Jean de Beaumanoir

Who was Jean de Beaumanoir?

Jean De Beaumanoir, seigneur and afterwards marquis de Lavardin, count of Nègrepelisse by marriage, was a French marshal.

He served first in the Protestant army, but turned Catholic after the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, in which his father had been killed, and then fought against Henry of Navarre. When that prince became king of France, Lavardin changed over to his side, and was made a marshal of France. He was governor of Maine, commanded an army in Burgundy in 1602, was ambassador extraordinary to England in 1612, and died in 1614. One of his descendants, Henry Charles, marquis de Lavardin, was sent as ambassador to Rome in 1689, on the occasion of a difference between Louis XIV and Pope Innocent XI.