the earlier part of his reign, Ladislaus obsequiously followed the direction of the Neapolitan court in foreign affairs. In Hungary itself a large party was in favour of the Germans, but the civil wars which raged between the two factions from 1276 to 1278 did not prevent Ladislaus, at the head of 20,000 Magyars and Kumanians, from co-operating with Rudolph of Habsburg in the great battle of Durnkrüt (August 26th, 1278), which destroyed, once for all, the empire of the Přemyslidae. A month later a papal legate arrived in Hungary to inquire into the conduct of the king, who was accused by his neighbours, and many of his own subjects, of adopting the ways of his Kumanian kinsfolk and thereby undermining Christianity. Ladislaus was not really a pagan, or he would not have devoted his share of the spoil of Durnkrüt to the building of the Franciscan church at Pressburg, nor would he have venerated as he did his aunt St Margaret. Political enmity was largely responsible for the movement against him, yet the result of a very careful investigation (1279–1281) by Philip, bishop of Fermo, more than justified many of the accusations brought against Ladislaus. He clearly preferred the society of the semi-heathen Kumanians to that of the Christians; wore, and made his court wear, Kumanian dress; surrounded himself with Kumanian concubines, and neglected and ill-used his ill-favoured Neapolitan consort. He was finally compelled to take up arms against his Kumanian friends, whom he routed at Hodmézö (May 1282) with fearful loss; but, previously to this, he had arrested the legate, whom he subsequently attempted to starve into submission, and his conduct generally was regarded as so unsatisfactory that, after repeated warnings, the Holy See resolved to supersede him by his Angevin kinsfolk, whom he had also alienated, and on the 8th of August 1288 Pope Nicholas IV. proclaimed a crusade against him. For the next two years all Hungary was convulsed by a horrible civil war, during which the unhappy young king, who fought for his heritage to the last with desperate valour, was driven from one end of his kingdom to the other like a hunted beast. On the 25th of December 1289 he issued a manifesto to the lesser gentry, a large portion of whom sided with him, urging them to continue the struggle against the magnates and their foreign supporters; but on the 10th of July 1290 he was murdered in his camp at Korosszeg by the Kumanians, who never forgave him for deserting them.
See Karoly Szabó, Ladislaus the Cumanian (Hung.), (Budapest, 1886); and Acsády, History of the Hungarian Realm, i. 2 (Budapest, 1903). The latter is, however, too favourable to Ladislaus. (R. N. B.)
LADISLAUS V. (1440–1457), king of Hungary and Bohemia,
the only son of Albert, king of Hungary, and Elizabeth, daughter
of the emperor Sigismund, was born at Komárom on the 22nd
of February 1440, four months after his father’s death, and was
hence called Ladislaus Posthumus. The estates of Hungary
had already elected Wladislaus III. of Poland their king, but
Ladislaus’s mother caused the holy crown to be stolen from its
guardians at Visegrad, and compelled the primate to crown the
infant king at Székesfejérvár on the 15th of May 1440; whereupon,
for safety’s sake, she placed the child beneath the guardianship
of his uncle the emperor Frederick III. On the death of
Wladislaus III. (Nov. 10th, 1444), Ladislaus V. was elected
king by the Hungarian estates, though not without considerable
opposition, and a deputation was sent to Vienna to induce the
emperor to surrender the child and the holy crown; but it was
not till 1452 that Frederick was compelled to relinquish both.
The child was then transferred to the pernicious guardianship
of his maternal grandfather Ulrich Cillei, who corrupted him
soul and body and inspired him with a jealous hatred of the
Hunyadis. On the 28th of October 1453 he was crowned king
of Bohemia, and henceforth spent most of his time at Prague
and Vienna. He remained supinely indifferent to the Turkish
peril; at the instigation of Cillei did his best to hinder the
defensive preparations of the great Hunyadi, and fled from the
country on the tidings of the siege of Belgrade. On the death
of Hunyadi he made Cillei governor of Hungary at the diet of
Futtak (October 1456), and when that traitor paid with his life
for his murderous attempt on Laszló Hunyadi at Belgrade,
Ladislaus procured the decapitation of young Hunyadi (16th of
March 1457), after a mock trial which raised such a storm in
Hungary that the king fled to Prague, where he died suddenly
(Nov. 23rd, 1457), while making preparations for his marriage
with Magdalena, daughter of Charles VII. of France. He is
supposed to have been poisoned by his political opponents in
Bohemia.
