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Ferdinand de Lannoy , Duke of Boyennes, was a Spanish general, born in Italy around 1510, died in 1579. He is the son of Charles de Lannoy .
Ferndinand de Lannoy, lord de Laroche served as one of the officers in the army of Charles V, under the command of Prince William of Orange. He was also known as La Roche.
In second marriage was married to Marguerite de Lannoy Perrenot, sister of Cardinal Granvelle. Lannoy was appointed governor of Artois and remained in the conflict of the Rebellion royalist and Catholic. When the royal governor of Holland, Count Maximilian of Boussu, had fallen into the hands of the insurgents, Lannoy was appointed stadtholder of Holland. Since the bulk of Holland was in the hands of the rebels, he stayed mostly in Utrecht.
Shortly after the siege he gave up the governorship of Holland and limited himself to that of Arras. Lannoy settled in one of his castles in the Franche-Comte, where he died in 1579.
Lannoy was as distinguished as a scholar as he was as a man of war. He is considered the inventor of the field artillery, and produced some of the earliest modern maps of Burgundy and Franche-Comté.
When the Duke of Alba marched north from Italy into the Netherlands in 1567, he used a map of Franche-Comté prepared by Ferdinand de Lannoy. The publication was delayed for a decade, but it appeared in the 1579 edition of Ortelius’s Theatrum orbis terrarum.