LATUDE, JEAN HENRI

This article appears in Volume V16, Page 275 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: LAP-LEO

LATUDE, JEAN HENRI , often called DANRY or MASERS DE LATUDE (17251805), prisoner of the

Bastille

BASTILLE (from Fr. bastir, now bdtir, to build)

, was born at Montagnac in Gascony on the 23rd of

March

1725. He received a military education and went to Paris in 1748 to study mathematics. He led a dissipated life and endeavoured to curry favour with the marquise de Pompadour by secretly sending her a box of poison and then informing her of the supposed

plot

PLOT
PLOT, ROBERT (164o-1696)

against her life. The ruse was discovered, and Mme de Pompadour, not appreciating the humour of the situation, had Latude put in the

Bastille

BASTILLE (from Fr. bastir, now bdtir, to build)

on the 1st of May 1749. He was later transferred to Vincennes, whence he escaped in 1750. Retaken and reimprisoned in the Bastille, he made a second brief escape in 1756. He was transferred to Vincennes in 1764, and the next year made a third escape and was a third time recaptured. He was put in a madhouse by Malesherbes in 1775, and discharged in 1777 on

condition

CONDITION (Lat. condicio, from condicere, to agree upon, arrange; not connected with conditio, from condere, conditum, to put together)

that he should retire to his native town. He remained in Paris and was again imprisoned. A certain Mme Legros became interested in him through chance

reading

READING

of one of his memoirs, and, by a vigorous agitation in his behalf, secured his definite release in 1784. He exploited his

long

LONG, GEORGE (1800-1879)
LONG, JOHN DAVIS (1838– )

captivity with considerable ability, posing as a brave officer, a son of the marquis de la Tude, and a victim of Pompadour's intrigues. He was extolled and pensioned during the Revolution, and in 1793 the convention compelled the heirs of Mme de Pompadour to pay him 6o,000 francs

damages

DAMAGES (through O. Fr. damage, mod. Fr. dommage, from Lat. damnum, loss)

. He died in obscurity at Paris on the 1st of January 1805.
The

principal

PRINCIPAL

work

WORK

of Latude is the account of his imprisonment, written in collaboration with an advocate named Thiery, and en-titled Le Despotisme devoile, ou Memoires de Henri Masers de la Tude, detenu pendant trente-cinq ans clans les diverses prisons d'etat (Amster-dam, 1787, ed. Paris, 1889). An Eng. trans. of a portion was published in 1787. The

work

WORK

is full of lies and misrepresentations, but had

great

GREAT

vogue at the time of the French Revolution. Latude also wrote essays on all sorts of subjects.
See J. F. Barriere, Memoires de Linguet et de Latude (1884); G. Bertin, Notice in edition of the Memoires (1889); F. Funck-Brentano, " Latude," in the Revue des deux mondes (1st October 1889).

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