See F. Palacky, Zeugenverhör über den Tod König Ladislaus von Ungarn u. Böhmen (Prague, 1856); Ignacz Acsády, History of the Hungarian State (Hung.), vol. i. (Budapest, 1903).
LA DIXMERIE, NICOLAS BRICAIRE DE (c. 1730–1791),
French man of letters, was born at Lamothe (Haute-Marne).
While still young he removed to Paris, where the rest of his
life was spent in literary activity. He died on the 26th of
November 1791. His numerous works include Contes philosophiques
et moraux (1765), Les Deux Âges du goût et du génie
sous Louis XIV. et sous Louis XV. (1769), a parallel and contrast,
in which the decision is given in favour of the latter; L’Espagne
littéraire (1774); Éloge de Voltaire (1779) and Éloge de Montaigne (1781).
LADO ENCLAVE, a region of the upper Nile formerly administered
by the Congo Free State, but since 1910 a province
of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. It has an area of about 15,000
sq. m., and a population estimated at 250,000 and consisting
of Bari, Madi, Kuku and other Nilotic Negroes. The enclave is
bounded S.E. by the north-west shores of Albert Nyanza—as
far south as the port of Mahagi—E. by the western bank of the
Nile (Bahr-el-Jebel) to the point where the river is intersected
by 5° 30′ N., which parallel forms its northern frontier from the
Nile westward to 30° E. This meridian forms the west frontier
to 4° N., the frontier thence being the Nile-Congo watershed to
the point nearest to Mahagi and from that point direct to Albert
Nyanza.
The country is a moderately elevated plateau sloping northward from the higher ground marking the Congo-Nile watershed. The plains are mostly covered with bush, with stretches of forest in the northern districts. Traversing the plateau are two parallel mountainous chains having a general north to south direction. One chain, the Kuku Mountains (average height 2000 ft.), approaches close to the Nile and presents, as seen from the river, several apparently isolated peaks. At other places these mountains form precipices which stretch in a continuous line like a huge wall. From Dufile in 3° 34′ N. to below the Bedden Rapids in 4° 40′ N. the bed of the Nile is much obstructed and the river throughout this reach is unnavigable (see Nile). Below the Bedden Rapids rises the conical hill of Rejaf, and north of that point the Nile valley becomes flat. Ranges of hill, however, are visible farther westwards, and a little north of 5° N. is Jebel Lado, a conspicuous mountain 2500 ft. high and some 12 m. distant from the Nile. It has given its name to the district, being the first hill seen from the Nile in the ascent of some 1000 m. from Khartum. On the river at Rejaf, at Lado, and at Kiro, 28 m. N. of Lado, are government stations and trading establishments. The western chain of hills has loftier peaks than those of Kuku, Jebel Loka being about 3000 ft. high. This western chain forms a secondary watershed separating the basin of the Yei, a large river, some 400 m. in length, which runs almost due north to join the Nile, from the other streams of the enclave, which have an easterly or north-easterly direction and join the Nile after comparatively short courses.
The northern part of the district was first visited by Europeans in 1841–1842, when the Nile was ascended by an expedition despatched by Mehemet Ali to the foot of the rapids at Bedden. The neighbouring posts of Gondokoro, on the east bank of the Nile, and Lado, soon became stations of the Khartum ivory and slave traders. After the discovery of Albert Nyanza by Sir Samuel Baker in 1864, the whole country was overrun by Arabs, Levantines, Turks and others, whose chief occupation was slave raiding. The region was claimed as part of the Egyptian Sudan, but it was not until the arrival of Sir Samuel Baker at Gondokoro in 1870 as governor of the equatorial provinces,
