JEAN

See also:

• HENRI

HENRI

See also:

• JEAN HENRI LATUDE

LATUDE  , often called DANRY or MASERS DE LATUDE (1725–1805), prisoner of the Bastille, was born at Montagnac in Gascony on the 23rd of March 1725 . He received a military education and went to Paris in 1748 to study mathematics . He led a dissipated life and endeavoured to curry favour with the marquise de Pompadour by secretly sending her a box of poison and then informing her of the supposed plot against her life . The ruse was discovered, and Mme de Pompadour, not appreciating the humour of the situation, had Latude put in the Bastille on the 1st of May 1749 . He was later transferred to Vincennes, whence he escaped in 1750 . Retaken and reimprisoned in the Bastille, he made a second brief escape in 1756 . He was transferred to Vincennes in 1764, and the next year made a third escape and was a third time recaptured . He was put in a madhouse by Malesherbes in 1775, and discharged in 1777 on condition that he should retire to his native town . He remained in Paris and was again imprisoned . A certain Mme Legros became interested in him through chance reading of one of his memoirs, and, by a vigorous agitation in his behalf, secured his definite release in 1784 . He exploited his long captivity with considerable ability, posing as a brave officer, a son of the marquis de la Tude, and a victim of Pompadour's intrigues . He was extolled and pensioned during the Revolution, and in 1793 the convention compelled the heirs of Mme de Pompadour to pay him 6o,000 francs damages .

He died in obscurity at Paris on the 1st of

January 1805 . The principal work of Latude is the account of his imprisonment, written in collaboration with an advocate named Thiery, and en-titled Le Despotisme devoile, ou Memoires de Henri Masers de la Tude, detenu pendant trente-cinq ans clans les diverses prisons d'etat (Amster-dam, 1787, ed . Paris, 1889) . An Eng. trans. of a portion was published in 1787 . The work is full of lies and misrepresentations, but had great vogue at the time of the French Revolution . Latude also wrote essays on all sorts of subjects . See J . F . Barriere, Memoires de Linguet et de Latude (1884); G . Bertin, Notice in edition of the Memoires (1889); F . Funck-Brentano, " Latude," in the Revue des deux mondes (1st October 1889) .