Part 44

LEBEUF, JEAN (1687-1760), French historian, was born on the 7th of March 1687 at Auxerre, where his father, a councillor in the parlement, was _receveur des consignations_. He began his studies in his native town, and continued them in Paris at the Collège Ste Barbe. He soon became known as one of the most cultivated minds of his time. He made himself master of practically every branch of medieval learning, and had a thorough knowledge of the sources and the bibliography of his subject. His learning was not drawn from books only; he was also an archaeologist, and frequently went on expeditions in France, always on foot, in the course of which he examined the monuments of architecture and sculpture, as well as the libraries, and collected a number of notes and sketches. He was in correspondence with all the most learned men of the day. His correspondence with Président Bouhier was published in 1885 by Ernest Petit; his other letters have been edited by the _Société des sciences historiques et naturelles de l'Yonne_ (2 vols., 1866-1867). He also wrote numerous articles, and, after his election as a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1740), a number of _Mémoires_ which appeared in the _Recueil_ of this society. He died at Paris on the 10th of April 1760. His most important researches had Paris as their subject.

He published first a collection of _Dissertations sur l'histoire civile et ecclésiastique de Paris_ (3 vols., 1739-1743), then an _Histoire de la ville et de tout le diocèse de Paris_ (15 vols., 1745-1760), which is a mine of information, mostly taken from the original sources. In view of the advance made by scholarship in the 19th century, it was found necessary to publish a second edition. The work of reprinting it was undertaken by H. Cocheris, but was interrupted (1863) before the completion of vol. iv. Adrien Augier resumed the work, giving Lebeuf's text, though correcting the numerous typographical errors of the original edition (5 vols., 1883), and added a sixth volume containing an analytical table of contents. Finally, Fernand Bournon completed the work by a volume of _Rectifications et additions_ (1890), worthy to appear side by side with the original work.

The bibliography of Lebeuf's writings is, partly, in various numbers of the _Bibliothèque des écrivains de Bourgogne_ (1716-1741). His biography is given by Lebeau in the _Histoire de l'Académie royale des Inscriptions_ (xxix., 372, published 1764), and by H. Cocheris, in the preface to his edition.

LE BLANC, NICOLAS (1742-1806), French chemist, was born at Issoudun, Indre, in 1742. He made medicine his profession and in 1780 became surgeon to the duke of Orleans, but he also paid much attention to chemistry. About 1787 he was attracted to the urgent problem of manufacturing carbonate of soda from ordinary sea-salt. The suggestion made in 1789 by Jean Claude de la Métherie (1743-1817), the editor of the _Journal de physique_, that this might be done by calcining with charcoal the sulphate of soda formed from salt by the action of oil of vitriol, did not succeed in practice because the product was almost entirely sulphide of soda, but it gave Le Blanc, as he himself acknowledged, a basis upon which to work. He soon made the crucial discovery--which proved the foundation of the huge industry of artificial alkali manufacture--that the desired end was to be attained by adding a proportion of chalk to the mixture of charcoal and sulphate of soda. Having had the soundness of this method tested by Jean Darcet (1725-1801), the professor of chemistry at the Collège de France, the duke of Orleans in June 1791 agreed to furnish a sum of 200,000 francs for the purpose of exploiting it. In the following September Le Blanc was granted a patent for fifteen years, and shortly afterwards a factory was started at Saint-Denis, near Paris. But it had not long been in operation when the Revolution led to the confiscation of the duke's property, including the factory, and about the same time the Committee of Public Safety called upon all citizens who possessed soda-factories to disclose their situation and capacity and the nature of the methods employed. Le Blanc had no choice but to reveal the secrets of his process, and he had the misfortune to see his factory dismantled and his stocks of raw and finished materials sold. By way of compensation for the loss of his rights, the works were handed back to him in 1800, but all his efforts to obtain money enough to restore them and resume manufacturing on a profitable scale were vain, and, worn out with disappointment, he died by his own hand at Saint-Denis on the 16th of January 1806.

