Henri de La Tour d'Auvergne, Duke of Bouillon

Biography[edit]

The vicomte de Turenne was born at the castle of Joze-en-Auvergne, near Clermont-Ferrand in Auvergne. His parents were François de La Tour d'Auvergne, Viscount of Turenne and Éléonore de Montmorency, eldest daughter of Anne, 1st Duc de Montmorency.


After the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572 he participated in the siege of La Rochelle, but subsequently re-converted to Protestantism. Compromised in the conspiracy of La Mole and Coconnat in 1574, he joined the party of the Malcontents headed by François, Duke of Alençon (younger brother of kings Charles IX and Henry III) in 1575.


In 1576 he joined the Protestant party of Henry of Navarre (the future Henry IV), negotiating the Peace of Nérac between Protestants and Catholics in 1579. Appointed lieutenant general of Upper Languedoc in 1580, he took part in the siege of Paris in 1590 after the accession of Henry IV to the throne, and conquered Stenay from the Catholic League in 1591.


In 1591 Henry IV married him to Charlotte de La Marck, heiress to the duchy of Bouillon and of the Principality of Sedan.^[1] In 1592 Henry IV made him Marshal of France.^[1]


After the death of his wife in 1594, he married Elisabeth of Nassau,^[1] a daughter of William the Silent, by his third wife Charlotte de Bourbon, in 1595.^[2] In 1593 and 1595, Henry and the Dutch Republic conducted two unsuccessful campaigns against Spanish-held Luxemburg.^[3][4][5][6]


Defeated at Doullens, Picardy in 1595 by Fuentes, governor of the Spanish Low Countries, he was sent to England to renew the alliance of France with Queen Elizabeth I of England in 1596. Compromised in the conspiracy of Biron in 1602, he fled to Geneva the following year and had to accept a French protectorate over his duchy of Bouillon in 1606.


At the death of Henry IV, he entered the Council of Regency during the minority of Louis XIII, and intrigued against Maximilien de Béthune, duc de Sully and Concini, the latter a favourite of the queen dowager and regent Marie de' Medici.


In April 1612 the Duke came to London as the ambassador of Marie de' Medici. He was received at court in state, and brought 100 or 250 followers. His lodgings at the Charterhouse were hung with tapestries, including rooms for his teenage nephew Henri de La Trémoille. He was brought to his first reception at the Banqueting House at Whitehall Palace by the Duke of Lennox in a convoy of 30 coaches. The court was wearing black mourning for the death of Anne Catherine wife of Christian IV of Denmark.^[7]


According to the Venetian ambassador, Antonio Foscarini, his instructions included an offer of a marriage between Princess Christine, the second Princess of France, and Prince Henry. Anne of Denmark told one of his senior companions that she would prefer Prince Henry married a French princess without a dowry than a Florentine princess with any amount of gold.^[8]


He died in Sedan in 1623.