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[1]  1827. Agreement between Britain, France, and Russia that threatened Turkey with military intervention if it did not make an armistice with Greece (see Greek war of independence). The three powers had concluded that an independent Greece was the best option. When Turkey refused the armistice a combined naval force was dispatched that destroyed the Turkish-Egyptian fleet at the Battle of Navarino.

[2]  1839. Treaty signed on April 19 between Britain, France, Austria, Prussia, Russia, and the Kingdom of the Netherlands. This confirmed the independence that Belgium had won from Dutch rule in 1830, but denied its further claims upon the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg (which then remained in dynastic union with Holland until 1890). Additionally, the treaty affirmed the “perpetually neutral state” of Belgium. This was breached when Germany invaded in 1914, leading Britain to enter world war i.

[3] 1852. Agreement of May 8 between the great powers which purportedly settled problems relating to the two duchies at issue in the schleswig-HOLSTEIN QUESTION. The treaty specified that the childless Frederick VII would be succeeded as king of DENMARK by Christian of Gliicksburg; and that, under separate succession laws, the latter would also inherit both schleswig and Holstein without incorporating either of them into the Danish kingdom itself. The rival claimant, the Duke of Augustenburg, accepted these provisions but failed to renounce his claim formally. The agreement began to unravel in 1863. At that point Christian became king and incorporated schleswig into Denmark, while the new duke of Augustenburg, Frederick, repudiated his father’s surrender of claims and declared himself to be ruler.

[4] 1913. Agreement made at the London Conference following the first of the Balkan wars. This treaty was at the territorial expense of Turkey (see TURKEY AND europe) which ceded land west of the Enos-Media line. An independent Albania was established; serbia gained central Macedonia against the opposition of Bulgaria which coveted the territory. Bulgaria did however receive Thrace, while salonika, southern Macedonia and Crete went to Greece. The Balkan states regarded the treaty as a mere interlude in the fighting and soon renewed hostilities. The instability of this region and the great power rivalries which it encouraged helped to produce world war i.

[5] 1915. Secret agreement signed in April between Britain, France, and Russia on the one hand and ITALY on the other. It was designed to bring the Italians into world war i on the Allied side. Accordingly, Italy was promised slices of territory controlled by Austria-Hungary and Turkey as well as German colonies in Africa. In the event, not all these pledges were kept at the Paris peace SETTLEMENT, thus encouraging Italian disaffection with the postwar political order.

Louis XVI (1754-93), King of France (1774-92) and grandson of Louis XV. Earnest and well-intentioned, Louis lacked the political skills and vision needed to address the regime’s financial problems before the french revolution of 1789.

He also failed to provide a lead at the estates GENERAL held that year where, distracted by the death of his son, he allowed power to slip out of his hands. A believer in traditional forms and duties of MONARCHISM (see also absolutism), he was never more than half-heartedly supportive of the revolutionary changes, which made the establishment of a constitutional kingship difficult. In this regard, the flight to varennes (June 1791) destroyed the last shreds of his credibility. After the outbreak of the french revolutionary wars in April 1792 Louis and his family were increasingly regarded as traitors. A republic was established in september, and the former monarch was tried and executed on January 21, 1793.

Louis XVIII (1755-1824), King of France (1795/ 1814-24). As the younger brother of louis xvi, and as Comte de Provence, he fled from France in June 1791 and organized an emigre army with the aim of re-establishing the ancien regime. He proclaimed himself regent after the execution of louis XVI in January 1793, and then king on the death in prison of the latter’s son (Louis XVII) in June 1795. He returned to France in 1814 following the abdication of napoleon i but fled during the HUNDRED DAYS. Restored by the Allies after the Battle of WATERLOO, he sensibly retained many of the innovations dating from the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods (see french revolution OF 1789; NAPOLEON i), including the legal and administrative systems, the concordat, and the land settlement. He also accepted the constitutional restraints imposed on him by the Charter of 1814. However, after 1820 his government became more reactionary as he sought to restrict the franchise and increase the influence of the Catholic Church.

Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (see napoleon iii)

Louis-Philippe, of France (see july monarchy)

Ludendorff, Erich (1865-1937), German general whose brilliance as a strategist was later overshadowed by his support for Nazism. A professional soldier by training, he joined the general staff in 1906 and was responsible for revising the SCHLIEFFEN PLAN. At the start of WORLD WAR I, he was involved in the capture of Liege, a vital strategic objective, whereupon he was swiftly transferred to the Eastern Front. Here he helped hindenburg defeat the Russians at the Battles of tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes. On becoming chief of staff in 1916, Hindenburg appointed Ludendorff as his chief quartermaster-general, and forged an important partnership which largely sidelined Emperor william ii and chancellor bethmann holl-WEG in the prosecution of the war. In seeking to break Allied resolve, Ludendorff was a strong advocate of unrestricted submarine warfare. in March 1918, having insisted that bolshevik Russia be humiliated through the brest-litovsk treaty, he also launched the initially successful western offensive that aimed to secure further victories before the full weight of us involvement became effective. When this eventually failed, his own resolve began to falter. By September he was urging that Germany should seek peace, but then changed his mind. After a brief exile in Sweden, he returned to Germany and immersed himself in far-right politics, participating in the kapp putsch and in the beer hall putsch led by hitler. Elected a Nazi representative to the Reichstag in 1924, he stood against Hindenburg in the 1925 presidential elections, only to be humiliated. Shortly afterwards he fell out with Hitler, and in 1935 refused the offer of a field marshalship in the new Nazi reich.

Ludwig II (1845-86), King of bavaria (1864-86). He is best known for his eccentric behavior and for his patronage of the composer, Richard Wagner. On coming to the throne, Ludwig showed little aptitude for government business and increasingly withdrew from public life, retreating to the mountains where he built a number of extravagant castles at great expense. During the course of his reign, and particularly after BiSMARCK’s establishment of the Prusssian-led german EMPIRE in 1871, Bavaria’s effective independence was diminished. On June 12,1886, Ludwig was forced by a cabal of ministers to abdicate on grounds of mental incapacity. He was found dead the following day in circumstances that remain mysterious.

Lueger, Karl (1844-1910). This Viennese politician helped to entrench antisemitism as a central feature of Austrian politics (see habsburg empire) around the end of the nineteenth century. As leader of the Christian Social Party, he exploited populist intolerance of jews to mobilize an otherwise disparate coalition of groups resistant to liberal reforms. On that basis (and despite francis JOSEPH I’s attempts to block him) he became mayor of Vienna in 1897. His administrative efficiency enabled him to maintain widespread popularity until his death. He is particularly remembered for the remark that “I will determine who is a Jew,” and for the posthumous praise that hitler heaped upon him.

Luneville, Treatyof Agreement signed February 9, 1801, between France and Austria during the NAPOLEONIC WARS following Austrian defeats at MARENGO (June 1800) and Hohenlinden (December 1800). It reaffirmed arrangements made at CAMPO FORMIO by keeping Belgium and the left bank of the Rhine, including Luxemburg, under French control. Additionally, Habsburg Tuscany became a French dependency in the form of the kingdom of Etruria under the Spanish Bourbon, Louis I. The rule of the bourbon dynasty in Naples was confirmed but they ceded territory to France. Overseas, Spain relinquished Louisiana to its French ally. The Luneville compact served to dismantle the Second Coalition, confirm napoleon I’s control of the continent, and leave Britain isolated until she made peace with France through the AMIENS TREATY of 1802.

