Some 6 m. S.E. of the town are the imposing ruins of the château of Tonquédec (c. 1400) styled the “Pierrefonds of Brittany,” and there are other buildings of antiquarian interest in the vicinity. The coast north of Lannion at Trégastel and Ploumanac presents curious rock formations.
Lannion is the seat of a subprefect and has a tribunal of first instance and a communal college. Its industries include saw-milling, tanning and the manufacture of farm implements. The town was taken in 1346 by the English; it was defended against them by Geoffroy de Pontblanc whose valour is commemorated by a cross close to the spot where he was slain.
LANNOY, GUILLEBERT DE (1386-1462), Flemish diplomatist, was chamberlain to the duke of Burgundy, governor of the fort of Sluys, and a knight of the Golden Fleece. He discharged several diplomatic missions in France, England, Prussia, Poland and Lithuania, and was one of the negotiators of the treaty of Troyes (1420). In 1421 he was sent by Henry V. of England to Palestine to inquire into the possibility of reviving the kingdom of Jerusalem, and wrote an account of his travels, Les Pèlerinages de Surye et de Egipte, which was published in 1826 and again in 1842.
LANOLIN (Lat. lana, wool, and oleum, oil), the commercial name of the preparation styled adeps lanae hydrosus in the British Pharmacopoeia, and which consists of 7 oz. of neutral wool-fat (adeps lanae) mixed with 3 fluid oz. of water. The wool-fat is obtained by purification of the “brown grease,” “recovered grease” or dégras extracted from raw sheep’s wool in the process of preparing it for the spinner. It is a translucent unctuous substance which has the property of taking up large quantities of water and forming emulsions which are very slow to separate into their constituents. Owing to the ease with which it penetrates the skin, wool-fat both in the anhydrous form and as lanolin, sometimes mixed with such substances as vaseline or fatty oils, is largely employed as a basis for ointments. It is slightly antiseptic and does not become rancid.
LA NOUE, FRANÇOIS DE (1531-1591), called Bras-de-Fer, one of the Huguenot captains of the 16th century, was born near Nantes in 1531, of an ancient Breton family. He served in Italy under Marshal Brissac, and in the first Huguenot war, but his first great exploit was the capture of Orleans at the head of only fifteen cavaliers in 1567, during the second war. At the battle of Jarnac in March 1569 he commanded the rearguard, and at Moncontour in 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; but a mechanic of Rochelle made him an iron arm (hence his sobriquet) with a hook for holding his reins. When peace was made in France in the same year, La Noue carried his sword against the Spaniards in the Netherlands, but was taken at the recapture of Mons by the Spanish in 1572. Permitted to return to France, he was commissioned by Charles IX., after the massacre of St Bartholomew, to reconcile the inhabitants of La Rochelle, the great stronghold of the Huguenots, to the king. But the Rochellois were too much alarmed to come to terms; and La Noue, perceiving that war was imminent, and knowing that his post was on the Huguenot side, gave up his royal commission, and from 1574 till 1578 acted as general of La Rochelle. When peace was again concluded La Noue once more went to aid the Protestants of the Low Countries. 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 loathsome prison at Limburg, La Noue, the admiration of all, of whatever faith, for his gallantry, honour and purity of character, was kept confined for five years by a powerful nation, whose reluctance to set him free is one of the sincerest tributes to his reputation. It was in captivity that he wrote his celebrated Discours politiques et militaires, a work which was published at Basel in 1587 [republished at La Rochelle 1590, Frankfurt on Main (in German) 1592 and 1612; and London (in English) 1597] and had an immense influence on the soldiers of all nations. The abiding value of La 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, La Noue was exchanged for Egmont and other prisoners of consideration, while a heavy ransom and a pledge not to bear arms against his Catholic majesty were also exacted from him. Till 1589 La Noue 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.
He wrote, besides the Discourses, Déclaration pour prise d’armes et la défense de Sedan et Jamets (1588); Observations sur l’histoire de Guicciardini (2 vols., 1592); and notes on Plutarch’s Lives. His Correspondance was published in 1854. See La Vie de François, seigneur de La Noue, by Moyse Amirault (Leiden, 1661); Brantôme’s Vies des Capitaines français; C. Vincens’ Les Héros de la Réforme. Fr. de La Noue (1875); and Hauser, François de La Noue (Paris, 1892).