When the French Wars of Religion erupted the following year, he and his Triumvirate colleagues secured the royal family for their cause and fought against the Protestants led by Navarre's brother, the prince de Condé.

[51][52][53] Écouen featured two statues by Michelangelo that had been gifted to Montmorency by François I (originally destined for the tomb of Pope Julius II), along with mosaics of coloured stones and an elaborate courtyard.

[33] Montmorency was also a patron of the arts, and commissioned the famous painter Léonard Limousin who produced an enamel dish which depicted a scene inspired by Raphael in which the various Greek gods were used as representations of the king, queen and his mistress.

[104] In the years that followed, it would be Montmorency who devoted himself to the needs and time of the young princes, supervising their days from dawn to dusk in his capacity as Grand Maître, and winning their affection with his attentions and provisions.

[115] Both men reported on their efforts to raise funds for the crown in 1529, the nobility of Péronne refused to shoulder the tenth that Humières proposed, leaving the governor to write to Montmorency for advice on how to proceed.

A day after his decision to launch an invasion on 14 July Montmorency was made 'lieutenant-general' on both sides of the mountains with powers that included troop mobilisation, the command of the forces on the ground and the ability to negotiate peace.

[145] In July they secured a favourable truce in the theatre and prepared to move south to where the war was continuing in Piemonte, Montreuil had been successfully regained and Thérouanne would remain in French hands; only the conquest of Saint-Pol had been reversed.

[160] The child of this affair, Diane de France would first be married to the duca di Castro, grandson of Pope Paul III, with the marriage contract signed for the king by Montmorency, Aumale and the chancellor Olivier.

Henri was keen to exert himself against the Empire and therefore summoned the Holy Roman Emperor to appear at his coronation in his capacity as the comte de Flandre, formerly a vassal of the French crown.

The motivation for this new policy, though it was a dead letter on arrival, was to invest authority in Montmorency and the three Marshals (Saint-André, Bouillon and Melfi) all of whom were favourites of the new king, at the expense of the Lorraine and Clèves family who were governors of those regions.

The Empire and England were bound to protect one another if more than 2000 French soldiers approached Calais, therefore Henri sent an ambassador to the Imperial court to inform the Emperor that the English had violated the previous convention first by fortifying Boulogne among various other transgressions.

[290] Montmorency would however present a force of opposition to the new duc when it came to him being made a pair (peer) of the realm by the Paris Parlement, attempting to block the transfer of the honour to either Henriette de Clèves or her new husband.

The crown intervened in the dispute, deciding in favour of Gonzague for his elevation as pair de France, but making no ruling on whether Nivernais or Montmorency was a more senior title in the French peerage.

[295] In a further grand procession that took place in the city on 16 June, Montmorency rode out in front of the king holding above him the Constable's sword, wearing a golden cloth and using gold reigns for the horse that he led.

The king conducted a review of the troops alongside Montmorency, Guise and Saint-André in Vitry in April, in total there were 15,000 French foot soldiers, 15,000 Landsknechts, 1300 men-at-arms, 3000 light cavalry and various other assorted forces.

[351] Contemporaries to the reign of Henri believed that the prime mover in appointments to bishoprics during this period was the Cardinal de Lorraine, who it was said was present whenever candidates to become bishop were read before the king for his approval or disapproval.

[369] At the French court, opinion was sharply divided between the Lorraine brothers, who saw advantage in continuing the fight in Italy, and Montmorency who saw it as an expensive liability (indeed the crown had already sunk 45,000,000 couronnes into the conflict by 1556).

[230] Meanwhile, with Guise ascendant in Montmorency's absence, the duc secured the capture of Calais from England in January 1558, bringing the city that had been in English hands for 200 years back into the control of the French crown.

This did not mean he was blind to the considerations of the war however, should peace fail, and he oversaw the fortification of Péronne and incited Süleyman into attacking the Empire, so that the Emperor would not be in a position to seek the return of the three bishoprics.

[454] In the session that followed, several deputies, including one Anne du Bourg voiced opinions that bordered on lèse majesté (defamation to the dignity of the king), and Henri was unable to tolerate what was said particularly in light of fact it was done in the presence of his favourites.

[473] As part of the palace revolution, Montmorency was dispossessed of the office of Grand Maître on 17 November 1559, the charge being granted to the duc de Guise, he was further compelled to provide his royal seal to the brothers.

[491][493] As early as June of 1560, Montmorency began to consider the possibility of a reconciliation with the Lorraine government in return for the granting of the comté de Dammartin to him which had been stripped from him in the palace revolution, however for the moment little came of this.

[557] According to Condé the association of Montmorency, Guise and Saint-André with support from Tournon and Lorraine intended nothing less than the extermination of the king's natural subjects with the aim of dividing and plundering France among themselves.

The result of their work together was published on 19 March as the Edict of Amboise, which mandated that crimes of the past from the civil war and before be vanquished from memory, that Protestant worship only occur at certain designated sites and that associations that might be the nuclei of opposition to the peace be disbanded.

Montmorency indeed had the most important responsibility of the tour, as it was his duty to maintain discipline in the large moving court, gave orders to the local town governors that they passed by and rode ahead of the main force to ensure everything was ready to receive the king.

[615] Despite his long record of anti-Protestantism, Montmorency was not excluded from the paranoid fears of some Catholics reported by Claude Haton, who observed that many felt the king, queen mother and Constable were all secret Protestants, as that could be the only explanation for the peace they had established and were enforcing across France.

[617] Further discord between Protestant and Catholic nobles was created by the hiring of Swiss mercenaries by the crown to protect the realm against any potential moves by the passing army under the duque de Alba which was heading to Nederland.

[618] They agreed to conduct a coup attempt in line with that of Amboise in 1560, assembling a large cavalry force at Meaux to kidnap the royal family and take charge of the religious direction of the kingdom from the Lorraine.

Therefore, when Charenton, a key point in the city's grain supply fell to the Protestants during the siege, the populations blamed the leaders of the defence effort, Montmorency and his son François, for the surrender of the garrison.

[191] Many contemporaries described him as the first true favourite in French history, by which it was meant a man whose fortune was based on his access to royal favour, as opposed to his control of a particularly powerful feudatory network.