Four years after his death, Michel Jean Jacques Dizê (1764-1852), who had been _préparateur_ to Darcet at the time he examined the process and who was subsequently associated with Le Blanc in its exploitation, published in the _Journal de physique_ a paper claiming that it was he himself who had first suggested the addition of chalk; but a committee of the French Academy, which reported fully on the question in 1856, came to the conclusion that the merit was entirely Le Blanc's (_Com. rend._, 1856, p. 553).

LE BLANC, a town of central France, capital of an arrondissement, in the department of Indre, 44 m. W.S.W, of Châteauroux on the Orléans railway between Argenton and Poitiers. Pop. (1906) 4719. The Creuse divides it into a lower and an upper town. The church of St Génitour dates from the 12th, 13th and 15th centuries, and there is an old castle restored in modern times. It is the seat of a subprefect, and has a tribunal of first instance and a communal college. Wool-spinning, and the manufacture of linen goods and edge-tools are among the industries. There is trade in horses and in the agricultural and other products of the surrounding region.

Le Blanc, which is identified with the Roman _Oblincum_, was in the middle ages a lordship belonging to the house of Naillac and a frontier fortress of the province of Berry.

LEBOEUF, EDMOND (1809-1888), marshal of France, was born at Paris on the 5th of November 1809, passed through the École Polytechnique and the school of Metz, and distinguished himself as an artillery officer in Algerian warfare, becoming colonel in 1852. He commanded the artillery of the 1st French corps at the siege of Sebastopol, and was promoted in 1854 to the rank of general of brigade, and in 1857 to that of general of division. In the Italian War of 1859 he commanded the artillery, and by his action at Solferino materially assisted in achieving the victory. In September 1866, having in the meantime become aide-de-camp to Napoleon III., he was despatched to Venetia to hand over that province to Victor Emmanuel. In 1869, on the death of Marshal Niel, General Leboeuf became minister of war, and earned public approbation by his vigorous reorganization of the War Office and the civil departments of the service. In the spring of 1870 he received the marshal's baton. On the declaration of war with Germany Marshal Leboeuf delivered himself in the Corps Législatif of the historic saying, "So ready are we, that if the war lasts two years, not a gaiter button would be found wanting." It may be that he intended this to mean that, given time, the reorganization of the War Office would be perfected through experience, but the result inevitably caused it to be regarded as a mere boast, though it is now known that the administrative confusion on the frontier in July 1870 was far less serious than was supposed at the time. Leboeuf took part in the Lorraine campaign, at first as chief of staff (major-general) of the Army of the Rhine, and afterwards, when Bazaine became commander-in-chief, as chief of the III. corps, which he led in the battles around Metz. He distinguished himself, whenever engaged, by personal bravery and good leadership. Shut up with Bazaine in Metz, on its fall he was confined as a prisoner in Germany. On the conclusion of peace he returned to France and gave evidence before the commission of inquiry into the surrender of that stronghold, when he strongly denounced Bazaine. After this he retired into private life to the Château du Moncel near Argentan, where he died on the 7th of June 1888.

LE BON, JOSEPH (1765-1795), French politician, was born at Arras on the 29th of September 1765. He became a priest in the order of the Oratory, and professor of rhetoric at Beaune. He adopted revolutionary ideas, and became a curé of the Constitutional Church in the department of Pas-de-Calais, where he was later elected as a _député suppléant_ to the Convention. He became _maire_ of Arras and _administrateur_ of Pas-de-Calais, and on the 2nd of July 1793 took his seat in the Convention. He was sent as a representative on missions into the departments of the Somme and Pas-de-Calais, where he showed great severity in dealing with offences against revolutionaries (8th Brumaire, year II. to 22nd Messidor, year II.; i.e. 29th October 1793 to 10th July 1794). In consequence, during the reaction which followed the 9th Thermidor (27th July 1794) he was arrested on the 22nd Messidor, year III. (10th July 1795). He was tried before the criminal tribunal of the Somme, condemned to death for abuse of his power during his mission, and executed at Amiens on the 24th Vendémiaire in the year IV. (10th October 1795). Whatever Le Bon's offences, his condemnation was to a great extent due to the violent attacks of one of his political enemies, Armand Guffroy; and it is only just to remember that it was owing to his courage that Cambrai was saved from falling into the hands of the Austrians.

