was undoubtedly influenced by his constant association with English-speaking people and his intimate acquaintance with their views and aspirations.

While at Montreal he had joined the Institut Canadien, a literary and scientific society which, owing to its liberal discussions and the fact that certain books upon its shelves were on the _Index expurgatorius_, was finally condemned by the Roman Catholic authorities. _Le Défricheur_ was an organ of extreme French sentiment, opposed to confederation, and also under ecclesiastical censure. One of its few surviving copies contains an article by Laurier opposing confederation as a scheme designed in the interest of the English colonies in North America, and certain to prove the tomb of the French race and the ruin of Lower Canada. The Liberals of Quebec under the leadership of Sir Antoine Dorion were hostile to confederation, or at least to the terms of union agreed upon at the Quebec conference, and Laurier in editorials and speeches maintained the position of Dorion and his allies. He was elected to the Quebec legislature in 1871, and his first speech in the provincial assembly excited great interest, on account of its literary qualities and the attractive manner and logical method of the speaker. He was not less successful in the Dominion House of Commons, to which he was elected in 1874. During his first two years in the federal parliament his chief speeches were made in defence of Riel and the French halfbreeds who were concerned in the Red River rebellion, and on fiscal questions. Sir John Macdonald, then in opposition, had committed his party to a protectionist policy, and Laurier, notwithstanding that the Liberal party stood for a low tariff, avowed himself to be "a moderate protectionist." He declared that if he were in Great Britain he would be a free trader, but that free trade or protection must be applied according to the necessities of a country, and that which protection necessarily involved taxation it was the price a young and vigorous nation must pay for its development. But the Liberal government, to which Laurier was admitted as minister of inland revenue in 1877, made only a slight increase in duties, raising the general tariff from 15% to 17½%; and against the political judgment of Alexander Mackenzie, Sir Richard Cartwright, George Brown, Laurier and other of the more influential leaders of the party, it adhered to a low tariff platform. In the bye-election which followed Laurier's admission to the cabinet he was defeated--the only personal defeat he ever sustained; but a few weeks later he was returned for Quebec East, a constituency which he held thenceforth by enormous majorities. In 1878 his party went out of office and Sir John Macdonald entered upon a long term of power, with protection as the chief feature of his policy, to which was afterwards added the construction of the Canadian Pacific railway.

After the defeat of the Mackenzie government, Laurier sat in Parliament as the leader of the Quebec Liberals and first lieutenant to the Hon. Edward Blake, who succeeded Mackenzie in the leadership of the party. He was associated with Blake in his sustained opposition to high tariff, and to the Conservative plan for the construction of the Canadian Pacific railway, and was a conspicuous figure in the long struggle between Sir John Macdonald and the leaders of the Liberal party to settle the territorial limits of the province of Ontario and the legislative rights of the provinces under the constitution. He was forced also to maintain a long conflict with the ultramontane element of the Roman Catholic church in Quebec, which for many years had a close working alliance with the Conservative politicians of the province and even employed spiritual coercion in order to detach votes from the Liberal party. Notwithstanding that Quebec was almost solidly Roman Catholic the Rouges sternly resisted clerical pressure; they appealed to the courts and had certain elections voided on the ground of undue clerical influence, and at length persuaded the pope to send out a delegate to Canada, through whose inquiry into the circumstances the abuses were checked and the zeal of the ultramontanes restrained.

In 1887, upon the resignation of Blake on the ground of ill-health, Laurier became leader of the Liberal party, although he and many of the more influential men in the party doubted the wisdom of the proceeding. He was the first French Canadian to lead a federal party in Canada since confederation. Apart from the natural fear that he would arouse prejudice in the English-speaking provinces, the second Riel rebellion was then still fresh in the public mind, and the fierce nationalist agitation which Riel's execution had excited in Quebec had hardly subsided. Laurier could hardly have come to the leadership at a more inopportune moment, and probably he would not have accepted the office at all if he had not believed that Blake could be persuaded to resume the leadership when his health was restored. But from the first he won great popularity even in the English-speaking provinces, and showed unusual capacity for leadership. His party was beaten in the first general election held after he became leader (1891), but even with its policy of unrestricted reciprocity with the United States, and with Sir John Macdonald still at the head of the Conservative party, it was beaten by only a small majority. Five years later, with unrestricted reciprocity relegated to the background, and with a platform which demanded tariff revision so adjusted as not to endanger established interests, and which opposed the federal measure designed to restore in Manitoba the separate or Roman Catholic schools which the provincial government had abolished, Laurier carried the country, and in July 1896 he was called by Lord Aberdeen, then governor-general, to form a government.

