Page:EB1911 - Volume 16.djvu/203

 conduct to the rank of chef de brigade. However, in 1795, on the reform of the army introduced by the Thermidorians, he was dismissed from his rank. He re-enlisted as a simple volunteer in the army of Italy, and in the famous campaign of 1796 he again fought his way up to high rank, being eventually made a general of brigade by Bonaparte. He was distinguished in every battle, and was wounded at Arcola. He was chosen by Bonaparte to accompany him to Egypt as commander of one of Kléber’s brigades, in which capacity he greatly distinguished himself, especially on the retreat from Syria. He went with Bonaparte to France, assisted at the 18th Brumaire, and was appointed general of division, and commandant of the consular guard. He commanded the advanced guard in the crossing of the Alps in 1800, was instrumental in winning the battle of Montebello, from which he afterwards took his title, and bore the brunt of the battle of Marengo. In 1801 Napoleon sent him as ambassador to Portugal. Opinions differ as to his merits in this capacity; Napoleon never made such use of him again. On the establishment of the empire he was created a marshal of France, and commanded once more the advanced guard of a great French army in the campaign of Austerlitz. At Austerlitz he had the left of the Grand Army. In the 1806–07 campaign he was at his best, commanding his corps with the greatest credit in the march through the Thuringian Forest, the action of Saalfeld (which is studied as a model to-day at the French Staff College) and the battle of Jena. His leadership of the advanced guard at Friedland was even more conspicuous. He was now to be tried as a commander-in-chief, for Napoleon took him to Spain in 1808, and gave him a detached wing of the army, with which he won a victory over Castaños at Tudela on November 22. In January 1809 he was sent to attempt the capture of Saragossa, and by February 21, after one of the most stubborn defences in history, was in possession of the place. Napoleon then created him duc de Montebello, and in 1809, for the last time, gave him command of the advanced guard. He took part in the engagements around Eckmühl and the advance on Vienna. With his corps he led the French army across the Danube, and bore the brunt, with Masséna, of the terrible (q.v.). On the 22nd of May he had to retreat. During the retreat Lannes exposed himself as usual to the hottest fire, and received a mortal wound, to which he succumbed at Vienna on the 31st of May. As he was being carried from the field to Vienna he met the emperor hurrying to the front. It was reported that the dying man reproached Napoleon for his ambition, but this rests on little evidence save the fact that Lannes was the most blunt and outspoken of all Napoleon’s marshals. He was one of the few men for whom the emperor felt a real and deep affection, and at this their last meeting Napoleon gave way to a passionate burst of grief, even in the midst of the battle. His eldest son was made a peer of France by Louis XVIII.

Lannes ranks with Davout and Masséna as the ablest of all Napoleon’s marshals, and consciously or unconsciously was the best exponent of the emperor’s method of making war. Hence his constant employment in tasks requiring the utmost resolution and daring, and more especially when the emperor’s combinations depended upon the vigour and self-sacrifice of a detachment or fraction of the army. It was thus with Lannes at Friedland and at Aspern as it was with Davout at Austerlitz and Auerstädt, and Napoleon’s estimate of his subordinates’ capacities can almost exactly be judged by the frequency with which he used them to prepare the way for his own shattering blow. Routine generals with the usual military virtue, or careful and exact troop leaders like Soult and Macdonald, Napoleon kept under his own hand for the final assault which he himself launched, but the long hours of preparatory fighting against odds of two to one, which alone made the final blow possible, he entrusted only to men of extraordinary courage and high capacity for command. In his own words, he found Lannes a pigmy, and lost him a giant. Lannes’s place in his affections was never filled.

See R. Périn, Vie militaire de Jean Lannes (Paris, 1809).

