Note 33 — SAMUEL CHAMPLAIN. (continued 2)

Reduction of Brittany. The greater part of Brittany held out for the League against the king (Henry IV), under the command of the Duke de Mercœur, aided by the Spaniards under the Archduke Albert of Austria.

Philippe Emanuel de Lorraine, Duke de Mercœur, was born at Nomény, in 1558. Attached to the Duke of Guise, he was about to be arrested at the States of Blois in 1588, but the queen, Louise de Lorraine, his sister, gave him timely warning, and he escaped. He then openly embraced the party of the League, withdrew to his government of Brittany, called in the aid of the Spaniards, and gave them possession of the port of Blavet in 1591. He made his submission to Henry IV in April, 1598, and was pardoned at the intercession of Gabrielle d'Estrées, lately created Duchess of Beaufort, who, however, previously stipulated that the duke should give his daughter, Françoise, one of the richest heiresses in France, in marriage to the son of Henry IV, César, Duke de Vendôme. In 1601 the Emperor Rodolph offered De Mercœur the command of his army in Hungary against the Turks. He endeavoured with only fifteen thousand men to raise the siege of Chanicha, which Ibrahim Pacha had invested with sixty thousand. He was forced to retire, but his retreat passed for one of the most skilful then known. Obliged in the following year to return to France, he died on the way, at Nuremberg, in 1602.