His son, Émile le Bon, published a _Histoire de Joseph le Bon et des tribunaux révolutionnaires d'Arras et de Cambrai_ (2nd ed., 2 vols., Arras, 1864).

LEBRIJA, or LEBRIXA, a town of southern Spain, in the province of Seville, near the left bank of the Guadalquivir, and on the eastern edge of the marshes known as Las Marismas. Pop. (1900) 10,997. Lebrija is 44 m. S. by W. of Seville, on the Seville-Cadiz railway. Its chief buildings are a ruined Moorish castle and the parish church, an imposing structure in a variety of styles--Moorish, Gothic, Romanesque--dating from the 14th century to the 16th, and containing some early specimens of the carving of Alonso Cano (1601-1667). There are manufactures of bricks, tiles and earthenware, for which clay is found in the neighbourhood; and some trade in grain, wine and oil.

Lebrija is the _Nabrissa_ or _Nebrissa_, surnamed _Veneria_, of the Romans; by Silius Italicus (iii. 393), who connects it with the worship of Dionysus, the name is derived from the Greek [Greek: nebris] (a "fawn-skin," associated with Dionysiac ritual). _Nebrishah_ was a strong and populous place during the period of Moorish domination (from 711); it was taken by St Ferdinand in 1249, but again lost, and became finally subject to the Castilian crown only under Alphonso the Wise in 1264. It was the birthplace of Elio Antonio de Lebrija or Nebrija (1444-1522), better known as Nebrissensis, one of the most important leaders in the revival of learning in Spain, the tutor of Queen Isabella, and a collaborator with Cardinal Jimenes in the preparation of the Complutensian Polyglot (see ALCALA DE HENARES).

LE BRUN, CHARLES (1619-1690), French painter, was born at Paris on the 24th of February 1619, and attracted the notice of Chancellor Séguier, who placed him at the age of eleven in the studio of Vouet. At fifteen he received commissions from Cardinal Richelieu, in the execution of which he displayed an ability which obtained the generous commendations of Poussin, in whose company Le Brun started for Rome in 1642. In Rome he remained four years in the receipt of a pension due to the liberality of the chancellor. On his return to Paris Le Brun found numerous patrons, of whom Superintendent Fouquet was the most important. Employed at Vaux le Vicomte, Le Brun ingratiated himself with Mazarin, then secretly pitting Colbert against Fouquet. Colbert also promptly recognized Le Brun's powers of organization, and attached him to his interests. Together they founded the Academy of Painting and Sculpture (1648), and the Academy of France at Rome (1666), and gave a new development to the industrial arts. In 1660 they established the Gobelins, which at first was a great school for the manufacture, not of tapestries only, but of every class of furniture required in the royal palaces. Commanding the industrial arts through the Gobelins--of which he was director--and the whole artist world through the Academy--in which he successively held every post--Le Brun imprinted his own character on all that was produced in France during his lifetime, and gave a direction to the national tendencies which endured after his death. The nature of his emphatic and pompous talent was in harmony with the taste of the king, who, full of admiration at the decorations designed by Le Brun for his triumphal entry into Paris (1660), commissioned him to execute a series of subjects from the history of Alexander. The first of these, "Alexander and the Family of Darius," so delighted Louis XIV. that he at once ennobled Le Brun (December, 1662), who was also created first painter to his majesty with a pension of 12,000 livres, the same amount as he had yearly received in the service of the magnificent Fouquet. From this date all that was done in the royal palaces was directed by Le Brun. The works of the gallery of Apollo in the Louvre were interrupted in 1677 when he accompanied the king to Flanders (on his return from Lille he painted several compositions in the Château of St Germains), and finally--for they remained unfinished at his death--by the vast labours of Versailles, where he reserved for himself the Halls of War and Peace, the Ambassadors' Staircase, and the Great Gallery, other artists being forced to accept the position of his assistants. At the death of Colbert, Louvois, who succeeded him in the department of public works, showed no favour to Le Brun, and in spite of the king's continued support he felt a bitter change in his position. This contributed to the illness which on the 22nd of February 1690 ended in his death in the Gobelins. Besides his gigantic labours at Versailles and the Louvre, the number of his works for religious corporations and private patrons is enormous. He modelled and engraved with much facility, and, in spite of the heaviness and poverty of drawing and colour, his extraordinary

## activity and the vigour of his conceptions justify his claim to fame.

Nearly all his compositions have been reproduced by celebrated engravers.