LANNION, a town of north-western France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Côtes-du-Nord, on the right bank of the Léguer, 45 m. W.N.W. of St Brieuc by rail. Pop. (1906) 5336. Lannion is 5 m. in direct line from the mouth of the Léguer; its port does a small trade (exports of agricultural produce, imports of wine, salt, timber, &c.), and there is an active fishing industry. The town contains many houses of the 15th and 16th centuries and other old buildings, the chief of which is the church of St Jean-du-Baly (16th and 17th centuries). On an eminence close to Lannion is the church of Brélevenez of the 12th century, restored in the 15th or 16th century; it has an interesting 16th-century Holy Sepulchre.

Some 6 m. S.E. of the town are the imposing ruins of the château of Tonquédec (c. 1400) styled the “Pierrefonds of Brittany,” and there are other buildings of antiquarian interest in the vicinity. The coast north of Lannion at Trégastel and Ploumanac presents curious rock formations.

Lannion is the seat of a subprefect and has a tribunal of first instance and a communal college. Its industries include saw-milling, tanning and the manufacture of farm implements. The town was taken in 1346 by the English; it was defended against them by Geoffroy de Pontblanc whose valour is commemorated by a cross close to the spot where he was slain.

LANNOY, GUILLEBERT DE (1386–1462), Flemish diplomatist, was chamberlain to the duke of Burgundy, governor of the fort of Sluys, and a knight of the Golden Fleece. He discharged several diplomatic missions in France, England, Prussia, Poland and Lithuania, and was one of the negotiators of the treaty of Troyes (1420). In 1421 he was sent by Henry V. of England to Palestine to inquire into the possibility of reviving the kingdom of Jerusalem, and wrote an account of his travels, Les Pèlerinages de Surye et de Egipte, which was published in 1826 and again in 1842.

LANOLIN (Lat. lana, wool, and oleum, oil), the commercial name of the preparation styled adeps lanae hydrosus in the British Pharmacopoeia, and which consists of 7 oz. of neutral wool-fat (adeps lanae) mixed with 3 fluid oz. of water. The wool-fat is obtained by purification of the “brown grease,” “recovered grease” or dégras extracted from raw sheep’s wool in the process of preparing it for the spinner. It is a translucent unctuous substance which has the property of taking up large quantities of water and forming emulsions which are very slow to separate into their constituents. Owing to the ease with which it penetrates the skin, wool-fat both in the anhydrous form and as lanolin, sometimes mixed with such substances as vaseline or fatty oils, is largely employed as a basis for ointments. It is slightly antiseptic and does not become rancid.

LA NOUE, FRANÇOIS DE (1531–1591), called Bras-de-Fer, one of the Huguenot captains of the 16th century, was born near Nantes in 1531, of an ancient Breton family. He served in Italy under Marshal Brissac, and in the first Huguenot war, but his first great exploit was the capture of Orleans at the head of only fifteen cavaliers in 1567, during the second war. At the battle of Jarnac in March 1569 he commanded the rearguard, and at Moncontour in the following October he was taken prisoner; but he was exchanged in time to resume the governorship of Poitou, and to inflict a signal defeat on the royalist troops before Rochefort. At the siege of Fontenay (1570) his left arm was shattered by a bullet; but a mechanic of Rochelle made him an iron arm (hence his sobriquet) with a hook for holding his reins. When peace was made in France in the same year, La Noue carried his sword against the Spaniards in the Netherlands, but was taken at the recapture of Mons by the Spanish in 1572. Permitted to return to France, he was commissioned by Charles IX., after the massacre of St Bartholomew, to reconcile the inhabitants of La Rochelle, the great stronghold of the Huguenots, to the king. But the Rochellois were too much alarmed to come to terms; and La Noue, perceiving that war was imminent, and knowing that his post was on the Huguenot side, gave up his royal commission, and from 1574 till 1578 acted as general of La Rochelle. When peace was again concluded La Noue once more went to aid the Protestants of the Low Countries. He took several towns and captured Count Egmont in 1580; but a few weeks afterwards he fell into the hands of the Spaniards. Thrust into a loathsome prison at Limburg, La Noue, the admiration of all, of whatever faith, for his gallantry, honour and purity of character, was kept confined for five years by a powerful nation, whose reluctance to set him