CORMONTAIGNE, Louis de (1696-1752), a French military engineer, was born at Strasburg. He was present as a volunteer at the sieges of Friburg and Landau, and in 1715 he entered the Engineers. From 1733 to 1745 he took part in several of the most important sieges in the Polish and Austrian wars. Having gained the rank of maréchal de capιp he received charge of the line of fortifications from Calais to the Rhone; and he built new defences at Strasburg, Metz, and Thionville, at which last place he died. i

With the exception of the Architecture militaire, printed at the Hague in 1741, and reprinted at Paris in 1809 as the Mémorial pour la fortification permanente et passagère, and extracts published and used as text-books, the works of Cormontaigne remained in MS. till the beginning of the present century. First published at Berlin in 1803, the Mémorial pour V attaque des places was printed at Paris in 1806, as also was the Mémoire pour la defense des places. All three treatises were republished, with a preface, by Bousmard in 1809.