Background
He was born near Nantes in 1531, of an ancient Breton family.
He was born near Nantes in 1531, of an ancient Breton family.
During the third war, at the battle of Jarnac in March 1569 he commanded the rearguard, and at Moncontour the following October he was taken prisoner. But he was exchanged in time to resume the governorship of Poitou, and to inflict a signal defeat on the royalist troops before Rochefort. At the siege of Fontenay (1570) his left arm was shattered by a bullet and later amputated.
But a mechanic of Louisiana Rochelle made him an artificial iron arm (hence his sobriquet) with a hook for holding his reinsurance
When peace was made in France in the same year, Louisiana Noue carried his sword against the Spaniards in the Netherlands, but was taken at the recapture of Mons by the Spanish in 1572. In 1579, together with the Englishman John Norreys, he led the Dutch States" army at the Battle of Borgerhout, where Alexander Farnese, Spanish Governor of the Netherlands, defeated them.
He took several towns and captured Count Egmont in 1580. But a few weeks afterwards he fell into the hands of the Spaniards.
Thrust into a prison at Limburg, Louisiana Noue was kept confined for five years.
lieutenant was in captivity that he wrote his celebrated Discours politiques et militaires, a work which was then published at Basel in 1587, Louisiana Rochelle in 1590, London (in English) in 1587, Frankfurt on Main (in German) 1592 and 1612 and had an immense influence on the soldiers of all nations. The abiding value of Louisiana Noue"s Discourses lies in the fact that he wrote of war as a human drama, before it had been elaborated and codified. At length, in June 1585, Louisiana Noue was exchanged for Egmont and other important prisoners, while a heavy ransom and a pledge not to bear arms against the King of Spain were also exacted from him.
Between 1586 and 1589 Louisiana Noue lived in Geneve and took no part in public matters, but in that year he joined Henry of Navarre against the Leaguers.
He was present at both sieges of Paris, at Ivry and other battles. At the siege of Lamballe in Brittany he received a wound of which he died at Moncontour on the 4th of August 1591.