Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/41

Rh L V L O V 27 in favour, his father Michel le Tellier had been made chancellor, and his only opponent Colbert was in growing disfavour. The ten years of peace between 1078 and 1688 were distinguished in French history by the rise of Madame de Maintenon, the capture of Strasburg, and the revocation of the edict of Nantes, in all of which Louvois bore a pro minent part. The surprise of Strasburg in 1681 in time of peace, in pursuance of an order of the chamber of reunion, was not only planned but executed by Louvois and Monclar, and after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes he claims the credit of inventing the dragonnades. Colbert died in 1683, and had been replaced by Le Pelletier, an adherent of Louvois, in the controller-generalship of finances, and by Louvois himself in his ministry for public buildings, which he took that he might be the minister able to gratify the king s two favourite pastimes, war and build ings. Louvois was able to superintend the successes of the first years of the war of 1688, but died suddenly of apoplexy after leaving the king s cabinet on July 16, 1691. His sudden death caused a suspicion of poison, and struck everybody with surprise. &quot; He is dead,&quot; writes Madame de Sevigne, &quot; that great minister, that important man, who held so grand a position, and whose Moi spread so far, who was the centre of so much.&quot; &quot; Tell the king of England,&quot; said Louis the next day, &quot; that I have lost a good minister, but that his affairs and mine will go none the worse for that.&quot; He was very wrong ; with Louvois the organizer of victory was gone. Great war ministers are far rarer than great generals. French history can only point to Carnot as his equal, English history only to the elder Pitt. The comparison with Carnot is an instructive one : both had to organize armies out of old material on a new system, both had to reform the principle of appointing officers, both were admirable contrivers of campaigns, and both devoted themselves to the material well-being of the soldiers. But in private life the comparison will not hold ; Carnot was a good husband, an upright man, and a broad minded thinker and politician, while Louvois married for money and lived openly with various mistresses, most notoriously with the beautiful Madame de Courcelles, used all means to over throw his rivals, and boasted of having revived persecution in his horrible system of the dragonnades. The principal authority for Louvois s life and times is Cainille Rousset s Histoirc de Louvois, 4 vols., 1862-63, a gr at vork founded on the 900 volumes of his despatches at the Depot de la Guerre. Saint Simon from his class prejudices is hardly to be trusted, but Madame de Sevigne throws many bright side-lights on his times. Testament Politiquc de Louvois (1695) is spurious. LOVAT, SIMON FKASER, BARON, a famous Jacobite intriguer, executed for the part which he took in the rebellion of 1745, was born about the year 1676, and was the second son of Thomas, afterwards twelfth Lord Lovat. He was educated at King s College, Aberdeen, and there seems reason to believe that lie was there no negligent student, as his correspondence afterwards gives abundant proof, not only of a thorough command of good English and idiomatic French, but of such an acquaintance with the Latin classics as to leave him never at a loss for an apt quotation from Virgil or Horace. Whether Lovat ever felt any real principle of loyalty to the Stuarts or was actuated throughout merely by what he supposed to be self-interest it is difficult to determine, but that he was a born traitor and deceiver there can be no doubt. One of his first acts on leaving college was to recruit three hundred men from his clan to form part of a regiment in the service of William and Mary, in which he himself was to hold a command, his object being, as he unhesitatingly avows, to have a body of well-trained soldiers under his influence, whom at a moment s notice he might carry over to the interest of King James. Among other wild outrages in which he was engaged about this time was a rape and forced marriage committed on the widow of a previous Lord Lovat with the view appar ently of securing his own succession to the estates ; and it is a curious instance of his plausibility and power of influenc ing others that, after being subjected by him to the most horrible ill-usage, the woman is said to have ultimately become seriously attached to him. A prosecution for his violence, however, having been instituted against him by Lady Lovat s family, Simon found it prudent to retire first to his native strongholds in the Highlands, and afterwards to France, where he at length found his way in July 1702 to the court of St Germains. One of his first steps towards gaining influence there seems to have been to announce his conversion to the Catholic faith. He then proceeded to put the great project of restoring the exiled family into a practical shape. Hitherto nothing seems to have been known among the Jacobite exiles of the efficiency of the Highlanders as a military force. But Lovat, who was of course well acquainted with their capabilities, saw that, as they were the only part of the British population accus tomed to the independent use of arms, they could be at once put in action against the reigning power. His plan there fore was to land five thousand French troops atDundee, where they might reach the north-eastern passes of the Highlands in a day s march, and be in a position to divert the British troops till the Highlands should have time to rise. Immedi ately afterwards five hundred men were to land on the west coast, seize Fort William or Inverlochy, and thus prevent the access of any military force from the south to the central Highlands. The whole scheme affords strong indication of Lovat s sagacity as a military strategist, and it is observable that his plan is that which was continuously kept in view in all the future attempts of the Jacobites, and finally acted on in the last outbreak of 1745. The advisers of the Pretender seem to have been either slow to trust their astute coad jutor or slow to comprehend his project. At last, however, he was despatched on a secret mission to the Highlands to sound those of the chiefs who were likely to rise, and to ascertain what forces they could bring into the field. He very soon found, however, that there was little disposition to join the rebellion, and he then made up his mind to secure his own safety by revealing all that he knew to the Government of Queen Anne. Having by this means ob tained a pardon for all his previous crimes, he was sent back to France to act as a spy on the Jacobites. On returning to Paris suspicions soon got afloat as to his pro ceedings, and in the end he was committed close prisoner in the castle of Angouleme, where he remained for nearly ten years, or till November 1714, when he made his escape to England. For some twenty-five years after this he was chiefly occupied in lawsuits for the recovery of his estates and the re-establishment of his fortune, in both of which objects he was successful. The intervals of his leisure were filled up by Jacobite and Anti-Jacobite intrigues, in which he seems to have alternately, as suited his interests, acted the traitor to both parties. But he so far obtained the confidence of the Government as to have secured the appointments of sheriff of Inverness and of colonel of an independent company. His disloyal practices, however, soon led to his being suspected ; and he was deprived of both his appointments. When the rebellion of 1745 broke out, Lovat acted with his characteristic duplicity. He re presented to the Jacobites what was probably in the main true that though eager for their success his weak health and advanced years prevented him from joining the standard of the prince in person, while to the Lord President Forbes he professed his cordial attachment to the existing state of things, but lamented that Ids headstrong son, in spite of all his remonstrances, had insisted on joining tho Pre tender, and succeeded in taking with him a strong force from the clan of the Erasers. The truth was that the poor