who was known as the marquis of La Ferté Imbault. La Ferté Nabert (the modern La Ferté Saint Aubin, department of Loiret) was acquired in the 16th century by the house of Saint Nectaire (corrupted to Senneterre), and erected into a duchy in the peerage of France (duché-pairie) in 1665 for Henri de Saint Nectaire, marshal of France. It was called La Ferté Lowendal after it had been acquired by Marshal Lowendal in 1748.
LA FERTÉ-BERNARD, a town of western France, in the
department of Sarthe, on the Huisne, 27 m. N.E. of Le Mans,
on the railway from Paris to that town. Pop. (1906) 4358.
La Ferté carries on cloth manufacture and flour-milling and
has trade in horses and cattle. Its church of Nôtre Dame has
a choir (16th century) with graceful apse-chapels of Renaissance
architecture and remarkable windows of the same period; the
remainder of the church is in the Flamboyant Gothic style.
The town hall occupies the superstructure and flanking towers
of a fortified gateway of the 15th century.
La Ferté-Bernard owes its origin and name to a stronghold (fermeté) built about the 11th century and afterwards held by the family of Bernard. In 1424 it did not succumb to the English troops till after a four months’ siege. It belonged in the 16th century to the family of Guise and supported the League, but was captured by the royal forces in 1590.
LA FERTÉ-MILON, a town of northern France in the department
of Aisne on the Ourcq, 47 m. W. by S. of Reims by rail.
Pop. (1906) 1563. The town has imposing remains comprising
one side flanked by four towers of an unfinished castle built
about the beginning of the 15th century by Louis of Orleans,
brother of Charles VI. The churches of St Nicholas and Notre-Dame,
chiefly of the 16th century, both contain fine old stained
glass. Jean Racine, the poet, was born in the town, and a
statue by David d’Augers has been erected to him.
LAFFITTE, JACQUES (1767–1844), French banker and
politician, was born at Bayonne on the 24th of October 1767,
one of the ten children of a carpenter. He became clerk in
the banking house of Perregaux in Paris, was made a partner
in the business in 1800, and in 1804 succeeded Perregaux as
head of the firm. The house of Perregaux, Laffitte et Cie.
became one of the greatest in Europe, and Laffitte became
regent (1809), then governor (1814) of the Bank of France and
president of the Chamber of Commerce (1814). He raised large
sums of money for the provisional government in 1814 and for
Louis XVIII. during the Hundred Days, and it was with him
that Napoleon deposited five million francs in gold before
leaving France for the last time. Rather than permit the government
to appropriate the money from the Bank he supplied
two million from his own pocket for the arrears of the imperial
troops after Waterloo. He was returned by the department
of the Seine to the Chamber of Deputies in 1816, and took his seat
on the Left. He spoke chiefly on financial questions; his known
Liberal views did not prevent Louis XVIII. from insisting on
his inclusion on the commission on the public finances. In
1818 he saved Paris from a financial crisis by buying a large
amount of stock, but next year, in consequence of his heated
defence of the liberty of the press and the electoral law of 1867,
the governorship of the Bank was taken from him. One of the
earliest and most determined of the partisans of a constitutional
monarchy under the duke of Orleans, he was deputy for Bayonne
in July 1830, when his house in Paris became the headquarters
of the revolutionary party. When Charles X., after retracting
the hated ordinances, sent the comte d’Argout[1] to Laffitte to negotiate a change of ministry, the banker replied, “It is too late.
There is no longer a Charles X.,” and it was he who secured
the nomination of Louis Philippe as lieutenant-general of the
kingdom. On the 3rd of August he became president of the
Chamber of Deputies, and on the 9th he received in this capacity
Louis Philippe’s oath to the new constitution. The clamour
of the Paris mob for the death of the imprisoned ministers of
Charles X., which in October culminated in riots, induced the
more moderate members of the government—including Guizot,
the duc de Broglie and Casimir-Périer—to hand over the
administration to a ministry which, possessing the confidence
of the revolutionary Parisians, should be in a better position
to save the ministers from their fury. On the 5th of November,
accordingly, Laffitte became minister-president of a government
pledged to progress (mouvement), holding at the same time the
portfolio of finance. The government was torn between the
necessity for preserving order and the no less pressing necessity
(for the moment) of conciliating the Parisian populace; with the
result that it succeeded in doing neither one nor the other.
