In 1669 he led the newly arrived French troops defending Candia against the Ottoman Turks, and was presumed to have been killed in a night sortie, on 25 June 1669.

[3] He began his career in the army and served in the first campaigns of the Thirty Years' War, but his ambitions and unscrupulous character soon found a more congenial field in the intrigues of the court.

His personal appearance, his affectation of popular manners, and his status as a grandson (legitimized) of Henry IV rendered him a favourite of the Parisians, who acclaimed him everywhere.

[4] Beaufort is one of the characters of Twenty Years After and The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Alexandre Dumas's sequels to The Three Musketeers.

He also appears in Le Roi Soleil, a French musical which opened in Paris in 2005 where he was played by Merwan Rim.

Beaufort is also one of the main characters in the trilogy "Secret d'État", by French novelist Juliette Benzoni.