danger he enlisted in the army, but after Thermidor he returned to Paris and to his newspaper work. He was involved in the royalist movement of the 13th Vendémiaire, and condemned to deportation after the 18th Fructidor; but, thanks to powerful influence, he was left “forgotten” in prison till after the 18th Brumaire, when he was set at liberty by Fouché. Under the Empire he was appointed a professor of history in the Faculté des lettres of Paris (1809), and elected as a member of the Académie française (1811). In 1827 he was prime mover in the protest made by the French Academy against the minister Peyronnet’s law on the press, which led to the failure of that measure, but this step cost him, as it did Villemain, his post as censeur royal. Under Louis Philippe he devoted himself entirely to his teaching and literary work. In 1848 he retired to Mâcon; but there, as in Paris, he was the centre of a brilliant circle, for he was a wonderful causeur, and an equally good listener, and had many interesting experiences to recall. He died on the 26th of March 1855. His son Pierre Henri (1815–1899) was a humorous writer and politician of purely contemporary interest.
J. C. Lacretelle’s chief work is a series of histories of the 18th century, the Revolution and its sequel: Précis historique de la Révolution française, appended to the history of Rabaud St Étienne, and partly written in the prison of La Force (5 vols., 1801–1806); Histoire de France pendant le XVIII e siècle (6 vols., 1808); Histoire de l’Assemblée Constituante (2 vols., 1821); L’Assemblée Législative (1822); La Convention Nationale (3 vols., 1824–1825); Histoire de France depuis la restauration (1829–1835); Histoire du consulat et de l’empire (4 vols., 1846). The author was a moderate and fair-minded man, but possessed neither great powers of style, nor striking historical insight, nor the special historian’s power of writing minute accuracy of detail with breadth of view. Carlyle’s sarcastic remark on Lacretelle’s history of the Revolution, that it “exists, but does not profit much,” is partly true of all his books. He had been an eye-witness of and an actor in the events which he describes, but his testimony must be accepted with caution.
LACROIX, ANTOINE FRANÇOIS ALFRED (1863– ),
French mineralogist and geologist, was born at Mâcon, Saône et
Loire, on the 4th of February 1863. He took the degree of
D. ès Sc. in Paris, 1889. In 1893 he was appointed professor of
mineralogy at the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, and in 1896 director
of the mineralogical laboratory in the École des Hautes Études.
He paid especial attention to minerals connected with volcanic
phenomena and igneous rocks, to the effects of metamorphism,
and to mineral veins, in various parts of the world, notably in
the Pyrenees. In his numerous contributions to scientific
journals he dealt with the mineralogy and petrology of Madagascar,
and published an elaborate and exhaustive volume
on the eruptions in Martinique, La Montagne Pelée et ses éruptions
(1904). He also issued an important work entitled Mineralogie
de la France et de ses Colonies (1893–1898), and other works
in conjunction with A. Michel Lévy. He was elected member
of the Académie des sciences in 1904.
LACROIX, PAUL (1806–1884), French author and journalist,
was born in Paris on the 27th of April 1806, the son of a novelist.
He is best known under his pseudonym of P. L. Jacob, bibliophile,
or “Bibliophile Jacob,” suggested by the constant interest he
took in public libraries and books generally. Lacroix was an
extremely prolific and varied writer. Over twenty historical
romances alone came from his pen, and he also wrote a variety
of serious historical works, including a history of Napoleon III.,
and the life and times of the Tsar Nicholas I. of Russia. He
was the joint author with Ferdinand Séré of a five-volume work,
Le Moyen Âge et La Renaissance (1847), a standard work on the
manners, customs and dress of those times, the chief merit of
which lies in the great number of illustrations it contains. He
also wrote many monographs on phases of the history of culture.
Over the signature Pierre Dufour was published an exhaustive
Histoire de la Prostitution (1851–1852), which has always been
attributed to Lacroix. His works on bibliography were also
extremely numerous. In 1885 he was appointed librarian of the
Arsenal Library, Paris. He died in Paris on the 16th of October
1884.
