Charles III de Bourbon

The future constable was the son of Gilbert , Count de Montpensier and Clara Gonzaga (daughter of Federico I Gonzaga , Marquis of Mantua ). In 1505, by the will of Louis XII, he married Suzanne de Bourbon (1491-1521), daughter of Pierre II , Duke de Bourbon and Anna of France . Thus, he became the heir to two lines of the Bourbon house at once. After the death of Pierre II, Charles III passed seniority among the Bourbons along with the ducal title. All his children died in infancy. The position of the eldest among the blood princes after him passed to the Earl of Vendome - the direct ancestor of all subsequent Bourbons.

Under Louis XII, the brave, generous and popular duke took a prominent place in the court and in government, and managed to keep it also under Francis I , who made him a constable. The battles of Aniadello and Marignano , as well as the ensuing siege of Milan, owed their favorable outcome exclusively to his military talent.

Over time, the party hostile to Bourbon gained more importance from the king. He was recalled from Milan, removed from public affairs, and even the title of connable was taken from him. With the death of Suzanne in 1521, things got worse. Despite the fact that his wife made him the heir of all her rights, the king’s mother, Louise of Savoy , as a niece of the Duke Pierre, also made claims on the Bourbon’s inheritance . According to some accounts, the reason for breaking the connable with the royal house lay in the fact that he rejected the love of the queen widow. In addition, he argued that the Bourbons had more rights to the throne than the Angouleme Valois: his wife Susanne was the only granddaughter of Louis XI , which from the point of view of the Salic law , however, did not give her the right to inherit the French crown.

Be that as it may, but returning again to the insignificant comparative position of the Count of Montpensier did not far smile at Charles. He decided, with the help of Charles V of Habsburg and Henry VIII of England , to regain his rights and possessions. In August 1522, he began secret negotiations with them, on which a one-time invasion of the Allies into France was supposed from three different sides: from the Rhine, from the Pyrenees and the English Channel.

The ex-chainable plot was uncovered, and Bourbon was to flee outside France. Subsequently, the really subsequent attacks of the Bourbon allies on France failed, and since the French themselves invaded, in turn, Italy was transferred to the theater of war , Bourbon was also forced to cross the Alps .

In the title of “imperial governor,” Charles de Bourbon was one of the commanders of Charles V, who won a brilliant victory at Gattinar in the spring of 1524 and drove the French out of Italy. He led a victorious army through the Alps, besieged Antibes , Frejus , Toulon , declared himself Count of Provence , consisting in lazy dependence on England, and proceeded to the siege of Marseille . This siege, however, was unsuccessful. Francis I again crossed the Alps and occupied Pavia .

After selling his family jewels, the ex-constable bailed out the amount for which he hired the German landsknechts , and with them defeated the French army at Pavia on February 24, 1525, and captured the king himself. Now it only remained for him to renew the attack on France; but the misunderstandings between the allies that took place after the Peace of Madrid forced him to remain in Italy with the army.

In May 1527, Charles de Bourbon took part, at the head of the German mercenary forces, in the siege of Rome and fell one of the first when climbing the city wall. Benvenuto Cellini was one of many who disputed the honor of delivering this mortal blow to him. He was buried in Gaet . Some of the possessions confiscated from the connable were later returned to his nephew, Louis III de Montpensier .

• Bourbon, Charles // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.