The impeached ministers were, indeed, saved by the courage
of the Chamber of Peers and the attitude of the National Guard;
but their safety was bought at the price of Laffitte’s popularity.
His policy of a French intervention in favour of the Italian
revolutionists, by which he might have regained his popularity,
was thwarted by the diplomatic policy of Louis Philippe. The
resignation of Lafayette and Dupont de l’Eure still further
undermined the government, which, incapable even of keeping
order in the streets of Paris, ended by being discredited with all
parties. At length Louis Philippe, anxious to free himself
from the hampering control of the agents of his fortune, thought
it safe to parade his want of confidence in the man who had
made him king. Thereupon, in March 1831, Laffitte resigned,
begging pardon of God and man for the part he had played in
raising Louis Philippe to the throne. He left office politically
and financially a ruined man. His affairs were wound up in
1836, and next year he created a credit bank, which prospered
as long as he lived, but failed in 1848. He died in Paris on the
26th of May 1844.
See P. Thureau-Dangin, La Monarchie de Juillet (vol. i. 1884).
LAFFITTE, PIERRE (1823–1903), French Positivist, was born on the 21st of February 1823 at Béguey (Gironde). Residing at Paris as a teacher of mathematics, he became a disciple of Comte, who appointed him his literary executor. On the schism of the Positivist body which followed Comte’s death, he was recognized as head of the section which accepted the full Comtian doctrine; the other section adhering to Littré, who rejected the religion of humanity as inconsistent with the materialism of Comte’s earlier period. From 1853 Laffitte delivered Positivist lectures in the room formerly occupied by Comte in the rue Monsieur le Prince. He published Les Grands Types de l’humanité (1875) and Cours de philosophie première (1889). In 1893 he was appointed to the new chair founded at the Collège de France for the exposition of the general history of science, and it was largely due to his inspiration that a statue to Comte was erected in the Place de la Sorbonne in 1902. He died on the 4th of January 1903.
LA FLÈCHE, a town of western France, capital of an arrondissement
in the department of Sarthe on the Loire, 31 m. S.S.W.
of Le Mans by rail. Pop. (1906) town 7800; commune 10,663.
The chief interest of the town lies in the Prytanée, a famous
school for the sons of officers, originally a college founded for
the Jesuits in 1607 by Henry IV. The buildings, including a
fine chapel, were erected from 1620 to 1653 and are surrounded
by a park. A bronze statue of Henry IV. stands in the marketplace.
La Flèche is the seat of a sub-prefect and of a tribunal
of first instance, and carries on tanning, flour-milling, and the
manufacture of paper, starch, wooden shoes and gloves. It is an
agricultural market.
The lords of La Flèche became counts of Maine about 1100, but the lordship became separate from the county and passed in the 16th century to the family of Bourbon and thus to Henry IV.
LAFONT, PIERRE CHÉRI (1797–1873), French actor, was
born at Bordeaux on the 15th of May 1797. Abandoning his
profession as assistant ship’s doctor in the navy, he went to
Paris to study singing and acting. He had some experience at
a small theatre, and was preparing to appear at the Opéra
Comique when the director of the Vaudeville offered him an
engagement. Here he made his début in 1821 in La Somnambule,
and his good looks and excellent voice soon brought him into
- ↑ Apollinaire Antoine Maurice, comte d’Argout (1782–1858), afterwards reconciled to the July monarchy, and a member of the Laffitte, Casimir-Périer and Thiers cabinets.
