French general and nobleman (1490?1527)
Charles III, Duke of Bourbon
(17 February 1490 ? 6 May 1527) was a French military leader, the
count of Montpensier
, Clermont and Auvergne, and
dauphin of Auvergne
from 1501 to 1523, then
duke of Bourbon
and
Auvergne
,
count of Clermont-en-Beauvaisis
,
Forez
and
La Marche
, and lord of Beaujeu from 1505 to 1521. He was also the
constable of France
from 1515 to 1521. Also known as the
Constable of Bourbon
, he was the last of the great feudal lords to oppose the
king of France
. He commanded the troops of
Holy Roman Emperor Charles V
in what became known as the
Sack of Rome
in 1527, where he was killed.
Family
[
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]
Charles was born at
Montpensier
, the second son of Count
Gilbert of Montpensier
by his wife
Clara Gonzaga
.
With her father's death in 1496, and his elder brother,
Louis II
, dying unwed in 1501, Charles was heir to the family's titles and extensive lands in
Auvergne
.
Marriage
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]
Charles married his
agnatic
second cousin,
Suzanne, Duchess of Bourbon
.
It was a dynastic match, intended to settle the question of succession to the Bourbon estates, which had arisen because Suzanne's father, Duke
Peter II of Bourbon
, the last of the senior Bourbon line, had died without sons. Charles was the scion of the next-senior Bourbon line, and thus the
heir male
of the
House of Bourbon
, while Suzanne was the
heir general
. With the marriage, Charles's position as
Duke of Bourbon
became undisputed. This cementing of position was important for another reason: with the death of
Charles IV, Duke of Alencon
, in 1525, Charles became the next in line to the French throne after the three sons of
French King
Francis I
.
Career
[
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]
A 19th-century
portrait
of Charles III, Duke of Bourbon, in
battle armor
.
Already distinguished as a soldier in the
Italian Wars
, Charles was appointed
constable of France
by Francis I of France in 1515.
In January 1516, he was given the Governorship of
Milan
,
but this was later given to Odet de Foix, viscount of Lautrec.
Francis was uneasy with the proud and wealthy duke, and soon recalled him from Milan and refused to honor his debts. Charles was further angered by the appointment of
Charles IV of Alencon
, Francis's brother-in-law, as commander of the vanguard during the campaigns in the
Netherlands
, an office which should have been his.
The death of his wife in 1521 provoked the final breach between Charles and Francis. Suzanne had left all her estates to Charles, but the king's mother,
Louise of Savoy
, claimed them as the heir in
proximity in blood
due to their previous entailments. She proposed to settle the question by marrying Charles; he refused the proposal because Louise was over forty-five years of age and fourteen years older than him. On behalf of his mother, Francis confiscated a portion of the Bourbon estates before the lawsuit had even been opened. Seeing no hope of prevailing, Charles made a secret agreement to betray his king and offer his services to
Emperor Charles V
. The emperor, the constable, and King
Henry VIII of England
devised a grand plan to partition France. This however came to nothing because the plot was discovered; Charles was stripped of his offices and proclaimed a traitor. He fled into Italy in 1523 and entered the imperial service.
In 1524, he drove the French under
Bonnivet
from
Lombardy
, and fought at the
Battle of Pavia
. The emperor gave Charles command of a mixed Spanish?German army (which included a number of
Lutherans
) sent to chastise
Pope Clement VII
. He neglected to supply this army with money or food, and Charles was only able to keep it together by promises of loot. Though Clement arranged a truce with the emperor, the army continued its advance, reaching
Rome
in May 1527. The death of Charles?the artist and goldsmith
Benvenuto Cellini
claimed that he fired the shot that killed him?outside the walls removed the last restraints from the army, which resulted in the
sack of Rome
.
Progeny and succession
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By Suzanne, Charles was the father of twins and of Francis of Bourbon, Count of Clermont. Officially, since neither survived a year of age, the senior line of the dukes of Bourbon was extinct in male line with his death in battle, and the junior line (
dukes of Vendome
) were not allowed to inherit, because Charles had forfeited his fiefs by committing treason. However, the county of Montpensier and dauphinate of Auvergne (but not the duchy of Bourbon) were later returned to his sister
Louise
, who was married to
Louis, Prince of La Roche-sur-Yon
, a member of the more junior
House of Bourbon-Vendome
. The Dukes of Montpensier line continued after Louise's death through her descendants.
References
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]
Sources
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]
- Knecht, R.J. (1984).
Francis I
. Cambridge University Press.
- Pardoe, Julia
(1849).
The Court and Reign of Francis the First, King of France
.
London
:
Richard Bentley
. Retrieved
11 November
2021
.
- Treat, James (1907).
The Catacombs of Rome
. Boston:
The Old Corner Bookstore
.
OL
16350247M
.
- Virastau, Nicolae Alexandru (2021).
Early Modern French Autobiography
. Brill.
- Ward, A.W.; Prothero, G.W.; Leathes, Stanley, eds. (1934).
The Cambridge Modern History
. Vol. XIII. Cambridge at the University Press.
- Louis Rousselet, "The Son of the Constable of France", (Gilbert & Rivington: London 1892)
- Grece, Michel de, "Le Rajah Bourbon", (Lattes: Paris 2007)
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