a division of Argyllshire. See ARGYLLSHIRE.

LORRAINE is the corrupted form of Lotharingia, Lothair-regne, Lotharii-regnum, or kingdom of Lothaire. The son and successor of Charlemagne, Louis the Pious, divided the empire between his three sons, Lothaire, Pepin, and Louis. Subsequent to this division, he had, by a second marriage, a son named Charles. Louis the Pious wished to make a new distribution of his dominions, which should include this Charles. The wish led to an insurrection on the part of the three elder brothers, and to the temporary deposition of Louis the Pious. The mother of Charles was desirous of securing the empire for her son, but failing in this, she united with Lothaire, to the exclusion of his younger brother, Louis. Pepin was at this time dead. The old and imbecile emperor being restored to the throne, agreed to make Lothaire and Charles his sole heirs. On the death of the emperor, however, Lothaire found himself opposed by his brothers Louis and Charles, and the result of the bloody battle at Fontenay, in which 100,000 lives are said to have been sacrificed for three unworthy princes, compelled Lothaire to agree to the terms imposed on him by his brothers. According to these terms, Lothaire was to retain the imperial title, but he was to possess only Italy and a territory which reached from the Mediterranean to the Netherlands, and which was partially bounded by the Rhine, the Rhone, the Meuse, and the Scheldt. Louis received Germany, and Charles willingly accepted France for his portion. The treaty of Verdun, which established these terms, was concluded in 843. The territory out of Italy, which was assigned by that treaty to the Emperor Lothaire, is said to have taken from him the name of Lotharingia. This, however, is an error. The district above described was a portion of the empire, and was subsequently split into the kingdoms of Austrasia and Burgundy. Among the political arrangements which followed the confusion supervening on the demise of Lothaire, the most important was that subdivision of territory between his heirs, by which his son Lothaire II. was invested with sovereign power over the districts between the Meuse and the Rhine (excepting certain cities on the banks of the latter river), the Scheldt and the Meuse, and some contiguous "counties." This district was the true Lotharingia, of which King Lothaire, son of the Emperor Lothaire, was the first sovereign. A glance at the map will show that this territory was so situated that, if its monarch gave offence, it could be easily invaded on the sides of either Italy, Germany, or France. On the other hand, Lorraine could give its support to either of its neighbours against the others. One consequence of this position was that the country was for centuries a brand of discord between the German empire and the kingdom of France.

Early in the tenth century, on the death of Louis II., the last German emperor of the blood of Charlemagne, Lorraine was recovered by the French king, Charles the Simple. Under that monarch we meet with the first Due beneficiaire of Lorraine. This was no other than that Reynier (Reginald or Raginer) whose system and policy have been so pleasantly transmitted to us in the exquisite satire, Reineke Fuchs. Reynier's son, Gislebert, succeeded to the ducal stewardship. Sanguinary contests ensued between Germany and France; and finally, a division of the prize being agreed upon, that portion known as Upper Lorraine became a fief of the empire in the year 950, to be governed by dukes receiving their nomination from the kaiser. This species of administration lasted eighty years, when the Emperor Henry III. founded a line of hereditary dukes in the person of Albert of Alsace. This line, which commenced in 1044, flourished during seven centuries, at the end of which time Lorraine was finally annexed to the French crown, and Francis, the twenty-sixth duke from the Alsatian (whose genealogy partial heralds have traced from Hector, and more modest builders of races from Dagobert) exchanged the duchy of Lorraine for that of Tuscany, took the hand of Maria Theresa, and gave to the imperial house of Austria the name of Hapsburg-Lorraine.

