He first served as a volunteer in the Dutch States Army under the orders of his maternal uncles Maurice of Nassau and Frederick Henry before pursuing his career in the service of France, where his noble origins and proven qualities soon saw him rise to the top of the military hierarchy.

Turenne initially supported the Fronde but returned to royal service in 1651, emerging as France's foremost general by defeating the rebellious army of the Prince of Condé on the outskirts of Paris and re-occupying the city.

Checked by the Dutch flooding of the land, he invaded the Holy Roman Empire the next year, reaching the Elbe and compelling Brandenburg to abandon the anti-French coalition.

[7] In 1630 Turenne left the Netherlands and entered the service of France, motivated both by the prospect of military advancement[4][6] but also because of his mother's desire to display loyalty to the French crown.

In the latter part of 1638, serving under Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar (1608–1639), he directed the assault on Breisach (reputedly the strongest fortress on the upper Rhine), which surrendered on 17 December.

[2] In led the assault on the powerful fortress of Vieux-Brisach in 1638 and obtained its capitulation on December 17 Turenne had now gained a reputation as one of the foremost of the younger generals of France, and Richelieu next employed him in the Italian campaign of 1639–1640 under Henri de Lorraine, count of Harcourt.

On 19 November 1639 Turenne fought in the famous rearguard action called the battle of the "Route de Quiers", for which he received a lot of credit though he only gave himself a small role in his own description of events.

[6][16] The French in the citadel held out, while Prince Thomas had to surrender on 17 September 1640, a fourth army which had invested Harcourt's lines being at the same time forced to retire.

[22] Turenne began the 1645 campaign with a successful forward movement,[23][2] but Mercy managed to deceive him into thinking the Bavarians were scattered and far away[24] and he was taken by surprise and defeated at Mergentheim.

[33] A month after his retreat Turenne marched 120 miles to Trier which he recaptured for its elector Philipp Christoph von Sötern after over a decade of imperialist occupation.

[40] With these manoeuvres Napoleon said he displayed "great boldness, sagacity and genius; they are fertile in grand results, and ought to be studied by all military men".

[43][8] Rosen, who had been recently promoted to high office on Turenne's insistence, convinced the Weimarian cavalry to revolt, pretending to be held prisoner by them.

[47] The following day, 17 May,[8] the imperials marched off unaware of the danger resulting in their rearguard being caught isolated and defeated in a vicious battle at Zusmarshausen.

This devastation, for which many modern writers have blamed Turenne, appeared no more harsh a measure than the spirit of the times and the circumstances of the case permitted.

[51] Mazarin had him removed as commander of the army of Weimar[52] causing Turenne to flee to the Netherlands, where he remained until the treaty of Rueil (March 1649) put an end to the first war of the Fronde.

[6] In this war Turenne sustained one of his few reverses at Rethel (15 December 1650), but the second conflict ended in the early months of the following year with the collapse of the court party and the release of the Princes.

In this, the third war of the Fronde, Turenne and Condé stood opposed to each other, the marshal commanding the royal armies, the prince that of the Frondeurs and their Spanish allies.

Turenne displayed the personal bravery of a young soldier at Jargeau (28 March 1652), the skill and wariness of a veteran general at Gien (7 April), and he practically crushed the civil war in the Battle of the Faubourg St Antoine (2 July) and in the re-occupation of Paris (21 October).

[49] On the death of Mazarin in 1661, Louis XIV took the reins of government into his own hands, and as one of his first acts appointed Turenne "marshal-general of the camps and armies of the king".

Born of Calvinist parents and educated a Protestant, he had refused to marry one of Richelieu's nieces in 1639 and subsequently rejected a similar proposal from Mazarin.

The letters between him and his wife show how closely both studied available evidence on the matter, and in the end, two years after her death, the eloquence of Bossuet and the persuasions of his nephew, the Cardinal de Bouillon, persuaded him to become Catholic in October 1668.

In 1667 he had returned to the more congenial air of the "Camps and Armies of the King", directing (nominally under Louis XIV) the famous Promenade Militaire in which the French overran the Spanish Netherlands.

Soon afterwards Condé, now reconciled with the king, rivalled Turenne's success by the rapid conquest of the Franche-Comté, shortly before the end of the War of Devolution in February 1668.

In the autumn, the anti-French allies again advanced, and though they again outmanoeuvred Turenne, the action of the neutral city of Strasbourg occasioned his failure by permitting the enemy to cross the Rhine by the bridge at that place.

The battle of Enzheim followed; this proved a strategic victory for Turenne but hardly affected the situation, and, at the beginning of December, the allies remained in Alsace.

[49] In the summer campaign he once more faced Montecuccoli, and after the highest display of "strategic chess moves" by both commanders, Turenne finally compelled his opponent to offer battle at a disadvantage at Salzbach.

Even the revolutionaries of 1793 respected it, and, while they reburied the bodies of the monarchs in a mass grave, they preserved the remains of Turenne at the Jardin des Plantes until 22 September 1800, when Napoleon had them removed to the church of the Invalides at Paris, where they still rest.

Strategic caution and logistic accuracy, combined with a brilliant dash in small combats and constancy under all circumstances—of success or failure—perhaps emerge as the salient points of Turenne's genius for war.

[86] In his character Turenne showed little more than the nature of a simple and honourable soldier, endowed with much tact; but in the world of politics he seemed disinterested and out of place, the glittering court of Versailles held no sway in the mind of the great commander.

He spent his life with the troops; he knew how to win their affection; he tempered a severe discipline with rare generosity, and his men loved him as a comrade no less than they admired him as a commander.