their administration Mytilene passed in 1462 under Turkish control, and has since had an uneventful history. The present population is about 130,000 of whom 13,000 are Turks and Moslems and 117,000 Greeks.
See Strabo xiii. pp. 617-619; Herodotus ii. 178, iii. 39, vi. 8, 14; Thucydides iii. 2-50; Xenophon, Hellenica, i., ii.; S. Plehn, Lesbiacorum Liber (Berlin, 1828); C. T. Newton, Travels and Discoveries in the Levant (London, 1865); B. V. Head, Historia Numorum (Oxford, 1887), pp. 487-488; E. L. Hicks and G. F. Hill, Greek Historical Inscriptions (Oxford, 1901), Nos. 61, 94, 101, 139, 164; Conze, Reise auf der Insel Lesbos (1865); Koldewey, Antike Baureste auf Lesbos (Berlin, 1890). (M. O. B. C.)
LESCHES (Lescheos in Pausanias x. 25. 5), the reputed
author of the Little Iliad (Ἰλιὰς μικρά), one of the “cyclic”
poems. According to the usually accepted tradition, he was
a native of Pyrrha in Lesbos, and flourished about 660 B.C.
(others place him about 50 years earlier). The Little Iliad took
up the story of the Homeric Iliad, and, beginning with the
contest between Ajax and Odysseus for the arms of Achilles,
carried it down to the fall of Troy (Aristotle, Poetics, 23). According
to the epitome in the Chrestomathy of Proclus, it ended with
the admission of the wooden horse within the walls of the city.
Some ancient authorities ascribe the work to a Lacedaemonian
named Cinaethon, and even to Homer.
See F. G. Welcker, Der epische Cyclus (1865–1882); Müller and Donaldson, Hist. of Greek Literature, i. ch. 6; G. H. Bode, Geschichte der hellenischen Dichtkunst, i.
LESCURE, LOUIS MARIE JOSEPH, Marquis de (1766–1793), French soldier and anti-revolutionary, was born near Bressuire. He was educated at the École Militaire, which he left at the age
of sixteen. He was in command of a company of cavalry in the
Régiment de Royal-Piémont, but being opposed to the ideas
of the Revolution he emigrated in 1791; he soon, however,
returned to France, and on the 10th of August 1792 took part
in the defence of the Tuileries against the mob of Paris. The
day after, he was forced to leave Paris, and took refuge in the
château of Clisson near Bressuire. On the outbreak of the
revolt of Vendée against the Republic, he was arrested and
imprisoned with all his family, as one of the promoters of the
rising. He was set at liberty by the Royalists, and became
one of their leaders, fighting at Thouars, taking Fontenay and
Saumur (May-June 1793), and, after an unsuccessful attack
on Nantes, joining H. du Verger de la Rochejaquelein, another
famous Vendean leader. Their peasant troops, opposed to
the republican general F. J. Westermann, sustained various
defeats, but finally gained a victory between Tiffauges and
Cholet on the 19th of September 1793. The struggle was then
concentrated round Chatillon, which was time after time taken
and lost by the Republicans. Lescure was killed on the 15th
of October 1793 near the château of La Tremblaye between
Einée and Fougères.
See Marquise de la Rochejaquelein (Lescure’s widow, who afterwards married La Rochejaquelein), Mémoires (Paris, 1817); Jullien de Courcelles, Dictionnaire des généraux français, tome vii. (1823); T. Muret, Histoire des guerres de l’ouest (Paris, 1848); and J. A. M. Crétineau-Joly, Guerres de Vendée (1834).
LESDIGUIÈRES, FRANÇOIS DE BONNE, Duc de (1543–1626), constable of France, was born at Saint-Bonnet de Champsaur on the 1st of April 1543, of a family of notaries with pretensions to nobility. He was educated at Avignon under a Protestant tutor, and had begun the study of law in Paris when he enlisted as an archer. He served under the lieutenant-general of his native province of Dauphiné, Bertrand de Simiane, baron de Gordes, but when the Huguenots raised troops in Dauphiné Lesdiguières threw in his lot with them, and under his kinsman Antoine Rambaud de Furmeyer, whom he succeeded in 1570,
distinguished himself in the mountain warfare that followed
by his bold yet prudent handling of troops. He fought at Jarnac
and Moncontour, and was a guest at the wedding of Henry IV.
