MILITARY GENERAL SERVICE MEDAL WITH EGYPT CLASP TO LIEUT. L.A. DENOE, 10TH FOOT (FRENCH COUNT)

Lieutenant and Count Lewis Amedie De Noe was a French Aristocrat known in full as Louis Pantaleon Jude Amedee De Noe, the Comte De Noe, born on 28 Oct 1777 on L’Isle-de-Noe, a commune in the Gers department in southwest France.

He was the son of Louis Pantaleon De Noe and Charlotte Jacquette De Noe; his father was a Marećhal de camp, the equivalent of a General officer in the French Army, and owner of a plantation at Breda au Cap in what is now Haiti.

After the French Revolution of 1789, De Noe’s parents emigrated to India and he joined the British military service there in 1791, archiving his time there in the form of a number of well-known sketches. Commissioned Lieutenant with the 10th Foot (North Lincolnshire) on 4 Sep 1798, De Noe served with the regiment during the Egyptian Campaign of 1801. An engraved image of De Noe appears on the inside cover of his book and memoirs of the Egyptian campaign: ‘Memoires Relatifs A L’Expedition Anglaise – Partie de Bengale en 1800 Pour Aller Combattre en Egypte L’Armee D’Orient’, published in 1826 and the Royal Printers in Paris.

De Noe was appointed Captain with the 2nd Ceylon Regiment on 20 Aug 1804 and transferred to the 6th (Warwickshire) Regiment of Foot on 8 Oct 1813.

With Napoleon advancing towards Brussels, De Noe joined the 2nd battalion, 59th (2nd Nottinghamshire) Regiment of Foot as a Captain and Company Commander. He was on the field for the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815, fighting with Major General Johnstone’s 6th British Brigade in Lieutenant General Sir Charles Colville’s 4th Division.

With the restoration of the French Monarchy, De Noe returned to France where he was appointed Gentleman in Ordinary to the King Louis XVIII’s Bedchamber.

De Noe’s family was to become renowned; he had married Francoise Caroline Halliday on 30 Jan 1804, with whom he had five children, including Francois Thomas De Noe, Marquis Denoe (1806 – 1887) and Amedee De Noe (1818 – 1879), a famous French artist and caricaturist, who produced more than 40,000 works under the pen name of ‘Cham’.

De Noe lived to claim this Military General Service Medal with Egypt clasp before he died in Paris on 3 Feb 1855, aged 75.