(A. W. H.*)
LOUIS OF NASSAU (1538-1574), son of William, count of Nassau, and Juliana von Stolberg, and younger brother of William the Silent, took an active part in the revolt of the Netherlands against Spanish domination. He was one of the leaders of the league of nobles who signed the document known as “the Compromise” in 1566, and a little later was a member of the deputation who presented the petition of grievances called “the Request” to the regent, Margaret of Parma. It was on this occasion that the appellation of “the Beggars” (les Gueux) was first given to the opponents of King Philip’s policy. On the arrival of Alva at Brussels, Count Louis, with his brother William, withdrew from the Netherlands and raised a body of troops in defence of the patriot cause. In the spring of 1568 Louis invaded Friesland, and at Heiligerlee, on the 23rd of May, completely defeated a Spanish force under Count Aremberg, who was killed. Alva then advanced to meet the invaders with a large army, and at Jemmingen (July 21), with very slight loss, annihilated the levies of Louis, who himself escaped by swimming from the field across an estuary of the Ems. He now joined the army of his brother William, which had in October to beat a hasty retreat before Alva’s superior skill. Then Louis, in company with his brothers William and Henry, made his way across the French frontier to the camp of the Huguenot leader, Admiral Coligny. Louis took an active part in the campaign and fought heroically at Jarnac and Moncontour. In 1572 Louis, not deterred by previous disaster, raised a small force in France, and, suddenly entering Hainaut, captured Mons (May 23). Here he was besieged by Don Frederick of Toledo, Alva’s natural son, who blockaded all approach to the town. William made an attempt to relieve his brother, but failed, and Mons had to surrender (September 17). Louis, who was sick with fever, withdrew to his ancestral home, Dillenburg, to recruit his health, and then once more to devote his energies to the raising of money and troops for another invasion of the Netherlands. In the hope of drawing away the Spaniards from the siege of Leiden by a diversion in the south, Louis, with his brothers John and Henry, at the head of a force of mixed nationalities and little discipline, crossed the frontier near Maastricht, and advanced as far as the Mookerheide near Nijmwegen. Here he was attacked by a body of Spanish veterans under an experienced leader, Sancho d’Avila, and speedily routed. In the disorderly flight both Louis and his younger brother Henry, refusing to abandon the field, lost their lives. Their bodies were never recovered. Thus perished at the age of thirty-six one of the most chivalrous and gifted of a gallant band of brothers, four of whom laid down their lives in their country’s cause.
See P. J. Blok, Lodewijk von Nassau, 1538-1574 (The Hague, 1689), and the Cambridge Modern History, vol. iii. chs. vi. and vii., and bibliography (1904); also A. J. Van der Aa, Biographisch woordenboek der Nederlanden (22 vols., Haarlem, 1852-1878).
LOUIS, JOSEPH DOMINIQUE, Baron (1755-1837), French statesman and financier, was born at Toul (Meurthe) on the 13th of November 1755. At the outbreak of the Revolution the abbé Louis (he had early taken orders) had already some reputation as a financial expert. He was in favour of the constitutional movement, and on the great festival of federation (July 14, 1790) he assisted Talleyrand, then bishop of Autun, to celebrate mass at the altar erected in the Champ de Mars. In 1792, however, he emigrated to England, where he spent his time studying English institutions and especially the financial system of Pitt. Returning to France on the establishment of the Consulate he served successively in the ministry of war, the council of state, and in the finance department in Holland and in Paris. Made a baron of the empire in 1809 he nevertheless supported the Bourbon restoration and was minister of finance in 1814-1815. Baron Louis was deputy from 1815 to 1824 and from 1827 to 1832. He resumed the portfolio of finance in 1815, which he held also in the Decazes ministry of 1818; he was the first minister of finance under the government of Louis Philippe, and held the same portfolio in 1831-1832. In 1832 he was made a peer of France and he died on the 26th of August 1837.
LOUIS PHILIPPE I., king of the French (1773-1850), was the eldest son of Louis Philip Joseph, duke of Orleans (known during the Revolution as Philippe Egalité) and of Louise Marie Adelaide de Bourbon, daughter of the duc de Penthièvre, and was born at the Palais Royal in Paris on the 6th of October 1773. On his father’s side he was descended from the brother of Louis XIV., on his mother’s from the count of Toulouse, “legitimated” son of Louis XIV. and Madame de Montespan. The legend that he was a supposititious child, really the son of an Italian police constable named Chiapponi, is dealt with elsewhere (see [Maria Stella], countess of Newborough). The god-parents of the duke of Valois, as he was entitled till 1785, were Louis XVI. and Queen Marie Antoinette; his governess was the famous Madame de Genlis, to whose influence he doubtless owed many of the qualities which later distinguished him: his wide, if superficial knowledge, his orderliness, and perhaps his parsimony. Known since 1785 as the duc de Chartres, he was sixteen at the outbreak of the Revolution, into which—like his father—he threw himself with ardour. In 1790 he joined the Jacobin Club, in which the moderate elements still predominated, and was assiduous in attendance at the debates of the National Assembly. He thus became a persona grata with the party in power; he was already a colonel of dragoons, and in 1792 he was given a command in the army of the North. As a lieutenant-general, at the age of eighteen, he was present at the cannonade of Valmy (Sept. 20) and played a conspicuous part in the victory of Jemappes (Nov. 6).
The republic had meanwhile been proclaimed, and the duc de Chartres, who like his father had taken the name of Egalité, posed as its zealous adherent. Fortunately for him, he was too young to be elected deputy to the Convention, and while his father was voting for the death of Louis XVI. he was serving under Dumouriez in Holland. He shared in the disastrous day of Neerwinden (March 18, 1793); was an accomplice of Dumouriez in the plot to march on Paris and overthrow the republic, and on the 5th of April escaped with him from the enraged soldiers into the Austrian lines. He was destined not to return to France for twenty years. He went first, with his sister Madame Adelaide, to Switzerland where he obtained a situation for a few months as professor in the college of Reichenau under an assumed name,[1] mainly in order to escape from the fury of the émigrés. The execution of his father in November 1793 had made him duke of Orleans, and he now became the centre of the intrigues of the Orleanist party. In 1795 he was at Hamburg with Dumouriez, who still hoped to make him king. With characteristic caution Louis Philippe refused to commit himself by any overt pretensions, and announced his intention of going to America; but in the hope that something might happen in France to his advantage, he postponed his departure, travelling instead through the Scandinavian countries as far north as Lapland. But in 1796, the Directory having offered to release his mother and his two brothers, who had been kept in prison since the Terror, on condition that he went to America, he set sail for the United States, and in October settled in Philadelphia, where in February 1797 he was joined by his brothers the duc de Montpensier and the comte de Beaujolais. Two years were spent by them in travels in New England, the region of the Great Lakes, and of the Mississippi; then the news of the coup d’état of 18 Brumaire decided them to return to Europe. They returned in 1800, only to find Napoleon Bonaparte’s power firmly established. Immediately on his arrival, in February 1800, the duke of Orleans, at the suggestion of Dumouriez, sought an interview with the comte d’Artois, through whose instrumentality he was reconciled with the exiled king Louis XVIII., who bestowed upon his brothers the order of the Saint Esprit. The duke, however, refused to join the army of Condé and to fight against France, an attitude in which he persisted throughout, while maintaining his loyalty to the king.[2] He settled with his brothers at Twickenham, near London, where he lived till 1807—for the most part in studious retirement.