Leuthen itself stands some 4000 paces south of the road, and a similar distance south again lies Sagschütz, while Nypern, on the northern edge of the hill country, is 5000 paces from the road. On Frederick’s approach the Austrians took up a line of battle resting on the two last-named villages. Their whole position was strongly garrisoned and protected by obstacles, and their artillery was numerous though of light calibre. A strong outpost of Saxon cavalry was in Borne to the westward. Frederick had the previous day surprised the Austrian bakeries at Neumarkt, and his Prussians, 33,000 to the enemy’s 82,000, moved towards Borne and Leuthen early on the 5th. The Saxon outpost was rushed at in the morning mist, and, covered by their advanced guard on the heights beyond, the Prussians wheeled to their right. Prince Charles of Lorraine, the Austrian commander-in-chief, on Leuthen Church tower, could make nothing of Frederick’s movements, and the commander of his right wing (Lucchesi) sent him message after message from Nypem and Gocklerwitz asking for help, which was eventually despatched. But the real blow was to fall on the left under Nadasdy. While the Austrian commander was thus wasting time, the Prussians were marching against Nadasdy in two columns, which preserved their distances with an exactitude which has excited the wonder of modern generations of soldiers; at the due place they wheeled into line of battle obliquely to the Austrian front, and in one great échelon,—the cavalry of the right wing foremost, and that of the left “refused,”—Frederick advanced on Sagschütz. Nadasdy, surprised, put a bold face on the matter and made a good defence, but he was speedily routed, and, as the Prussians advanced, battalion after battalion was rolled up towards Leuthen until the Austrians faced almost due south. The fighting in Leuthen itself was furious; the Austrians stood, in places, 100 deep, but the disciplined valour of the Prussians carried the village. For a moment the victory was endangered when Lucchesi came down upon the Prussian left wing from the north, but Driesen’s cavalry, till then refused, charged him in flank and scattered his troopers in wild rout. This stroke ended the battle. The retreat on Breslau became a rout almost comparable to that of Waterloo, and Prince Charles rallied, in Bohemia, barely 37,000 out of his 82,000. Ten thousand Austrians were left on the field, 21,000 taken prisoners (besides 17,000 in Breslau a little later), with 51 colours and 116 cannon. The Prussian loss in all was under 5500. It was not until 1854 that a memorial of this astonishing victory was erected on the battlefield.
See Carlyle, Frederick, bk. xviii. cap. x.; V. Ollech, Friedrich der Grosse von Kolin bis Leuthen (Berlin, 1858); Kutzen, Schlacht bei Leuthen (Breslau, 1851); and bibliography under Seven Years’ War.
LEUTZE, EMANUEL (1816–1868), American artist, was born at Gmünd, Württemberg, on the 24th of May 1816, and as a child was taken by his parents to Philadelphia, where he early displayed talent as an artist. At the age of twenty-five he had earned enough to take him to Düsseldorf for a course of art study at the royal academy. Almost immediately he began the painting of historical subjects, his first work, “Columbus before the Council of Salamanca,” being purchased by the Düsseldorf Art Union. In 1860 he was commissioned by the United States Congress to decorate a stairway in the Capitol at Washington, for which he painted a large composition, “Westward the Star of Empire takes its Way.” His best-known work, popular through engraving, is “Washington crossing the Delaware,” a large canvas containing a score of life-sized figures; it is now owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. He became a member of the National Academy of Design in 1860, and died at Washington, D.C., on the 18th of July 1868.
LEVALLOIS-PERRET, a north-western suburb of Paris, on
the right bank of the Seine, 212 m. from the centre of the city.
Pop. (1906) 61,419. It carries on the manufacture of motor-cars
and accessories, carriages, groceries, liqueurs, perfumery, soap,
&c., and has a port on the Seine.