of Navarre. Warned of the impending massacre he retired
hastily to Dauphiné, where he secretly equipped and drilled
a determined body of Huguenots, and in 1575, after the execution
of Montbrun, became the acknowledged leader of the Huguenot
resistance in the district with the title of commandant general,
confirmed in 1577 by Marshal Damville, by Condé in 1580,
and by Henry of Navarre in 1582. He seized Gap by a lucky
night attack on the 3rd of January 1577, re-established the
reformed religion there, and fortified the town. He refused to
acquiesce in the treaty of Poitiers (1578) which involved the
surrender of Gap, and after two years of fighting secured better
terms for the province. Nevertheless in 1580 he was compelled
to hand the place over to Mayenne and to see the fortifications
dismantled. He took up arms for Henry IV. in 1585, capturing
Chorges, Embrun, Châteauroux and other places, and after
the truce of 1588–1589 secured the complete submission of
Dauphiné. In 1590 he beat down the resistance of Grenoble,
and was now able to threaten the leaguers and to support the
governor of Provence against the raids of Charles Emmanuel I.
of Savoy. He defeated the Savoyards at Esparron in April
1591, and in 1592 began the reconquest of the marquessate of
Saluzzo which had been seized by Charles Emmanuel. After
his defeat of the Spanish allies of Savoy at Salebertrano in
June 1593 there was a truce, during which Lesdiguières was
occupied in maintaining the royal authority against Éperon
in Provence. The war with Savoy proceeded intermittently
until 1601, when Henry IV. concluded peace, much to the
dissatisfaction of Lesdiguières. The king regarded his lieutenant’s
domination in Dauphiné with some distrust, although he was
counted among the best of his captains. Nevertheless he made
him a marshal of France in 1609, and ensured the succession
to the lieutenant-generalship of Dauphiné, vested in Lesdiguières
since 1597, to his son-in-law Charles de Créquy. Sincerely
devoted to the throne, Lesdiguières took no part in the intrigues
which disturbed the minority of Louis XIII., and he moderated
the political claims made by his co-religionists under the terms
of the Edict of Nantes. After the death of his first wife, Claudine
de Bérenger, he married the widow of Ennemond Matel, a
Grenoble shopkeeper, who was murdered in 1617. Lesdiguières
was then 73, and this lady, Marie Vignon, had long been his
mistress. He had two daughters, one of whom, Françoise,
married Charles de Créquy. In 1622 he formally abjured the
Protestant faith, his conversion being partly due to the influence
of Marie Vignon. He was already a duke and peer of France;
he now became constable of France, and received the order of
the Saint Esprit. He had long since lost the confidence of the
Huguenots, but he nevertheless helped the Vaudois against
the duke of Savoy. Lesdiguières had the qualities of a great
general, but circumstances limited him to the mountain warfare
of Dauphiné, Provence and Savoy. He had almost unvarying
success through sixty years of fighting. His last campaign,
fought in alliance with Savoy to drive the Spaniards from the
Valtelline, was the least successful of his enterprises. He died
of fever at Valence on the 21st of September 1626.
The life of the Huguenot captain has been written in detail by Ch. Dufuyard, Le Connétable de Lesdiguières (Paris, 1892). His first biographer was his secretary Louis Videl, Histoire de la vie du connestable de Lesdiguières (Paris, 1638). Much of his official correspondence, with an admirable sketch of his life, is contained in Actes et correspondance du connétable de Lesdiguières, edited by Comte Douglas and J. Roman in Documents historiques inédits pour servir à l’histoire de Dauphiné (Grenoble, 1878). Other letters are in the Lettres et mémoires (Paris, 1647) of Duplessis-Mornay.
LESGHIANS, or Lesghis (from the Persian Leksi, called
Leki by the Grusians or Georgians, Armenians and Ossetes),
the collective name for a number of tribes of the eastern Caucasus, who, with their kinsfolk the Chechenzes, have inhabited Daghestan from time immemorial. They spread southward into the Transcaucasian circles Kuba, Shemakha, Nukha and Sakataly. They are mentioned as Λῆχαι by Strabo and Plutarch along with the Γῆλαι (perhaps the modern Galgai, a Chechenzian tribe), and their name occurs frequently in the chronicles of the Georgians, whose territory was exposed to their raids for centuries, until, on the surrender (1859) to Russia of the Chechenzian chieftain Shamyl, they became Russian subjects. Moses of Chorene mentions a battle in the reign of the Armenian king Baba (A.D. 370–377), in which Shagir, king of the Lekians, was slain. The most important of the Lesghian tribes are the Avars (q.v.), the Kasimukhians or Lakians, the Darghis and the
