[1] This background is significant in understanding their importance; Catholic loyalists from a disputed border province, in a period when France was divided by the Wars of Religion and threatened by the Spanish Empire, then the dominant power in Europe.

[3] The long-running contest with Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs led to French involvement in the 1568–1648 Dutch Revolt and peripheral engagements of the 1618–48 Thirty Years War.

During the 1627–1630 War of the Mantuan Succession, Créqui's eldest son and namesake died in 1630 at Chambéry, the capital of Savoy and he himself was killed in 1638 at Breme in Lombardy.

[5] The capture of the Huguenot stronghold of La Rochelle in 1628 released French forces for the relief of Casale Monferrato, then besieged by a Habsburg army during the War of the Mantuan Succession.

[6] Créqui was killed on 17 March 1638 while reconnoitring the beleaguered fortress during the Siege of Breme (1638),[7] Some of his letters are preserved in the Bibliothque Nationale in Paris, and his life was written by Nicolas Chorier (Grenoble, 1683).