LE BARGY, CHARLES GUSTAVE AUGUSTE (1858- ), French actor, was born at La Chapelle (Seine). His talent both as a comedian and a serious actor was soon made evident, and he became a member of the Comédie Française, his chief successes being in such plays as Le Duel, L’Énigme, Le Marquis de Priola, L’Autre Danger and Le Dédale. His wife, Simone le Bargy née Benda, an accomplished actress, made her début at the Gymnase in 1902, and in later years had a great success in La Rafale and other plays. In 1910 he had differences with the authorities of the Comédie Française and ceased to be a sociétaire.
LE BEAU, CHARLES (1701-1778), French historical writer, was born at Paris on the 15th of October 1701, and was educated at the Collège de Sainte-Barbe and the Collège du Plessis; at the latter he remained as a teacher until he obtained the chair of rhetoric in the Collège des Grassins. In 1748 he was admitted a member of the Academy of Inscriptions, and in 1752 he was nominated professor of eloquence in the Collège de France. From 1755 he held the office of perpetual secretary to the Academy of Inscriptions, in which capacity he edited fifteen volumes (from the 25th to the 39th inclusive) of the Histoire of that institution. He died at Paris on the 13th of March 1778.
The only work with which the name of Le Beau continues to be associated is his Histoire du Bas-Empire, en commençant à Constantin le Grand, in 22 vols. 12mo (Paris, 1756-1779), being a continuation of C. Rollin’s Histoire Romaine and J. B. L. Crevier’s Histoire des empereurs. Its usefulness arises entirely from the fact of its being a faithful résumé of the Byzantine historians, for Le Beau had no originality or artistic power of his own. Five volumes were added by H. P. Ameilhon (1781-1811), which brought the work down to the fall of Constantinople. A later edition, under the care of M. de Saint-Martin and afterwards of Brosset, has had the benefit of careful revision throughout, and has received considerable additions from Oriental sources.
See his “Éloge” in vol. xlii. of the Histoire de l’Académie des Inscriptions (1786), pp. 190-207.
LEBEAU, JOSEPH (1794-1865), Belgian statesman, was born at Huy on the 3rd of January 1794. He received his early education from an uncle who was parish priest of Hannut, and became a clerk. By dint of economy he raised money to study law at Liége, and was called to the bar in 1819. At Liége he formed a fast friendship with Charles Rogier and Paul Devaux, in conjunction with whom he founded at Liége in 1824 the Mathieu Laensbergh, afterwards Le politique, a journal which helped to unite the Catholic party with the Liberals in their opposition to the ministry, without manifesting any open disaffection to the Dutch government. Lebeau had not contemplated the separation of Holland and Belgium, but his hand was forced by the revolution. He was sent by his native district to the National Congress, and became minister of foreign affairs in March 1831 during the interim regency of Surlet de Chokier. By proposing the election of Leopold of Saxe-Coburg as king of the Belgians he secured a benevolent attitude on the part of Great Britain, but the restoration to Holland of part of the duchies of Limburg and Luxemburg provoked a heated opposition to the treaty of London, and Lebeau was accused of treachery to Belgian interests. He resigned the direction of foreign affairs on the accession of King Leopold, but in the next year became minister of justice. He was elected deputy for Brussels in 1833, and retained his seat until 1848. Differences with the king led to his retirement in 1834. He was subsequently governor of the province of Namur (1838), ambassador to the Frankfort diet (1839), and in 1840 he formed a short-lived Liberal ministry. From this time he held no office of state, though he continued his energetic support of liberal and anti-clerical measures. He died at Huy on the 19th of March 1865.
Lebeau published La Belgique depuis 1847 (Brussels, 4 vols., 1852), Lettres aux électeurs belges (8 vols., Brussels, 1853-1856). His Souvenirs personnels et correspondance diplomatique 1824-1841 (Brussels, 1883) were edited by A. Fréson. See an article by A. Fréson in the Biographie nationale de Belgique; and T. Juste, Joseph Lebeau (Brussels, 1865).
LEBEL, JEAN (d. 1370), Belgian chronicler, was born near the end of the 13th century. His father, Gilles le Beal des Changes, was an alderman of Liége. Jean entered the church and became a canon of the cathedral church, but he and his brother Henri followed Jean de Beaumont to England in 1327, and took part in the border warfare against the Scots. His will is dated 1369, and his epitaph gives the date of his death as 1370. Nothing more is known of his life, but Jacques de Hemricourt, author of the Miroir des nobles de Hesbaye, has left a eulogy of his character, and a description of the magnificence of his attire, his retinue and his hospitality. Hemricourt asserts that he was eighty years old or more when he died. For a long time Jean Lebel (or le Bel) was only known as a chronicler through a reference by Froissart, who quotes him in the prologue of his first book as one of his authorities. A fragment of his work, in the MS. of Jean d’Outremeuse’s Mireur des istores, was discovered in 1847; and the whole of his chronicle, preserved in the library of Châlons-sur-Marne, was edited in 1863 by L. Polain. Jean Lebel gives as his reason for writing a desire to replace a certain misleading rhymed chronicle of the wars of Edward III. by a true relation of his enterprises down to the beginning of the Hundred Years’ War. In the matter of style Lebel has been placed by some critics on the level of Froissart. His chief merit is his refusal to narrate events unless either he himself or his informant had witnessed them. This scrupulousness in the acceptance of evidence must be set against his limitations. He takes on the whole a similar point of view to Froissart’s; he has no concern with national movements or politics; and, writing for the public of chivalry, he preserves no general notion of a campaign, which resolves itself in his narrative into a series of exploits on the part of his heroes. Froissart was considerably indebted to him, and seems to have borrowed from him some of his best-known episodes, such as the death of Robert the Bruce, Edward III. and the countess of Salisbury, and the devotion of the burghers of Calais. The songs and virelais, in the art of writing which he was, according to Hemricourt, an expert, have not come to light.