LA LOUTRE, Louis Joseph de, French adventurer, born in France about 1690; died there about 1770. He was a priest in the Roman Catholic church, and in 1737 was sent by the French foreign missionary society to Nova Scotia, settling near Messagouche (now Fort Lawrence). He headed the Acadians and Micmacs in an attack on Annapolis in 1744, and so incensed the English by his revolutionary measures that in 1745 they offered a reward for his capture. He subsequently revisited France, was intrusted with a large sum of money for the improvement of his mission, and was appointed vicar-general of Acadia. But, after ruining the neutral French by his unwise counsels, he abandoned them in the hour of their distress, fled in disguise before the surrender of Fort Beau-sejour, and, arriving in Quebec, was bitterly reproached for his faithlessness by his bishop. He embarked for France in 1751, and, falling into British hands on the passage, was imprisoned for eight years in the island of Jersey.