Bernardin Gigault, Marquis de Bellefonds (20 June 1630 – 4 December 1694) was a French military officer and courtier who was appointed Marshal of France in 1668 and held a number of senior positions in the personal household of King Louis XIV.
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Early life
While the family came from Bellefonds, in the central French department of Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Bernadin's branch settled in Chef-du-Pont, near Valognes, in Normandy. His paternal grandfather Bernardin Gigault de Bellefonds (1580–1639) was Governor of Valognes and Caen; his grandmother Jeanne Suzanne aux-Épaules (?–1652) was the daughter of Henri-Robert-aux-Épaules, Lieutenant général du roi in Normandy.
Bernadin was the only child of Henri-Robert Gigault (?–1643), also Governor of Valognes and Caen, and his wife, Marie d'Avoynes (d. 1634), who brought the Servigny properties into the family. His father was one of eight and he had a wide circle of relatives in Normandy and Acquitaine.
Private life
He married Madeleine Fouquet de Chalain (1639–1716) in 1655 and they had 9 children:
Jean (1660–1668)
Louis-Christophe, killed at Steenkerque in 1692
Suzanne Louise Jeanne (d. 1698), married Charles-François Davy, Marquis d'Amfreville
Thérèse-Marie (1667–1733), married Charles-Antoine, Marquis du Châtelet-Clefmont
Jeanne-Susanne (1665–1698), married Charles-Antoine, Marquis du Châtelet-Clefmont
Louise, married Jean-François du Fay, Marquis de Vergetot
Bernardine-Thérèse (d. 1717)
Françoise Bonne (1676–1693)
Marie-Armande-Agnès
Louis-Charles Bernadin (d. 1692), married Marie Olympe de La Porte. Bernardin's titles and estates were inherited by his grandson, Louis Charles Bernardin Gigault, Marquis de Bellefonds and de la Boulaye (1685-1710).
Career
In the first half of the 17th century, France was divided internally and threatened externally; while it largely stayed out of the 1618–1648 Thirty Years' War, support for the Dutch Republic in its war of independence from Spain eventually led to the 1635–1659 Franco-Spanish War. At home, the French Wars of Religion that had ended with the 1590 Edict of Nantes flared up again in a series of domestic Huguenot rebellions in the 1620s.
The accession of the five-year old Louis XIV in 1643 caused a power struggle between his regents, headed by his mother, Anne of Austria and Cardinal Mazarin, opposed by regional magnates like Condé. This resulted in the 1648–1653 civil war known as the Fronde; Bellefonds became Governor of Valognes after his father's death in 1643 and in 1649 held it against rebel troops or Frondeurs. Similarly, in November 1651 he defended Cognac in Nouvelle-Aquitaine when besieged by Frondeurs under Condé, until it was relieved by the Comte d'Harcourt in early December.
In the latter stages of the Franco-Spanish war, he served in Catalonia and Flanders, including the decisive Battle of the Dunes in June 1658, which led to the 1659 Treaty of the Pyrenees and he was promoted Lieutenant-General in 1659. He was also employed in maritime operations, acting as deputy to the duc de Guise in his failed attempt to capture Naples in 1654 and in 1666 was sent to the Dutch Republic to discuss joint fleet operations against England.
In 1663, he was appointed head of the Maison du Roi or the King's household; given its proximity to Louis XIV, this was a position of great importance, held by an individual of proven loyalty. In the 1667–1668 War of Devolution, France quickly over-ran Franche-Comté and much of the Spanish Netherlands; after the capture of Lille in 1667, Turenne detached a cavalry force under Bellefonds and de Créquy to cut off the Spanish retreat. They inflicted nearly 2,000 casualties, with Louis looking on; in 1668, Bellefonds, de Créquy and Humières were all created Marshals of France.
However, the Dutch preferred a weak Spain as a neighbour in the Spanish Netherlands, to a strong and ambitious France; with England and Sweden, they formed the Triple Alliance obliging Louis to return most of his gains in the 1668 Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. Angered by what he viewed as ingratitude for previous French support against Spain, Louis made preparations to invade the Netherlands.
Legacy
Bellefonds was considered by contemporaries to be a man of morality but inflexible once he had decided on a course of action, which led to his banishment in 1672 and removal from command in 1674. He was known for religious piety, financing Notre-Dame-des-Anges, a convent near Rouen established in 1650 by his aunt, Laurence Gigault de Bellefonds (1610–1683). He was also associated with the abbey of Port-Royal-des-Champs, a centre of Jansenist thought, a then popular doctrine within French Catholicism controversial for its similarities to Calvinism. Finally, he was close to Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Bishop to the Court at Versailles, and like him supported the decision of Louis' mistress Louise de La Vallière to enter a Carmelite convent in Paris in 1675.
His letters to and from Louis XIV concerning the education of the Dauphin were later collected and published in Lettres sur l'éducation du dauphin; suivies de Lettres au maréchal de Belle-fonds et au roi. Introd. et notes de E. Levesque.
The Rue de Bellefond in Paris is named after his daughter Marie-Éléonore, Abbess of nearby Montmartre Abbey, demolished in 1794.