LEUK (Fr. Loèche Ville), an ancient and very picturesque little town in the Swiss canton of the Valais. It is built above the right bank of the Rhone, and is about 1 m. from the Leuk-Susten station (15½ m. east of Sion and 17½ m. west of Brieg) on the Simplon railway. In 1900 it had 1592 inhabitants, all but wholly German-speaking and Romanists. About 10½ m. by a winding carriage road N. of Leuk, and near the head of the Dala valley, at a height of 4629 ft. above the sea-level, and overshadowed by the cliffs of the Gemmi Pass (7641 ft.; q.v.) leading over to the Bernese Oberland, are the Baths of Leuk (Leukerbad, or Loèche les Bains). They have only 613 permanent inhabitants, but are much frequented in summer by visitors (largely French and Swiss) attracted by the hot mineral springs. These are 22 in number, and are very abundant. The principal is that of St Laurence, the water of which has a temperature of 124° F. The season lasts from June to September. The village in winter is long deprived of sunshine, and is much exposed to avalanches, by which it was destroyed in 1518, 1719 and 1756, but it is now protected by a strong embankment from a similar catastrophe.
(W. A. B. C.)
LEUTHEN, a village of Prussian Silesia, 10 m. W. of Breslau, memorable as the scene of Frederick the Great’s victory over the Austrians on December 5, 1757. The high road from Breslau to Lüben crosses the marshy Schweidnitz Water at Lissa, and immediately enters the rolling country about Neumarkt. Leuthen itself stands some 4000 paces south of the road, and a similar distance south again lies Sagschütz, while Nypern, on the northern edge of the hill country, is 5000 paces from the road. On Frederick’s approach the Austrians took up a line of battle resting on the two last-named villages. Their whole position was strongly garrisoned and protected by obstacles, and their artillery was numerous though of light calibre. A strong outpost of Saxon cavalry was in Borne to the westward. Frederick had the previous day surprised the Austrian bakeries at Neumarkt, and his Prussians, 33,000 to the enemy’s 82,000, moved towards Borne and Leuthen early on the 5th. The Saxon outpost was rushed at in the morning mist, and, covered by their advanced guard on the heights beyond, the Prussians wheeled to their right. Prince Charles of Lorraine, the Austrian commander-in-chief, on Leuthen Church tower, could make nothing of Frederick’s movements, and the commander of his right wing (Lucchesi) sent him message after message from Nypem and Gocklerwitz asking for help, which was eventually despatched. But the real blow was to fall on the left under Nadasdy. While the Austrian commander was thus wasting time, the Prussians were marching against Nadasdy in two columns, which preserved their distances with an exactitude which has excited the wonder of modern generations of soldiers; at the due place they wheeled into line of battle obliquely to the Austrian front, and in one great échelon,—the cavalry of the right wing foremost, and that of the left “refused,”—Frederick advanced on Sagschütz. Nadasdy, surprised, put a bold face on the matter and made a good defence, but he was speedily routed, and, as the Prussians advanced, battalion after battalion was rolled up towards Leuthen until the Austrians faced almost due south. The fighting in Leuthen itself was furious; the Austrians stood, in places, 100 deep, but the disciplined valour of the Prussians carried the village. For a moment the victory was endangered when Lucchesi came down upon the Prussian left wing from the north, but Driesen’s cavalry, till then refused, charged him in flank and scattered his troopers in wild rout. This stroke ended the battle. The retreat on Breslau became a rout almost comparable to that of Waterloo, and Prince Charles rallied, in Bohemia, barely 37,000 out of his 82,000. Ten thousand Austrians were left on the field, 21,000 taken prisoners (besides 17,000 in Breslau a little later), with 51 colours and 116 cannon. The Prussian loss in all was under 5500. It was not until 1854 that a memorial of this astonishing victory was erected on the battlefield.
See Carlyle, Frederick, bk. xviii. cap. x.; V. Ollech, Friedrich der Grosse von Kolin bis Leuthen (Berlin, 1858); Kutzen, Schlacht bei Leuthen (Breslau, 1851 ); and bibliography under [Seven Years’ War].
LEUTZE, EMANUEL (1816-1868), American artist, was born at Gmünd, Württemberg, on the 24th of May 1816, and as a child was taken by his parents to Philadelphia, where he early displayed talent as an artist. At the age of twenty-five he had earned enough to take him to Düsseldorf for a course of art study at the royal academy. Almost immediately he began the painting of historical subjects, his first work, “Columbus before the Council of Salamanca,” being purchased by the Düsseldorf Art Union. In 1860 he was commissioned by the United States Congress to decorate a stairway in the Capitol at Washington, for which he painted a large composition, “Westward the Star of Empire takes its Way.” His best-known work, popular through engraving, is “Washington crossing the Delaware,” a large canvas containing a score of life-sized figures; it is now owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. He became a member of the National Academy of Design in 1860, and died at Washington, D.C., on the 18th of July 1868.
LEVALLOIS-PERRET, a north-western suburb of Paris, on the right bank of the Seine, 2½ m. from the centre of the city. Pop. (1906) 61,419. It carries on the manufacture of motor-cars and accessories, carriages, groceries, liqueurs, perfumery, soap, &c., and has a port on the Seine.