Luxemburg Grand Duchy with a current population of around 490,000 that occupies an area of around a thousand square miles bordered by BELGIUM, France and Germany. Previously under the rule of the habsburg empire, the territory was controlled by France from 1795 until the end of the NAPOLEONIC WARS. In 1815 the Vienna congress formalized its status as an independent Grand Duchy, albeit one whose rulership was assigned to the king of the Netherlands. Following the Belgians’ successful revolt of 1830, Luxemburg was compelled to cede some of its French-speaking areas to its newly-independent neighbors. In 1890 the dynastic link with the Netherlands was severed when failure of the Orange-Nassau family to provide a male heir (a constitutional requirement for the Grand Duchy that was only later abandoned by the Luxemburgers themselves) brought transfer of sovereignty to the house of Nassau-Weilburg. Meanwhile, despite the fact that Luxemburg had been a member of the GERMAN CONFEDERATION from 1815 and of the zollverein from 1842, pressure from France had prompted bismarck to exclude it from his Prussian-dominated NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION of 1867 (see also german unification). Although the Grand Duchy had then declared its perpetual NEUTRALITY and had subsequently escaped absorption into the new german empire of 1871, it suffered invasion from that quarter during WORLD WAR I. After a repetition of this experience in 1940, Luxemburg even found itself directly incorporated into hitler’s Reich during the period 1942-5. Following world war ii, the country not only threw itself into the cause of European INTEGRATION but also abandoned neutrality. Having secured back in 1921 a customs union with Belgium, it agreed in 1948 an extension of this trading linkage that would embrace the Netherlands too. All three members of the resulting Benelux cluster then entered nato in 1949. Similarly, the Grand Duchy accompanied its Belgian and Dutch partners into the even broader grouping of “the six” that created in 1951 the European COAL AND steel COMMUNITY and that signed in 1957 the ROME treaties. Though the smallest of the founder-states of the European Community, Luxemburg soon flourished as one of its main administrative centers, for example as seat of the European Court of Justice (see European court [1]). Subsequently the Grand Duchy prospered not only from a highly efficient steel industry (exploiting its own rich resources of iron ore) but also from its role as an international, and indeed cosmopolitan, centre for financial services. Its position was weakened, however, by the major European and global banking crisis that erupted towards the end of 2008.

Luxemburg, Rosa (1871-1919), German socialist prominent in the spartacist rising of 1919. Of Jewish origins, she was born in Russian Poland, but adopted German citizenship on her marriage in 1898. Educated at the universities of Warsaw and Zurich, she was drawn to left-wing politics and became a prominent member of the social democratic party of Germany (SPD). An independent thinker, she took issue with the versions of SOCIALISM promoted both by lenin and Bernstein. After participating in the 1905 anti-tsarist protests in Russian Poland, she was active in the Second international. In 1914 Luxemburg opposed war, but also saw how it might yet hasten the fall of capitalism. In 1915 she helped found the Spartacist League, along with lieb-KNECHT and other members of the SPD uncommitted to the war effort, but was soon imprisoned. At the time of the german revolution of 1918-19, she helped transform the League into the German Communist Party (see communism). Critical of what Lenin was attempting in bolshevik Russia, she still urged German workers to revolt but rightly viewed the Spartacist uprising of January 1919 as premature. During its course both she and Liebknecht were murdered by German troops (see freikorps). Luxemburg is remembered particularly for her opposition both to the moderation of Bernstein and to the authoritarianism of Lenin, and in the 1970s and 1980s she also became regarded as an early champion of feminism.

Luxemburg compromise In the context of EUROPEAN INTEGRATION, this agreement of January 30, 1966, ended the so-called “empty chair” crisis precipitated by the French president, de gaulle. He was perturbed by the growing “federalist” implications (see federalism [1]) of the movement towards closer cooperation among “the six,” and particularly by the previously-agreed shift towards qualified majority voting (QMV) in the Council of Ministers. Being anxious to retain the support of the French farmers who were the prime beneficiaries of subsidies from the common

AGRICULTURAL POLICY, de Gaulle instructed his own ministers to boycott all sessions of the Council held during the second half of 1965. This stance helped him to secure presidential re-election in December, and thus strengthened his hand against the rest of the Six. Early the following year the so-called Luxemburg compromise eased the impasse by allowing that, notwithstanding the formal requirement for QMV, decisions on matters of “very important national interest” could be put off until unanimity was achieved. For nearly two decades thereafter this essentially informal agreement effectively gave each member of the European Community a national veto over key issues. Ironically, it was thatcher’s use of this to assert British interests, now mainly against French ones, when renegotiating the UK’s budgetary contributions during 1982 that again brought matters to a head. Through their Stuttgart Declaration of 1983 the member states managed to reduce the risk of boycott, even while continuing to fudge much of the question. Only with the SINGLE EUROPEAN ACT of 1986 was the principle of QMV substantially reasserted to cover a number of major areas. Integrationists argue that, had the compromise prevailed, the single market would never have been accomplished. An attempt at veto always remains a possibility, yet within the structures of the European Union there have developed so many alternative devices for “opting out” that this seems unlikely to occur unless a state is prepared to risk a major crisis.