Louis-Marie, Vicomte de Noailles
(1756-1804)
BIRTH
April 17, 1756
Paris, France
Louis Marie de Noailles
SISTER
Anne de Noailles
(1758-1794)
SISTER
Adrienne de La Fayette
(1759-1807)
SISTER
Anne-Paule-Dominique de Noailles, Marquise de Montagu
(1766-1839)
SISTER
Rosalie de Noailles
(1767-?)
SISTER
Henriette du Motier
(1776-1778)
WIFE
Anne de Noailles
(1758-1794)
Children
Louis Joseph Alexis de Noailles
(1783-1835)
Children
Adélaide Marie Euphémie de Noailles
(1790-1870)
Children
Alfred de Noailles
(1784-1812)
Louis Marie de Noailles (1756–1804) was a French officer who fought for American independence and helped negotiate the British surrender at Yorktown. A brother-in-law of Lafayette, he later represented the nobility in the Estates-General and supported abolishing feudal privileges in August 1789. After exile in America, he served France in Saint-Domingue and died in Havana from wounds. Sources disagree on the precise January 1804 death day, giving the seventh or ninth.
BORN
Louis Marie de Noailles
Paris, France
Married Name
Noaillies, Louis Marie was born on Apr 17, 1756 in Paris, France. The surviving biographical summary provides only limited evidence about childhood, schooling, and the daily circumstances of the household, so those details are not reconstructed here without documentation. What can be stated securely is that this person belonged to the interconnected family world from which HistoryGPS traces participants, relatives, and later descendants of the Revolutionary generation.
Louis Marie de Noailles served in the French army during the American Revolutionary War, including campaigns with d'Estaing and Rochambeau. As an officer of the Soissonnais Regiment, he participated in the Yorktown campaign in 1781 and represented the French army in negotiating the British capitulation. His American service also brought membership in the Society of the Cincinnati. Returning to France, he combined a continuing military career with participation in the political upheaval of 1789.
Elected by the nobility of Nemours to the Estates-General, Noailles became an advocate of reform. On the night of August 4 he proposed equal taxation and the removal or redemption of feudal obligations, helping initiate the assembly's attack on inherited privileges. He served on its military committee, presented plans for army reorganization, supported Jewish civil equality and the abolition of noble titles, and briefly presided over the assembly in 1791.
Promoted to general, Noailles commanded during the opening Revolutionary campaigns but resigned in 1792 and left France. He reached Philadelphia in 1793 and pursued commercial activity during his American exile. Under the Consulate he regained a place in the French army and joined the expedition to Saint-Domingue, which attempted to restore French control over the colony. During the French withdrawal his vessel encountered British forces near Cuba. Wounded in the fighting, he died at Havana in January 1804.
CAREER
DEATH
Louis Marie de Noailles died at Havana in January 1804 after being severely wounded in a naval engagement during the French withdrawal from Saint-Domingue. Accounts differ between January 7 and January 9, and the exact day remains uncertain. His final campaign followed a return to French military service after years of exile and commercial activity in the United States. In Saint-Domingue he served under Rochambeau and took part in the effort to maintain French colonial control against the revolution that created Haiti. After commanding at Môle-Saint-Nicolas, he sailed with the garrison toward Cuba. An encounter with a British vessel led to prolonged fighting and the wounds that ended his life. He reached Havana but did not recover. The available account establishes the connection between the engagement, serious injury and subsequent death more securely than it establishes the medical details. It does not justify specifying a particular organ injury, infection or attempted operation. His end was therefore a delayed death from battle wounds, not the illness of an elderly man in retirement. It also belonged to a different war and political setting from his earlier service in the American Revolution. Exact last words and the course of his care ashore are not dependably documented in the material consulted.
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