The son of Jacques d'Angennes and Isabelle Cottereau, he first achieved prominence in 1568, when he was established as governor of Le Mans.

Henri, increasingly unable to tolerate the humiliations inflicted on him by the duke of Guise and ligue resolved that something needed to be done in December 1588.

The enraged Maintenon proposed to his heir, the Protestant Navarre that they respond by putting Paris to a sack after their siege was concluded.

Navarre, now styling himself Henri IV was unable to do so, as the royal army dissolved from defections of those not willing to serve a Protestant king.

Maintenon was among the Catholic nobility who remained royalist and having fought in the brief siege of Paris, he continued to serve Henri, fighting at Arques in September.

The two families were united not only by their proximity to royal favour, but also the closeness of their geographic interests, both being lords with lands in the south west of Île de France.

The king's brother Alençon, now loyal to the crown desired to prove himself by campaigning against the rebels he had fought with in the prior civil war.

Not among them however were Maitenon, D'O, La Guiche and Georges de Villequier who preferred to stay with the royal court in Poitou.

[9][10] As the royal army progressed, it disintegrated, the king having been unable to secure funds from the Estates General for the campaign, as such a peace was concluded in the Treaty of Bergerac in September.

[12] He fought again for the king in the brief civil war of 1580, where he was present at the Siege of La Fère, the city having been seized by the Protestant prince of Condé.

[14] Having established his new order of chivalry in 1578, Maintenon was included in its fourth induction on 31 December 1581 as a chevalier de l'Ordre du Saint Esprit.

[3] With the Estates General called, a vicious election campaign got underway, as Henri and the ligueurs competed through whatever means they had at their disposal for prospective control of the body.

Henri did not feel either of these men could be trusted to support him reliably in the upcoming meeting, he dismissed Memelon as obstinate and a dream, and Courville for a minor military defeat.

[15] This proved one of the minority of areas in which Henri achieved success, meanwhile the Lorraine family busied itself with engineering ligueur elections in Bourgogne, Picardie and Champagne.

Maintenon rallied the Second Estate behind him, convincing them of his royalist argument that not only should they seize Saluzzo back from Savoie they should unite the kingdom behind a war against a hereditary enemy Spain.

[22] Writing sometime after, one of the duke's young valets puts particular responsibility in the hands of Maintenon and his brother Rambouillet for what had transpired.

Maintenon wanted the attack on Paris to be a merciless sack to punish the city for killing their rightful king.