A more famous line of dukes never challenged admiration. Occasionally we find one weary of his glory. Thus, after Albert, Gerard, Thierry I., and Matthew I., had successively enjoyed their ducal state, we meet with the astute Simeon II., who, after twenty-two years of renown and responsibility, laid down his ducal cap, and ended his days in a monastery. His coronet was joyously worn by his nephew Ferry, or Frederic I., whose successor, Thibaut the Handsome, wore it more joyously still, but less happily, ending a gay life by poison, mixed for him by the hand of a favourite and ungrateful mistress. His brother and successor, the terrible Matthew II., is remembered for the summary manner in which he suppressed all desire to commit acts of injustice on the part of local governors by skinning one offender alive. Ferry II., in 1298, received an accession of sovereign power in the imperial sanction to coin his own money. The second Thibaut reduced the authority of the aspiring Lorraine nobles as vigorously as Richelieu subsequently crushed that of the proud aristocracy of France. The third Ferry, surnamed the Wrestler, gave asylum in his duchy to the fugitive Templars, flying from the vengeance of other sovereigns. He is otherwise remembered as being the first of the Lorraine dukes who was a decided partisan of France. It was the ambition of all these dukes to obtain the title of king. Raoul, who followed Ferry the Wrestler, acquired the lordship of Guise, in Picardy, by his marriage with Mary of Blois; but this alliance with France was founded more on policy than affection. This "paragon of Lorraine dukes" was not unknown to our forefathers, for he was among the bravest of our foes counted among the dead on the well-stricken field of Cressy. Still better known to the English was his successor John, godson of John, King of France. John left his dukedom a prey to the luxurious nobles and to the peasantry, who massacred those nobles because of their licentious cruelty, and Duke John joined his fortunes with those of his royal godfather. Like him, the duke became our prisoner at Poitiers, hunted in our English woods, sojourned in our English castles, was now at large, anon under strict restraint, and was not released, even by the peace of Bretigny, under a less modest ransom than 30,000 livres.

Then ensued the period of disputed successions, the history of a portion of which is familiar to English readers who have perused the Anne of Geierstein of Sir Walter Scott. Charles, the son of our prisoner John, died without male heirs. His daughter, Isabella, was married to René d'Anjou, "Duke of Bar, King of Naples, Sicily, and Jerusalem," by whom the ducal coronet of Lorraine was claimed. René is famous for his lack of good fortune, his empty titles, and his love of poetry and minstrelsy. He was unable either to sustain the claim of his wife to the sovereignty of Lorraine, or to help his daughter, Margaret of Anjou, Queen of England, in her attempt to recover the crown of her husband, Henry VI. René and Isabella left the disputed coronet of Lorraine to be worn by their son John II., who was wiser than his father, and still more unfortunate. John's son, Duke Nicholas, was an exquisite dancer, but a very indifferent duke. His death left the seat of authority to be occupied by René II., but it was claimed by Charles, Duke of Burgundy, for the Count of Vermandois. The contest which arose is one of the principal features in Scott's romance, already named, and it ended unsuccessfully for the Burgundian by his defeat at Nancy, and his death in the marsh near the city. When his body was discovered there, the gentle René took the frozen hand, and exclaimed, "God have your soul, cousin, although you have caused me many a pain and sorrow!" René II. refused to confiscate the property of any of the adherents of Charles in Lorraine; and of all the rich spoil of the Burgundian camp, he retained only a crystal vase, out of which he drank, after the funeral of Charles, "to the oblivion of vengeance." When René died, in 1508, his wife Philippa took the veil in the convent at Pont à Mongeon. At the solemn ceremony, her youngest son, twelve years of age, placed in her hand the symbolic wax-light, and burst into tears as he turned from his mother, who for the next fifty years humbly signed herself "Sister Philippa, poor earth-worm." Of the good duke, René II., it is unnecessary to say more here than that from him sprang another line of dukes, of which we shall briefly speak at the close of this article, namely, the dukes of Guise.

