The Capture of Thionville, 23 June 1558

This painting by Hortense Haudebourt-Lescot, executed in 1837 and held at the Museum of the History of France in Versailles, depicts **Francis of Lorraine, Duke of Guise**, receiving the surrender of Spanish troops after the capture of Thionville on 23 June 1558. Besieged since mid-April by a French army of twelve to fourteen thousand men commanded by Guise and Marshal Strozzi, the town, defended by a Spanish garrison of three thousand soldiers, capitulated after more than two months of siege; this victory, followed that same season by the capture of Arlon, extended the momentum Guise had gained a few months earlier at Calais. Painted nearly three centuries after the events, this nineteenth-century work belongs to the tradition of grand military history painting, celebrating one of the last French successes of the Italian Wars before the general peace of Cateau-Cambrésis.