EMILE

FRANCOIS

See also:

• EMILE FRANCOIS LOUBET (1838— )

LOUBET (1838— )  , 7th president of the French republic, was born on the 3oth of December 1838, the son of a peasant proprietor at Marsanne (Dreme), who was more than once mayor of Marsanne . He was admitted to the efforts of Loubet and Waldeck-Rousseau the Dreyfus affair was settled, when Loubet, acting on the advice of General Galliffet, minister of war, remitted the ten years' imprisonment to which Dreyfus was condemned at Rennes . Loubet's presidency saw an acute stage of the clerical question, which was attacked by Waldeck-Rousseau and in still more drastic fashion by the Combes ministry . The French ambassador was recalled from the Vatican in April 1905, and in July the separation of church and state was voted in the Chamber of Deputies . Feeling had run high between France and England over the mutual criticisms passed on the conduct of the South African War and the Dreyfus case respectively . These differences were composed, by the Anglo-French entente, and in 1904 a convention between the two countries secured the recognition of French claims in Morocco in exchange for non-interference with the English occupation of Egypt . President Loubet was a typical example of the peasant-proprietor class, and had none of the aristocratic, not to say monarchical, proclivities of President Faure . He inaugurated the Paris Exhibition of 1900, received the tsar Nicholas II. in September 1901 and paid a visit to Russia in 1902 . He also exchanged visits with King Edward VII., with the king of Italy and the king of Spain . The king of Spain's visit in 1905 was the occasion of an attempt on his life, a bomb being thrown under his carriage as he was proceeding with his Parisian bar in 1862, and took his doctorate-in-law next year . 1 guest to the opera . His presidency came to an end in January He was still a student when he witnessed the sweeping triumph 11906, when he retired into private life .

of the Republican party in Paris at the general

election in 1863 . LOUDON, ERNST GIDEON, FREIHERR VON (1717-1790), He settled down to the exercise of his profession in Montelimar, Austrian soldier, was born at Tootzen in Livonia, on the 2nd of where he married in 1869 Marie Louis Picard . He also inherited February 1717 . His family, of Scottish origin,' had been settled a small estate at Grignan . At the crisis of 187o he became in that country since before 1400 . His father was a lieutenant-mayor of Montelimar, and thenceforward was a steady supporter I colonel, retired on a meagre pension from the Swedish service, of Gambetta's policy . Elected to the Chamber of Deputies in and the boy was sent in 1732 into the Russian army as a cadet; 1876 by Montelimar he was one of the famous 363 who in June He took part in Field Marshal Miinnich's siege, of 'Danzig in 1897 passed the vote of want of confidence in the ministry of 1734, in the march of a Russian corps to the Rhine in 1735 and the duc de Broglie . In the general election of October he was in the Turkish war 1738-1739 . Dissatisfied with his prospects re-elected, local enthusiasm for him being increased by the fact he resigned in 1741 and sought military employment elsewhere. that the government had driven him from the mayoralty . I He applied first to Frederick the Great, who declined his services . In the Chamber he occupied himself especially with education, At Vienna he had better fortune, being made a captain in Trenck's fighting the clerical system established by the Loi Falloux, and free corps . He took part in its forays and marches, though not working for the establishment of free, obligatory and secular in its atrocities, until wounded and taken prisoner in Alsace. primary instruction .

In 188o he became president of the depart- He was shortly released by the advance of the

main Austrian mental council in Dreme . His support of the second Jules army . His next active service, still under Trenck, was in the Ferry ministry and his zeal for the colonial expansion of France I Silesian mountains in 1745, in which campaign he greatly disgave him considerable weight in the moderate Republican party. tinguished himself as a leader of light troops . He was present He had entered the Senate in 1885, and he became minister of also at Soor . He retired shortly afterwards, owing to his distaste public works in the Tirard ministry (December 1887 to March 1888) . In 1892 President Sadi Carnot, who was his personal friend, asked him to form a cabinet . Loubet held the portfolio of the interior with the premiership, and had to deal with the anarchist crimes of that year and with the great strike of Carmaux, in which he acted as arbitrator, giving a' decision regarded in many quarters as too favourable to the strikers . He was defeated in November on the question of the Panama scandals, but he retained the ministry of the interior in the next cabinet under Alexandre Ribot, though he resigned on its re-construction in January . His reputation as an orator of great force and lucidity of exposition and as a safe and honest states-man procured for him in 1896 the presidency of the Senate, and in February 1899 he was chosen president of the republic in succession to Felix Faure by 483 votes as against 279 recorded by Jules Meline, his only serious competitor . He was marked out for fierce opposition and bitter insult. as the representative of that section of the Republican party which sought the revision of the Dreyfus case . On the day of President Faure's funeral Paul Deroulede met the troops under General Roget on their return to barracks, and demanded that the general should march on the llysee . Roget sensibly took his troops back to barracks .

