Blaise de Monluc, also known as Blaise de Lasseran-Massencôme, seigneur de Monluc, (24 July 1577) was a professional soldier whose career began in 1521 and reached the rank of marshal of France in 1574. Written between 1570 and 1576, an account of his life titled Commentaires de Messire Blaise de Monluc was published in 1592, and remains an important historical source for 16th century warfare.
Born into a family of impoverished Gascon nobility, he rose to prominence during the Italian Wars and was appointed Lieutenant-General of Guyenne in January 1562, shortly before the outbreak of the French Wars of Religion. Fighting for the French crown, he soon gained a reputation as a brutal but effective commander, winning the critical Battle of Vergt in 1562. He was badly injured in July 1570 and dismissed for alleged corruption soon after, dying at home in Estillac on 24 July 1577.
Personal details
Blaise de Monluc was born between 1500 and 1502 in Saint-Puy, eldest son of François de Lasseran-Massencômes, seigneur de Monluc, who held lands in different parts of Gascony, and his first wife, Françoise de Mondenard, Dame d'Estillac, from whom he inherited the family chateau. Suggestions the Lasseran-Massencômes were a cadet branch of the more significant Montesquiou family are disputed.
His younger full brother Jean de Monluc (1508–1579) became a diplomat and subsequently Bishop of Valence; despite his clerical status, he had a natural son, Jean de Monluc de Balagny (1545–1603), who was legitimised in 1563 and became Marshal of France in 1594. Their father's second marriage produced another five half-sisters and five half-brothers, of whom few details survive. One daughter Anne married François de Gélas and their younger son Charles later succeeded his uncle Jean as Bishop of Valence in 1574, while Joachim was another soldier whose pillaging of the Dordogne in 1537 was still remembered three centuries later.
Monluc also married twice, the first time to Antoinette Ysalguier (1505–1562), daughter of the Baron de Clermont. They had three daughters, Françoise, Marguerite and Marie, along with four sons, all of whom became soldiers. Three of the four died on active service; the eldest, Marc-Antoine, at Ostia in November 1557, the second, Pierre-Bertrand (1539–1566), on an expedition to Madeira, while Fabian, the youngest, died in a skirmish outside Nogaro in June 1573. His third son Jean (1548–1581) retired after being badly wounded in 1569 and was appointed Bishop of Condom in 1570. Monluc's second marriage to Isabeau de Beauville produced another three daughters, Charlotte-Catherine, Suzanne and Jeanne.
Career
Italian Wars
As was then common for the sons of gentry, in 1512 Monluc entered the service of Antoine, Duke of Lorraine as a page, before joining the ducal army at the age of 14. He later claimed to have served under Bayard in Italy but the dates and his age make this unlikely. At the beginning of the Four Years War in 1521, he enlisted as an archer in a company raised by Lescun, a distant relative. After four years of minor skirmishes, he was captured at Pavia in 1525; a decisive French defeat, he was too poor to be worth a ransom and released. During the War of the League of Cognac, he fought in southern Italy under Lautrec, and was badly wounded at the unsuccessful Siege of Naples in 1528.
Monluc returned home and spent the next three years serving Henry II of Navarre, before joining the "Legion de Languedoc" in 1534, part of an attempt by Francis I to create a national army. In the Italian War of 1536–1538, the latest episode of the long-running conflict between Francis and Emperor Charles V, he helped defend Marseille when Imperial troops invaded Provence in 1536. He spent the next five years on garrison duty in Piedmont and when the war started again in 1542 took part in the unsuccessful attack on Perpignan, then part of Spain. In his "Memoires", Monluc claimed it failed because his advice was ignored.
At the French victory of Ceresole in April 1544, Monluc commanded a unit of French infantry and acted as advisor to the inexperienced Francis, Count of Enghien. During 1545, he served under the future Henry II of France in an attempt to recapture Boulogne from Henry VIII of England and was promoted colonel by the Dauphin, then returned home to Gascony in December before the war ended with the June 1546 Treaty of Ardres. Francis died in March 1547 and was succeeded by his son Henry, who appointed Montluc governor of Moncalieri in 1548.