Charles de Sainte-Maure, duc de Montausier

Having served under Bernard of Saxe-Weimar in Germany in 1634, he returned to the French service in 1636, and fought in the Rhenish campaigns of the following years.

He was taken prisoner on 25 November 1643 after the defeat of the French forces under the command of Josias von Rantzau in the Battle of Tuttlingen.

[3][4] Montausier was named governor of Saintonge and Angoumois after the death of his uncle, the comte de Brassac, and became a Roman Catholic before his marriage.

On the conclusion of peace in 1653, the marquis, who had been severely wounded in 1652, obtained high favour at court in spite of the roughness of his manners and the general austerity which made the Parisian public recognize him as the original of Alceste in Molière's Le Misanthrope.

[1] Court gossip assigned part of Montausier's favour to the complaisance of his wife, who had been named gouvernante des enfants de France in 1661, at the time of the dauphin's birth, until 1664, when she was appointed lady-in-waiting to the queen, a position she used to facilitate Louis XIV's passion for Louise de la Vallière, and subsequently to protect Madame de Montespan, who found refuge from her husband with her.