LEBRUN, CHARLES FRANÇOIS, duc de Plaisance (1739-1824), French statesman, was born at St-Sauveur-Lendelin (Manche) on the 19th of March 1739, and in 1762 made his first appearance as a lawyer at Paris. He filled the posts successively of _censeur royale_ (1766) and of inspector general of the domains of the crown (1768); he was also one of the chief advisers of the chancellor Maupeou, took part in his struggle against the parlements, and shared in his downfall in 1774. He then devoted himself to literature, translating Tasso's _Gerusalemme liberata_ (1774), and the _Iliad_ (1776). At the outset of the Revolution he foresaw its importance, and in the _Voix du citoyen_, which he published in 1789, predicted the course which events would take. In the Constituent Assembly, where he sat as deputy for Dourdan, he professed liberal views, and was the proposer of various financial laws. He then became president of the directory of Seine-et-Oise, and in 1795 was elected as a deputy to the Council of Ancients. After the _coup d'état_ of the 18th Brumaire in the year VIII. (9th November 1799), Lebrun was made third consul. In this capacity he took an active part in the reorganization of finance and of the administration of the departments of France. In 1804 he was appointed arch-treasurer of the empire, and in 1805-1806 as governor-general of Liguria effected its annexation to France. He opposed Napoleon's restoration of the noblesse, and in 1808 only reluctantly accepted the title of duc de Plaisance (Piacenza). He was next employed in organizing the departments which were formed in Holland, of which he was governor-general from 1811 to 1813. Although to a certain extent opposed to the despotism of the emperor, he was not in favour of his deposition, though he accepted the _fait accompli_ of the Restoration in April 1814. Louis XVIII. made him a peer of France; but during the Hundred Days he accepted from Napoleon the post of Grand Master of the university. On the return of the Bourbons in 1815 he was consequently suspended from the House of Peers, but was recalled in 1819. He died at St Mesmes (Seine-et-Oise) on the 16th of June 1824. He had been made a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1803.

See M. de Caumont la Force, _L'Architrésorier Lebrun_ (Paris, 1907); M. Marie du Mesnil, _Mémoire sur le prince Le Brun, duc de Plaisance_ (Paris, 1828); _Opinions, rapports et choix d'écrits politiques de C. F. Lebrun_ (1829), edited, with a biographical notice, by his son Anne-Charles Lebrun.

LEBRUN, PIERRE ANTOINE (1785-1873), French poet, was born in Paris on the 29th of November 1785. An _Ode à la grande armée_, mistaken at the time for the work of Écouchard Lebrun, attracted Napoleon's attention, and secured for the author a pension of 1200 francs. Lebrun's plays, once famous, are now forgotten. They are: _Ulysse_ (1814), _Marie Stuart_ (1820), which obtained a great success, and _Le Cid d'Andalousie_ (1825). Lebrun visited Greece in 1820, and on his return to Paris he published in 1822 an ode on the death of Napoleon which cost him his pension. In 1825 he was the guest of Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford. The coronation of Charles X. in that year inspired the verses entitled _La Vallée de Champrosay_, which have, perhaps, done more to secure his fame than his more ambitious attempts. In 1828 appeared his most important poem, _La Grèce_, and in the same year he was elected to the Academy. The revolution of 1830 opened up for him a public career; in 1831 he was made director of the Imprimerie Royale, and subsequently filled with distinction other public offices, becoming senator in 1853. He died on the 27th of May 1873.

See Sainte-Beuve, _Portraits contemporains_, vol. ii.

