Charles de Sainte-Maure, duc de Montausier

CHARLES DE SAINTE MONTAUSIER - Maure, Duc DE (1610-1690), French soldier, was born on the 6th of October 1610, being the second son of Leon de Sainte-Maure, baron de Montausier. His parents were Huguenots, and he was educated. at the Protestant College of Sedan under Pierre du Moulin.. He served brilliantly at the siege of Casale in 1630. Becoming; marquis de Montausier by the death of his elder brother in 1635, he was the recognized aspirant for the hand of Mme de Rambouillet's daughter Julie Lucine d'Angennes (1607-1671). Having served under Bernard of Saxe-Weimar in Germany in 1634 he returned to the French service in 1636, and fought in the Rhenish campaigns of the following years. He was taken prisoner at Rantzau in November 1643, and only ransomed after ten months' captivity. On his return to France he became a lieutenant-general. On the 15th of July 1645 he married "the incomparable Julie," thus terminating a courtship famous in the annals of French literature because of the Guirlande de Julie, a garland of verse consisting of madrigals by Montausier, Jean Chapelain, Guillaume Colletet, Claude de Malleville, Georges de Scudery, Pierre Corneille (if M. Uzanne is correct in the attribution of the poems signed M.C.), Philippe Hubert, Simon Arnauld de Pomponne, 1 Jean Desmarests de Saint Sorlin, Antoine Gombaud ( ` e nain de la Princesse Julie) and others. It was copied by the famous calligraphist N. Jarry in a magnificent MS., on each page of which was painted a flower, and was presented to Julie on her fete day in 1641. The MS. is now in possession of the Uzes family, to whom it passed by the marriage of Julie's daughter to Emmanuel de Crussol, duc d'Uzes.

Montausier had bought the governorship of Saintonge and Angoumois, and became a Roman Catholic before his marriage. During the Fronde he remained, in spite of personal grievances against Mazarin, faithful to the Crown. On the conclusion of peace in 1653 the marquis, who had been severely wounded in 1652, obtained high favour at court in spite of the roughness of his manners and the general austerity which made the Parisian public recognize him as the original of Alceste in the Misanthrope. Montausier received from Louis XIV. the order of the Saint Esprit, the government of Normandy, a dukedom, and in 1668 the office of governor of the dauphin, Louis. He initiated the series of classics Ad usum Delphini, directed by the learned Huet, and gave the closest attention to the education of his charge, who was only moved by his iron discipline to a hatred of learning. Court gossip assigned some part of Montausier's favour to the complaisance of his wife, who, appointed lady-in-waiting to the queen in 1664, favoured Louis XIV.'s passion for Louise de la Valliere, and subsequently protected Mme de Montespan, who found a refuge from her husband with her. He died on the 17th of November 1690.

See Pere Nicolas Petit, Vie du duc de Montausier (1729); Puget de Saint Pierre, Histoire du duc de Montausier (1784); Amedee Roux, Un Misanthrope a la tour de Louis XIV. Montausier (1860); O. Uzanne, La Guirlande de Julie (1875); E. Fleshier, Oraisons funebres du duc et de la duchesse de Montausier (Paris, 1691); and contemporary memoirs.

Montbeliard, a town of eastern France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Doubs, 49 m. N.E. of Bescancon on the Paris-Lyon line between that town and Belfort. Pop. (1906), town, 8723; commune, 10,455. Montbeliard is situated 1050 ft. above sea-level on the right bank of the Allaine at its junction with the Luzine (Lizaine or Lisaine). It is an important point in the frontier defences of France since 1871. Forts on outlying hills connect it with Belfort on the one side and (through Blamont and the Lomont fortifications) with Besancon on the other. The old castle of the counts of Montbeliard is now used as barracks; its most conspicuous features, the Tour Bossue and the Tour Neuve, date respectively from 1425 and 1 594. Most of the inhabitants are Protestant, and the church of St Martin, built early in the 17th century, now serves as a Protestant place of worship. The old market-hall and some old houses of the 16th century also remain. A bronze statue of George Cuvier, the most illustrious native of Montbeliard, and several fountains adorn the town. Montbeliard is the seat of a sub-prefect and has a tribunal of first instance, a board of trade-arbitrators, a communal college, a practical school of industry, a chamber of arts and manufactures and a museum of natural history. Since 1870 a considerable impetus has been given to its prosperity by the Alsatian immigrants. Its industries include watch and clock making and dependent trades, cotton spinning and weaving, the manufacture of hosiery, textile machinery, tools, nails and wire, and brewing. There is commerce in wine, cheese, wood and Montbeliard cattle.

After belonging to the Burgundians and Franks, Montbeliard (Mons Peligardi) was, by the treaty of Verdun (843), added to Lorraine. In the 11th century it became the capital of a countship, which formed part of the second kingdom of Burgundy and latterly of the German Empire. Its German name is Mdmpelgard. In 1397 it passed by marriage to the house of Wurttemberg, to whom it belonged till 1793. It resisted the attacks of Charles the Bold (1473), and Henry I. of Lorraine, 1 (1618-1699), a son of Arnauld d'Andelly and minister of foreign affairs in succession to Lionne.

(1587 and 1588), duke of Guise, but was taken in 1676 by Marshal Luxemburg, who razed its fortifications. The tolerance of the princes of Wurttemberg attracted to the town at the end of the 16th century a colony of Anabaptists from Frisia, and their descendants still form a separate community in the neighbourhood. In 1793 the inhabitants voluntarily submitted to annexation by France. In 1871 the battle of the, Lisaine between the French and Germans was fought in the neighbourhood and partly within its walls.

Categories: MOD-MON | Biography