He was the first French-Canadian to occupy the office of premier; and his personal supremacy was shown by his long continuance in power. During the years from 1896 to 1910, he came to hold a position within the British Empire which was in its way unique, and in this period he had seen Canadian prosperity advance progressively by leaps and bounds. The chief features of his administration were the fiscal preference of 33(1/3)% in favour of goods imported into Canada from Great Britain, the despatch of Canadian contingents to South Africa during the Boer war, the contract with the Grand Trunk railway for the construction of a second transcontinental road from ocean to ocean, the assumption by Canada of the imperial fortresses at Halifax and Esquimault, the appointment of a federal railway commission with power to regulate freight charges, express rates and telephone rates, and the relations between competing companies, the reduction of the postal rate to Great Britain from 5 cents to 2 cents and of the domestic rate from 3 cents to 2 cents, a substantial contribution to the Pacific cable, a practical and courageous policy of settlement and development in the Western territories, the division of the North-West territories into the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan and the enactment of the legislation necessary to give them provincial status, and finally (1910), a tariff arrangement with the United States, which, if not all that Canada might claim in the way of reciprocity, showed how entirely the course of events had changed the balance of commercial interests in North America.

Laurier made his first visit to Great Britain on the occasion of Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee (1897), when he received the grand cross of the Bath; he then secured the denunciation of the Belgian and German treaties and thus obtained for the colonies the right to make preferential trade arrangements with the mother country. His personality made a powerful impression in Great Britain and also in France, which he visited before his return to Canada. His strong facial resemblance both to Lord Beaconsfield and to Sir John Macdonald marked him out in the public eye, and he captured attention by his charm of manner, fine command of scholarly English and genuine eloquence. Some of his speeches in Great Britain, coming as they did from a French-Canadian, and revealing delicate appreciation of British sentiment and thorough comprehension of the genius of British institutions, excited great interest and enthusiasm, while one or two impassioned speeches in the Canadian parliament during the Boer war profoundly influenced opinion in Canada and had a pronounced effect throughout the empire.

A skilful party-leader, Laurier kept from the first not only the affection of his political friends but the respect of his opponents; while enforcing the orderly conduct of public business, he was careful as first minister to maintain the dignity of parliament. In office he proved more of an opportunist than his career in opposition would have indicated, but his political courage and personal integrity remained beyond suspicion. His jealousy for the political autonomy of Canada was noticeable in his attitude at the Colonial conference held at the time of King Edward's coronation, and marked all his diplomatic dealings with the mother country. But he strove for sympathetic relations between Canadian and imperial authorities, and favoured general legislative and fiscal co-operation between the two countries. He strove also for good relations between the two races in Canada, and between Canada and the United States. Although he was classed in Canada as a Liberal, his tendencies would in England have been considered strongly conservative; an individualist rather than a collectivist, he opposed the intrusion of the state into the sphere of private enterprise, and showed no sympathy with the movement for state operation of railways, telegraphs and telephones, or with any kindred proposal looking to the extension of the obligations of the central government.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--J. S. Willison, _Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the Liberal Party; a Political History_ (Toronto, 1903); L. O. David, _Laurier et son temps_ (Montreal, 1905); see also Henri Moreau, _Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Premier Ministre du Canada_ (Paris, 1902); and the collection of Laurier's speeches from 1871 to 1890, compiled by Ulric Barthe (Quebec, 1890). (J. S. W.)