Duke Antony, the eldest son of René II., has received the equivocal praise of Brantome, for many fine qualities and reputable virtues. He was French by education and inclination. His ducal coronet passed to the brows of three successive dukes, Francis, Charles, and Henry, before a lineal succession was interrupted by the lack of male heirs at the decease of the last-named ducal sovereign. Henry was succeeded in 1614 by his nephew and son-in-law, the great Duke Charles, the most famous and most unfortunate of his house. He was renowned for his gallantry in the field and in lady's bower, and he prided himself on this double reputation. In the Thirty Years' War, he took the side of Germany against France, a partnership which for a time cost him his dukedom. His reconciliation with France did not induce him to consider the designs of the government of that country with less dread or suspicion. He evinced his antagonism by entering the Spanish service, and in that service he carried on war against the French crown, after the peace of Westphalia in 1648 had caused a cessation of hostilities between France and her other adversaries. But Charles found his worst foes amongst his latest friends, and his freedom of speech was exercised at the cost of his personal liberty. For some audacious criticism, the Spaniards put him under arrest in Brussels, transferred him to close captivity in Antwerp and Toledo, but released him in 1659, when Louis XIV. concluded the peace of the Pyrenees. The French monarch procured the enlargement of the duke on terms which made of the latter a very obsequious servant. His obsequiousness, however, went farther than the stipulations required of him; and when his nephew and heir, Charles Leopold, declined to enter into a marriage proposed to him by the duke, the latter forwarded a despatch to Louis XIV., which the French monarch received as he was enjoying the gay delights of the fair at St. Germain, in 1661. When Louis had read the missive, he joyously remarked that he had obtained a more precious prize than could be found in the fair. The despatch from Lorraine contained an offer to make over the duchy to France after the death of Charles, on condition that the princes of the House of Lorraine should be reckoned among the princes of the blood-royal of France. When Charles Leopold heard of the offer, he fled to the emperor for protection. His uncle became the slave of Louis, and when Charles attempted to free himself from the galling yoke in 1670, he was driven out of his duchy by French troops. He died a soldier in the imperial service in 1675. There were difficulties in the way of the annexation of Lorraine to France which neither Louis nor the able Colbert could surmount. It is a singular circumstance, too, that during the early period of the away of Duke Charles he was a proud supporter of his independence of France. He repaired to Versailles, indeed, to do homage for the dukedom of Bar, which was on French territory, but when the ceremony was concluded, he remarked that he hoped no one would construe the act as an acknowledgment of vassalage. The chancellor of King Louis expressed, in his turn, a hope that no chicanery was intended; at which the haughty duke looked at the legal gentleman, and asked if, by chance, he mistook him for a lawyer!

Charles Leopold only nominally reigned from 1675 to 1690. He might have returned to Lorraine, but he refused to accept the terms allowed him by the peace of Nimeguen. He made his name famous by his deeds in the wars of that period; and the recovery of the dukedom which was denied to him, was realized in the person of his son, Leopold Joseph, by the terms of the peace of Ryswick, in 1697, after Lorraine had been more than a quarter of a century in the possession of the French. The experience of his predecessors rendered Leopold Joseph wise. He loved peace rather than war; was respected equally by Germany and France, and while he cultivated the friendship of the former, he cemented his alliance with the latter by marrying Elizabeth Charlotte, daughter of Philip, Duke of Orleans. He died in 1729.

It seems paradoxical to assert that the glory of this ambitious house was consummated by the downfall of the Lorraine. Such, however, is the remarkable fact. The son of Leopold Joseph was Francis Stephen, the last duke. He was popular, gentle, very much of a German by education, a moderate traveller, and was the lion of the London season, at the gay parties of 1731. Of the wars and political struggles of this period we cannot speak farther than as they influenced Lorraine. The possession of the duchy became necessary for the security of the French frontier. Cardinal Fleury finally effected the desired end. Francis married Maria Theresa, exchanged Lorraine for Tuscany, and, with his bride, ascended the imperial throne of Germany. The great hope of the House of Lorraine was thus accomplished. Maria Theresa and Francis could alike trace their descent from Gerard of Alsace, the nephew of the first duke of the hereditary line; and on grasping the sceptre of the kaisers they might have quoted, as fulfilled, the device of their race, *Spes alium redit ut orovum*. They were, as before noticed, the first of the line of Hapsburg-Lorraine.

The old duchy did not immediately revert to the French crown. Among the unsceptred monarchs of the time there was Stanislaus Leszinski, who had been carried to the throne of Poland by Charles XII., and who was driven from it by Charles's enemies. Louis XV. married the daughter of Stanislaus, and gave the duchy, with all its privileges, to her father, in life-interest. The new Duke of Lorraine passed the most pleasant of lives under the protectorate of the worst of kings. He kept a brilliant court; governed with remarkable wisdom; was alternately religious and licentious; made of Nancy a city of parks and palaces; drank joyously the Tokay wine sent to him by Francis; cooked little dishes of his own invention, for which he is still gratefully remembered; dallied in literature; wrote maxims for daily conduct, which embrace the wide distances between duty towards God and watchfulness against damp shoes; and, after a reign or residence of twenty-eight years, from 1738 to 1766, was burned to death by the ignition of his dressing-gown as he was stooping to light his pipe at his own fire.

After his decease Lorraine became a province of France; but the annexation was not carried into effect without various riots, in which the Lorraine women were especially conspicuous. As a province, it disappeared in the French Revolution, when provincial governments, with all their heavy oppressions, ceased. The ancient province was broken up into departments, and that part of the old kingdom of Lothaire is now divided into the departments of the Meurthe, the Meuse, and the Moselle.