LACROMA (Serbo-Croatian Lokrum), a small island in the
Adriatic Sea, forming part of the Austrian kingdom of Dalmatia,
and lying less than half a mile south of Ragusa. Though barely
114 m. in length, Lacroma is remarkable for the beauty of its sub-tropical
vegetation. It was a favourite resort of the archduke
Maximilian, afterwards emperor of Mexico (1832–1867), who
restored the château and park; and of the Austrian crown prince
Rudolph (1857–1889). It contains an 11th-century Benedictine
monastery; and the remains of a church, said by a very doubtful
local tradition to have been founded by Richard I. of England
(1157–1199), form part of the imperial château.
See Lacroma, an illustrated descriptive work by the crown princess Stéphanie (afterwards Countess Lónyay) (Vienna, 1892).
LA CROSSE, a city and the county-seat of La Crosse county,
Wisconsin, U.S.A., about 180 m. W.N.W. of Milwaukee, and
about 120 m. S.E. of St Paul, Minnesota, on the E. bank of the
Mississippi river, at the mouth of the Black and of the La Crosse
rivers. Pop. (1900) 28,895; (1910 census) 30,417. Of the
total population in 1900, 7222 were foreign-born, 3130 being
German and 2023 Norwegian, and 17,555 were of foreign-parentage
(both parents foreign-born), including 7853 of German
parentage, 4422 of Norwegian parentage, and 1062 of Bohemian
parentage. La Crosse is served by the Chicago & North Western,
the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul, the Chicago, Burlington &
Quincy, the La Crosse & South Eastern, and the Green Bay &
Western railways, and by river steamboat lines on the Mississippi.
The river is crossed here by a railway bridge (C.M. & St P.) and
wagon bridge. The city is situated on a prairie, extending back
from the river about 212 m. to bluffs, from which fine views may
be obtained. Among the city’s buildings and institutions are the
Federal Building (1886–1887), the County Court House (1902–1903),
the Public Library (with more than 20,000 volumes),
the City Hall (1891), the High School Building (1905–1906), the
St Francis, La Crosse and Lutheran hospitals, a Young Men’s
Christian Association Building, a Young Women’s Christian
Association Building, a U.S. Weather Station (1907), and a
U.S. Fish Station (1905). La Crosse is the seat of a state Normal
School (1909). Among the city’s parks are Pettibone (an island
in the Mississippi), Riverside, Burns, Fair Ground and Myrick.
The city is the see of a Roman Catholic bishop. La Crosse is
an important lumber and grain market, and is the principal
wholesale distributing centre for a large territory in S.W. Wisconsin,
N. Iowa and Minnesota. Proximity to both pine and
hardwood forests early made it one of the most important
lumber manufacturing places in the North-west; but this
industry has now been displaced by other manufactures. The
city has grain elevators, flour mills (the value of flour and grist
mill products in 1905 was $2,166,116), and breweries (product
value in 1905, $1,440,659). Other important manufactures are
agricultural implements ($542,425 in 1905), lumber and planing
mill products, leather, woollen, knit and rubber goods, tobacco,
cigars and cigarettes, carriages, foundry and machine-shop
products, copper and iron products, cooperage, pearl buttons,
brooms and brushes. The total value of the factory product
in 1905 was $8,139,432, as against $7,676,581 in 1900. The
city owns and operates its water-works system, the wagon
bridge (1890–1891) across the Mississippi, and a toll road (212 m.
long) to the village of La Crescent, Minn.
Father Hennepin and du Lhut visited or passed the site of La Crosse as early as 1680, but it is possible that adventurous coureurs-des-bois preceded them. The first permanent settlement was made in 1841, and La Crosse was made the county-seat in 1855 and was chartered as a city in 1856.
LACROSSE, the national ball game of Canada. It derives its
name from the resemblance of its chief implement used, the
curved netted stick, to a bishop’s crozier. It was borrowed
from the Indian tribes of North America. In the old days,
according to Catlin, the warriors of two tribes in their war-paint
would form the sides, often 800 or 1000 strong. The goals were
placed from 500 yds. to 12 m. apart with practically no side
boundaries. A solemn dance preceded the game, after which the
ball was tossed into the air and the two sides rushed to catch
it on “crosses,” similar to those now in use. The medicine-men
acted as umpires, and the squaws urged on the men by beating
