Charles de Blanchefort

Charles I de Blanchefort, Marquis de Créquy, Prince de Poix, Duc de Lesdiguières, (1578–1638), was a marshal of France.

De Blanchefort was son of Antoine de Blanchefort. He saw his first fighting before Laon in 1594, and was wounded at the capture of Saint-Jean-d'Angély in 1621. In the next year he became a marshal of France.

De Blanchefort served through the Piedmontese campaign in aid of Victor Amadeus, Duke of Savoy in 1624 as second in command to the constable, François de Bonne, Duc de Lesdiguières, whose daughter Madeleine he had married in 1595.

He had a quarrel extending over years with Philip, the bastard of Savoy, which ended in a duel fatal to Philip in 1599; and in 1620 he defended the comte de Saint-Aignan, who was his prisoner of war, against a prosecution threatened by Louis XIII.

In 1626 de Blanchefort inherited the estates and title of his father-in-law, who had induced him, after the death of his first wife, to marry her half-sister Françoise. He was also lieutenant-general of Dauphiné. In 1633 he was ambassador to Rome, and in 1636 to Venice.

De Blanchefort fought in the Italian campaigns of 1630, 1635, 1636 and 1637, when he helped to defeat the Spaniards at Monte Baldo. He was killed on 17 March 1638 in an attempt to raise the siege of Crema, a fortress in the Milanese. Some of his letters are preserved in the Bibliothque Nationale in Paris, and his life was written by N. Chorier (Grenoble, 1683).

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