La Trémoille family
In 1269 another Guy de La Trémoïlle, who is numbered "I" in the family lineage, paid homage to his liege, Alphonse, Count of Poitou, and died sometime after 1301.
[1] His son, Guy V (1346–1398), was called "The Valiant" according to Père Anselme, being a renowned warrior, the confidante of Philip the Hardy of Burgundy, and later counselor in the service of Charles VI of France, whose Oriflamme he carried into battle against the English in 1382.
He journeyed with Louis II, Duke of Bourbon on crusade to Africa, and died in Rhodes en route to France, having been ransomed in 1396 following imprisonment at Nicopolis.
His rivalry with Arthur de Richemont, rather than hostility to Joan of Arc, is believed to have slowed her crusade's momentum against the English, allowing them to capture and burn her at the stake in 1431.
[2] His family's rise to wealth and power made him a target, and he was ransomed after capture thrice; after the Battle of Agincourt, once again by the English, and at Chinon, whence he was taken from the king's side and held prisoner at Montrésor.
Defeated and wounded fighting the Swiss at Novarra in 1513, he redeemed his reputation by raising the siege of Marseilles against the Constable de Bourbon's Imperial troops in 1523 before being killed at the Battle of Pavia in 1525.
The eldest son of François de La Trémoïlle, Louis III (1521–1577), was the first of his family to obtain ducal status when Charles IX conferred that honor upon him in 1563.
[1] The third duc de Thouars, Henri (1599–1674), was present at the Siege of La Rochelle in October 1628, after which he was obliged to abjure Protestantism for Catholicism while face-to-face with the victorious Cardinal Richelieu.
Henri-Charles (1599–1674), duc de Thouars, received royal confirmation of the rank of foreign prince in 1651; he bore as arms Quarterly Or a chevron gules between three eagles azure (La Trémoïlle), France, Bourbon-Montpensier and Montmorency-Laval.
[6] On November 6, 1748, the La Trémoïlle family made a final protest concerning their rights to the kingdom of Naples which had been yielded by the Treaty of Vienna of 1738 to the King of Sicily.
[11] The original grant of the dukedom, in July 1563 by Charles IX, stipulated that it was heritable by both male and female successors, although when erected into a pairie by Henry IV in 1599, the letters patent restricted succession to the peerage—but not the dukedom—to male heirs,[1] restrictions inapplicable to the title of pretence, Prince of Taranto, traditionally borne by the representative heir to the historical throne of Naples, which was heritable in the female line.
