Loui I, King of Normandy

Loui I, King of Normandy (1455-1494) was King of Normandy from 1491 to 1494.

Early life
Loui married Magdalene of Brandenburg in 1480 and with her had three daughters, Maria, Susan and Phillipa.

King of Normandy
Loui was crowned King of Normandy at the age of 37 in 1492, after the death of his brother, William III, King of Normandy. Prior to being crowned King, Loui was a prominent member of the Kings Council and was effectively running the Kingdom, in place of his brother, who preferred his hunting expeditions to running the Kingdom.

When Loui became King, the nobility of Normandy celebrated the new King who had already shown his expertise at governing the realm.

Grenada War
In 1490, Loui sent an army under the command ofEdward de Lusignan, to Spain to assist Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, against the Nasrid dynasty's Emirate of Granada. After a two year siege, the Norman-Spanish army were victorious in taking Granada.

Conquest of Tunis
After the Christian victory at Granada, Loui began plans to carve out his own territory from the Moorish Hafsid Kingdom and prepared an army. In 1492 three Norman armies under the command of Loui, Edward de Lusignan and Richard de Montfort, landed on the outskirts of Tunis. Loui's army laid siege to Tunis whilst the armies of Lusignan and Montfort secured the surrounding area.

Lusignan defeated a Hafsid army at the Battle of Carthage in 1493 whilst Montfort secured alliances with a number of Bedouin tribes. By the end of 1493, Tunis had been under siege for a year and Loui's army began to suffer with illness. Meanwhile Lusignan and Montfort had secured the surrounding areas.

In February 1494, Tunis finally surrendered to the Normans and Loui entered as conqueror of Tunis. His first action was to rename the city to Carthage and over the next year welcomed 300,000 Jews, who had been expelled from Spain and Sicily, to settle in the Duchy of Carthage.

A month after taking the city, Louis was preparing for his return to Normandy, when he fell sick. A week later, Loui died, most likely of dysentry.