René de Froulay de Tessé

René de Froulay, comte de Tessé (14 May 1648 – 30 March 1725) was a French Marshal and diplomat.

Tessé was born at Le Mans. His younger brother Philibert-Emmanuel de Froulay, chevalier de Tessé also became a Maréchal de camp. In the 1670s, he fought the Dutch in the Franco-Dutch war.

As an officer in the Dragoons (he became Colonel Général in 1692), he participated actively in the Dragonnade, directed at the Huguenot population around 1685.

He also carried out the pitilessly and methodically devastation of the Palatinate, ordered by Louvois, in January and February 1689.

In 1693 he successfully defended the fortress of Pinerolo.

He intrigued with Jeanne Baptiste d'Albert de Luynes (mistress of the then Duke of Savoy) to bring about a marriage with Louis XIV's grandson and Marie Adelaide of Savoy.

He became a marshal of France in 1703 and was in 1704, during the War of the Spanish Succession, appointed as commander-in-chief of the Franco-Spanish troops in Spain, in place of Berwick.

His first action was to resolve the costly Twelfth Siege of Gibraltar, which by the beginning of 1705 had not made much headway. Apart from the slow advance of the Spanish under Villadarias, the problem was that the Anglo-Dutch forces were continually resupplied by sea. Tessé concluded that it was absolutely necessary to take Gibraltar and that the enterprise only was possible with strong support of a French naval squadron. The annihilation on March 21, 1705 of this squadron near Cabrita point put an end to this design. Tessé then lifted the siege at the end of April.

...
Wikipedia