LAURISTON, JACQUES ALEXANDRE BERNARD LAW, MARQUIS DE (1768-1828), French soldier and diplomatist, was the son of Jacques François Law de Lauriston (1724-1785), a general officer in the French army, and was born at Pondicherry on the 1st of February 1768. He obtained his first commission about 1786, served with the artillery and on the staff in the earlier Revolutionary campaigns, and became brigadier of artillery in 1795. Resigning in 1796, he was brought back into the service in 1800 as aide-de-camp to Napoleon, with whom as a cadet Lauriston had been on friendly terms. In the years immediately preceding the first empire Lauriston was successively director of the Le Fère artillery school and special envoy to Denmark, and he was selected to convey to England the ratification of the peace of Amiens (1802). In 1805, having risen to the rank of general of division, he took part in the war against Austria. He occupied Venice and Ragusa in 1806, was made governor-general of Venice in 1807, took part in the Erfurt negotiations of 1808, was made a count, served with the emperor in Spain in 1808-1809 and held commands under the viceroy Eugène Beauharnais in the Italian campaign and the advance to Vienna in the same year. At the battle of Wagram he commanded the guard artillery in the famous "artillery preparation" which decided the battle. In 1811 he was made ambassador to Russia; in 1812 he held a command in the _Grande Armée_ and won distinction by his firmness in covering the retreat from Moscow. He commanded the V. army corps at Lützen and Bautzen and the V. and XI. in the autumn campaign, falling into the hands of the enemy in the disastrous retreat from Leipzig. He was held a prisoner of war until the fall of the empire, and then joined Louis XVIII., to whom he remained faithful in the Hundred Days. His reward was a seat in the house of peers and a command in the royal guard. In 1817 he was created marquis and in 1823 marshal of France. During the Spanish War he commanded the corps which besieged and took Pamplona. He died at Paris on the 12th of June 1828.

LAURIUM ([Greek: Laurion], mod. ERGASTIRI), a mining town in Attica, Greece, famous for the silver mines which were one of the chief sources of revenue of the Athenian state, and were employed for coinage. After the battle of Marathon, Themistocles persuaded the Athenians to devote the revenue derived from the mines to shipbuilding, and thus laid the foundation of the Athenian naval power, and made possible the victory of Salamis. The mines, which were the property of the state, were usually farmed out for a certain fixed sum and a percentage on the working; slave labour was exclusively employed. Towards the end of the 5th century the output was diminished, partly owing to the Spartan occupation of Decelea. But the mines continued to be worked, though Strabo records that in his time the tailings were being worked over, and Pausanias speaks of the mines as a thing of the past. The ancient workings, consisting of shafts and galleries for excavating the ore, and pans and other arrangements for extracting the metal, may still be seen. The mines are still worked at the present day by French and Greek companies, but mainly for lead, manganese and cadmium. The population of the modern town was 10,007 in 1907.

See E. Ardaillon, "Les Mines du Laurion dans l'antiquité," No. lxxvii. of the _Bibliothèque des écoles françaises d'Athènes et de Rome_.

LAURIUM, a village of Houghton county, Michigan, U.S.A., near the centre of Keweenaw peninsula, the northern extremity of the state. Pop. (1890) 1159; (1900) 5643, of whom 2286 were foreign-born; (1904) 7653; (1910) 8537. It is served by the Mineral Range and the Mohawk and Copper Range railways. It is in one of the most productive copper districts in the United States, and copper mining is its chief industry. Immediately W. of Laurium is the famous Calumet and Hecla mine. The village was formerly named Calumet, and was incorporated under that name in 1889, but in 1895 its name was changed by the legislature to Laurium, in allusion to the mineral wealth of Laurium in Greece. The name Calumet is now applied to the post office in the village of Red Jacket (incorporated 1875; pop. 1900, 4668; 1904, 3784; 1910, 4211), W. of the Calumet and Hecla mine; and Laurium, the mining property and Red Jacket are all in the township of Calumet (pop. 1904, state census, 28,587).

LAURUSTINUS, in botany, the popular name of a common hardy evergreen garden shrub known botanically as _Viburnum Tinus_, with rather dark-green ovate leaves in pairs and flat-topped clusters (or corymbs) of white flowers, which are rose-coloured before expansion, and appear very early in the year. It is a native of the Mediterranean region, and was in cultivation in Britain at the end of the 16th century. _Viburnum_ belongs to the natural order Caprifoliaceae and includes the common wayfaring tree (_V. Lantana_) and the guelder rose (_V. Opulus_).