LEVANT (from the French use of the participle of lever, to
rise, for the east, the orient), the name applied widely to the
coastlands of the eastern Mediterranean Sea from Greece to
Egypt, or, in a more restricted and commoner sense, to the
Mediterranean coastlands of Asia Minor and Syria. In the 16th
and 17th centuries the term “High Levant” was used of the
Far East. The phrase “to levant,” meaning to abscond, especially
of one who runs away leaving debts unpaid, particularly of
a betting man or gambler, is taken from the Span. levantar,
to lift or break up, in such phrases as levantar la casa, to break
up a household, or el campo, to break camp.
LEVASSEUR, PIERRE EMILE (1828– ), French economist,
was born in Paris on the 8th of December 1828. Educated
in Paris, he began to teach in the lycée at Alençon in 1852, and
in 1857 was chosen professor of rhetoric at Besançon. He returned
to Paris to become professor at the lycée Saint Louis,
and in 1868 he was chosen a member of the academy of moral
and political sciences. In 1872 he was appointed professor of
geography, history and statistics in the Collège de France, and
subsequently became also professor at the Conservatoire des
arts et métiers and at the École libre des sciences politiques.
Levasseur was one of the founders of the study of commercial
geography, and became a member of the Council of Public
Instruction, president of the French society of political economy
and honorary president of the French geographical society.
His numerous writings include: Histoire des classes ouvrières en France depuis la conquête de Jules César jusqu’à la Révolution (1859); Histoire des classes ouvrières en France depuis la Révolution jusqu’à nos jours (1867); L’Étude et l’enseignement de la géographie (1871); La Population française (1889–1892); L’Agriculture aux États-Unis (1894); L’Enseignement primaire dans les pays civilisés (1897); L’Ouvrier américain (1898); Questions ouvrières et industrielles sous la troisième République (1907); and Histoire des classes ouvrières et de l’industrie en France de 1789 à 1870 (1903–1904). He also published a Grand Atlas de géographie physique et politique (1890–1892).
LEVECHE, the name given to the dry hot sirocco wind in Spain; often incorrectly called the “solano.” The direction of the Leveche is mostly from S.E., S. or S.W., and it occurs along the coast from Cabo de Gata to Cabo de Nao, and even beyond Malaga for a distance of some 10 m. inland.
LEVÉE (from Fr. lever, to raise), an embankment which keeps a
river in its channel. A river such as the Mississippi (q.v.), draining
a large area, carries a great amount of sediment from its swifter
head-streams to the lower ground. As soon as a stream’s velocity
is checked, it drops a portion of its load of sediment and spreads
an alluvial fan in the lower part of its course. This deposition
of material takes place particularly at the sides of the stream
where the velocity is least, and the banks are in consequence
raised above the main channel, so that the river becomes lifted
bodily upwards in its bed, and flows above the level of the
surrounding country. In flood-time the muddy water flows over
the river’s banks, where its velocity is at once checked as it flows
gently down the outer side, causing more material to be deposited
there, and a long alluvial ridge, called a natural levée, to be built
up on either side of the stream. These ridges may be wide or
narrow, but they slope from the stream’s outer banks to the
plain below, and in consequence require careful watching, for if
the levée is broken by a “crevasse,” the whole body of the river
may pour through and flood the country below. In 1890 the
Mississippi near New Orleans broke through the Nita crevasse
and flowed eastward with a current of 15 m. an hour, spreading
destruction in its path. The Hwang-ho river in China is
peculiarly liable to these inundations. The word levée is also
sometimes used to denote a riverside quay or landing-place.
LEVEE (from the French substantival use of lever, to rise; there is no French substantival use of levée in the English sense), a reception or assembly held by the British sovereign or his representative, in Ireland by the lord-lieutenant, in India by the viceroy, in the forenoon or early afternoon, at which men only are present in distinction from a “drawing-room,” at which ladies also are presented or received. Under the ancien règime in France the lever of the king was regulated, especially under Louis XIV., by elaborate etiquette, and the various divisions of the ceremonial followed the stages of the king’s rising from bed, from which it gained its name. The petit lever began when the
