1609–1650; Danish military strategist and commander; Marshal of France under Louis XIV. The fragmentary Josias Rantzau was one of the most powerful of the marshals of his day, and was at least twice thrown in the Bastille to temper his ambitions. He was wounded over sixty times in the field; whatever fame he can still claim clings to him due to that circumstance, that by and by he had only one left of each limb and organ of which Nature has allotted Man two. He lost an eye in the siege of Dole, and the voracious siege of Arras (in which Cyrano de Bergerac also participated, but came out largely intact) cost him an arm, a leg and an ear; where he lost his kidney, testicle or lung is not recorded in the sources available to me. His epitaph is concerned entirely with this unusual deformation, and ends:
Et Mars ne lui laissa rien d'entier que le coeur.
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