Hardly anything is known regarding Louis-Nicolas and his family between 1716-1735; on 4 August 1739 Louis-Nicolas was married to Marie-Jeanne Bassecour, linen seamstress and daughter of a valet, in the church of St. André; the family settled in a house on the place des Bleuets. During the war of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) the war passes near Lille and Louis-Nicolas probably joined the army as an ingeneer-geographer and learned the techniques of warfare. In the army he became a protégé of several young aristocrats, like the future ducs de Choiseul, de Ségur, de Richelieu, and d'Aiguillon. Due to his early marriage, his great family and the depressed economics in Lille, he probably never visited Italy; in December 1751 his wife died during labour in Lille, while Louis-Nicolas had gone to Paris (Maillet-Chassagne 2001).