LEBRUN, PONCE DENIS ÉCOUCHARD (1729-1807), French lyric poet, was born in Paris on the 11th of August 1729, in the house of the prince de Conti, to whom his father was valet. Young Lebrun had among his schoolfellows a son of Louis Racine whose disciple he became. In 1755 he published an _Ode sur les désastres de Lisbon_. In 1759 he married Marie Anne de Surcourt, addressed in his _Élégies_ as Fanny. To the early years of his marriage belongs his poem _Nature_. His wife suffered much from his violent temper, and when in 1774 she brought an action against him to obtain a separation, she was supported by Lebrun's own mother and sister. He had been _secrétaire des commandements_ to the prince de Conti, and on his patron's death was deprived of his occupation. He suffered a further misfortune in the loss of his capital by the bankruptcy of the prince de Guémené. To this period belongs a long poem, the _Veillées des Muses_, which remained unfinished, and his ode to Buffon, which ranks among his best works. Dependent on government pensions he changed his politics with the times. Calonne he compared to the great Sully, and Louis XVI. to Henry IV., but the Terror nevertheless found in him its official poet. He occupied rooms in the Louvre, and fulfilled his obligations by shameless attacks on the unfortunate king and queen. His excellent ode on the _Vengeur_ and the _Ode nationale contre Angleterre_ on the occasion of the projected invasion of England are in honour of the power of Napoleon. This "versatility" has so much injured Lebrun's reputation that it is difficult to appreciate his real merit. He had a genius for epigram, and the quatrains and dizaines directed against his many enemies have a verve generally lacking in his odes. The one directed against La Harpe is called by Sainte-Beuve the "queen of epigrams." La Harpe has said that the poet, called by his friends, perhaps with a spice of irony, Lebrun-Pindare, had written many fine strophes but not one good ode. The critic exposed mercilessly the obscurities and unlucky images which occur even in the ode to Buffon, and advised the author to imitate the simplicity and energy that adorned Buffon's prose. Lebrun died in Paris on the 31st of August 1807.

His works were published by his friend P. L. Ginguené in 1811. The best of them are included in Prosper Poitevin's "_Petits poètes français_," which forms part of the "_Panthéon littéraire_."

LE CARON, HENRI (whose real name was THOMAS MILLER BEACH) (1841-1894), British secret service agent, was born at Colchester, on the 26th of September 1841. He was of an adventurous character, and when nineteen years old went to Paris, where he found employment in business connected with America. Infected with the excitement of the American Civil War, he crossed the Atlantic in 1861 and enlisted in the Northern army, taking the name of Henri Le Caron. In 1864 he married a young lady who had helped him to escape from some Confederate marauders; and by the end of the war he rose to be major. In 1865, through a companion in arms named O'Neill, he was brought into contact with Fenianism, and having learnt of the Fenian plot against Canada, he mentioned the designs when writing home to his father. Mr Beach told his local M.P., who in turn told the Home Secretary, and the latter asked Mr Beach to arrange for further information. Le Caron, inspired (as all the evidence shows) by genuinely patriotic feeling, from that time till 1889 acted for the British government as a paid military spy. He was a proficient in medicine, among other qualifications for this post, and he remained for years on intimate terms with the most extreme men in the Fenian organization under all its forms. His services enabled the British government to take measures which led to the fiasco of the Canadian invasion of 1870 and Riel's surrender in 1871, and he supplied full details concerning the various Irish-American associations, in which he himself was a prominent member. He was in the secrets of the "new departure" in 1879-1881, and in the latter year had an interview with Parnell at the House of Commons, when the Irish leader spoke sympathetically of an armed revolution in Ireland. For twenty-five years he lived at Detroit and other places in America, paying occasional visits to Europe, and all the time carrying his life in his hand. The Parnell Commission of 1889 put an end to this. Le Caron was subpoenaed by _The Times_, and in the witness-box the whole story came out, all the efforts of Sir Charles Russell in cross-examination failing to shake his testimony, or to impair the impression of iron tenacity and absolute truthfulness which his bearing conveyed. His career, however, for good or evil, was at an end. He published the story of his life, _Twenty-five Years in the Secret Service_, and it had an immense circulation. But he had to be constantly guarded, his acquaintances were hampered from seeing him, and he was the victim of a painful disease, of which he died on the 1st of April 1894. The report of the Parnell Commission is his monument.