At the Auteuil

steeplechase in June the president was struck on the head with a cane by an anti-Dreyfusard . In that month President Loubet summoned Waldeck-Rousseau to form a cabinet, and at the 'same time entreated Republicans of all shades of opinion to rally to the defence of the state . By the for the lawless habits of his comrades in the irregulars, and after long waiting in poverty for a regular commission he was at last made a captain in one of the frontier regiments, spending the next ten years in half-military, half-administrative work in the Carlstadt district . At Bunich, where he was stationed, he built a church and planted an oak forest now called by his name . He had reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel when the outbreak of the Seven Years' War called him again into the'field . From this point began his fame as a soldier . Soon promoted colonel, he distinguished himself repeatedly and was in 1757 made a General-feldwacht-meister (major-general of cavalry) and a knight of the newly founded order of Maria Theresa . In the campaign of 1758 came his first opportunity for fighting an action as a commander-in-chief, and he used it so well that Frederick the Great was obliged to give up the siege of Olmiitz and retire into Bohemia (action of Dom-stadtl, 3oth of June) . He was rewarded with the grade of lieutenant-field-marshal and having again shown himself an active and daring commander in the campaign of Hochkirch, he was created a Freiherr in the Austrian nobility by Maria Theresa and in the peerage of the Holy Roman Empire by her husband the emperor Francis . Maria Theresa gave him, further, the grand cross of the order she had founded and an estate near Kuttenberg in Bohemia . He was placed in command of the Austrian contingent sent to ' His name is phonetically spelt Laudon or Laudohn by Germans, and the latter form was that adopted by himself and his family . In 1759, however, he reverted to the original Scottish form .

join the Russians on the

Oder . At Kunersdorf he turned defeat daughter of Hugh Campbell, 1st Baron Loudoun (d . 1622') . He was created earl on the rah of May 1633, but in consequence of his opposition to Charles I.'s church policy in Scotland the patent was stopped in Chancery . In 16Z7 he was one of the supplicants against the introduction of the English liturgy; and with John Leslie, 6th earl of Rothes, he took a leading part in the promulgation of the Covenant and in the General Assembly which met at Glasgow in the autumn of 1638 . He served under General Leslie, and was one of the Scottish commissioners at the Pacification of Berwick in June 1639 . In November of that year and again in 164o the Scottish estates sent Loudoun with Charles Seton, and earl of Dunfermline, to London on an embassy to Charles I . Loudoun intrigued with the French ambassador and with Thomas Savile, afterwards earl of Sussex, but without much success . He was in London when John Stewart, earl of Traquair, placed in Charles's hands a letter signed by Loudoun and six others and addressed to Louis XIII . In spite of his protest that the letter was never sent, and that it would in any case be covered by the amnesty granted at Berwick, he was sent to the Tower . He was released in June, and two months later he re-entered England with the Scottish invading army, and was one of the commissioners at Ripon in October . In the following August (1641) Charles opened parliament at Edinburgh in person, and in pursuance of a policy of conciliation towards the leaders of the Covenant Loudoun was made lord chancellor of Scotland, and his title of earl of Loudoun was allowed .

He also became first

commissioner of the treasury . In 1642 he was sent by the Scottish council to York to offer to mediate in the dispute between Charles and the parliament, and later on to Oxford, but in the second of these instances Charles refused to accept his authority . He was constantly einployed in subsequent negotiations, and in 1647 was sent to Charles at Carisbrooke Castle, but the " Engage-anent " to assist the king there made displeased the extreme Covenanters, and Loudoun was obliged to retract his support of it . He was now entirely on the side of the duke of Argyll and the preachers . He assisted in the capacity of lord chancellor at Charles II.'s coronation at Scone, and was present at Dunbar . He joined in the royalist rising of 1653, but eventually surrendered to General Monk . His estates were forfeited by Cromwell, and a sum of money settled on the countess and her heirs . At the Restoration he was removed from the chancellor-ship, but a pension of r000 granted him by Charles I. in 1643 was still allowed him . In 1662 he was heavily fined . He died in Edinburgh on the 15th of March 1663 . The earl's elder son, James (d . 1684), and earl of Loudoun, passed his life out of Great Britain, and when he died at Leiden was succeeded by his son Hugh (d .

1731) . The 3rd earl held various high positions in England and Scotland, being chosen one of the representative peers for Scotland at the

union of the parliaments in 1707 . He rendered good service to the government during the rising of 1715, especially at the battle of Sheriffmuir, and was succeeded as 4th earl by his son John (1705-1782), who fought against the Jacobites in 1745, was commander-in-chief of the British force in America in 1756 and died unmarried . The title then passed to James Mure Campbell (d . 1786), a grandson of the 2nd earl, and was afterwards borne by the marquesses of Hastings, descendants of the 5th earl's daughter and heiress, Flora (1780-1840) . Again reverting to a female on the death of Henry, 4th marquess of Hastings, in 1868, it came afterwards to Charles (b . 1855), a nephew of this marquess, who became 11th earl of Loudoun .