The story of Lorraine would be very imperfect without some notice of the branch of Guise. Towards the end of the fifteenth century, René II. sent his fifth and youthful son Claude into France, to push his fortune. The boy grew up to manhood; served Francis I. with his sword; carried the double cross of Lorraine triumphantly over many a field, and acquired such power, that although Francis had made him Duke of Guise, the king warned his successor against the ambition of such men as the duke and his brother, the famous Cardinal John. It was the daughter of this duke, Mary, who married James V. of Scotland, and became the mother of Mary Stuart.

If these two Guises were the terror of all Protestants, still more so were Francis, the second duke, and his able but unscrupulous brother, Cardinal Charles. Side by side they governed France; revived her glory; impoverished the people, and enriched themselves. They overcame all political opponents; lived with a splendour which was unknown at court, and sealed their reputation—the first, by capturing Calais from the English; the second, by his sanguinary persecution of the Reformers. The reputation of the duke during the reigns of Henry II. and Francis II. was only equaled by that of his brother; and the kingdom was never so much at the mercy of individuals as when it was brilliantly misruled by Duke Francis of Guise and Cardinal Charles of Lorraine. The duke was shot by Poltrot at the siege of Orleans; the cardinal survived to the reign of Henry III. Meanwhile, there succeeded to the dukedom Henry of the Star (Le Balafre), who was perhaps the most redoubtable antagonist that the Reformers ever had, as he was the most formidable subject ever possessed by helpless sovereign. To him and to Cardinal Charles may be traced the authorship of the plan carried out in that never-to-be-forgotten day of massacre—the day of St Bartholomew. When Charles IX. had passed away, the great struggle for power commenced between the new king, Henry III., and the Guises. It was a struggle for very existence, and in it the Guisards had the sympathy of the people, always excepting the Huguenots. The history of the horrors of the struggle comprises the darkest pages in the history of France. It was not closed when Henry III. got his namesake of Guise into his power at Blois in 1588, and there had him cowardly assassinated in the very bedchamber of the king. The bloody struggle was only brought to an end when the sister of the murdered duke, Ann of Montpensier, put a knife into the hand of the Dominican, Clement, and he, inspired by her beauty and her promises, went and plunged the weapon into the bosom of the last of the Valois kings of France.

From this time the fortunes of Guise suffered retrogression. The fourth duke, Charles, escaped from his captivity at Tours, and joined the league against that over-landed monarch, "Henri Quatre." The triumph of this Bourbon king reduced the duke to comparative retirement. Cardinal Richelieu drove him into exile in the reign of Louis XIII., and this worthless duke was succeeded by his son, the more worthless Henry, who surrendered the dignity of a cardinal to assume the honours and responsibility of a dukedom. It was this libertine who, in 1647, headed the expedition by which, for a time, he succeeded Masaniello on the throne of Naples. After a life of great vicissitudes, he died, in 1664, a sort of "gold-stick-in-waiting" at the French court. Being childless, he was succeeded by his nephew, Louis Joseph, a youth who died of smallpox in 1671, and who bequeathed the once proud title of Guise to his infant son, Francis Joseph, who, in his turn, died of the same disease, the seventh and last of the Dukes of Guise, in the year 1675.

With the prestige of this house its pretensions did not expire. The French memoirs continually reveal to us the petty court quarrels and the silly struggles for precedence at state halls, carried on at court by ladies and gentlemen who could trace their descent from some younger branch (and there were many of them) of the House of Lorraine. The last of the race connected with the line of Guise was that Prince of Lambesc, colonel of cavalry, who, in one of the street riots in Paris, which, in 1789, were preludes to the Revolution, struck a rioter with the flat of his sabre, and for this assault upon the people was driven out of France, three centuries after his great ancestor, Claude, had entered it from Lorraine. The last of the Guises found a refuge at Vienna, where the heir of the elder branch of Lorraine held the imperial sceptre. The present Emperor of Austria is the representative of this ancient race; and he, as if unwilling to give up all connection with the old ducal province which has been so long annexed to France, still reigns supreme over a few square yards in Nancy, the old capital of the province. Those few yards are comprised within the walls of the church wherein are ranged the cenotaphs of all the dukes of Lorraine, and near which lies the body of one of whom Nancy is as proud as of her dukes—Callot, the great French engraver. The ecclesiastical staff of this edifice is in the pay of the Emperor of Austria, as representative of the ancient ducal family.