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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Henri, Duc de Rohan Biography ROHAN, ro'än, Henri, Duke de (1579–1638). A French Huguenot general, son of Duke René II and Catharine de Parthenay (heroine of La Rochelle, heiress of the house of Soubise, q.v.). He was born at the Chateau de Blain in Brittany. About 1595 he was sent to the court of Henry IV, and in 1597 distinguished himself at the siege of Amiens. Then he spent more than two years in travel. In 1603 he was made Duke; two years afterward he married the daughter of the King's great minister, Sully; but he did not come into prominence until the death of Henry IV, when the leadership of the Protestant party fell to him. At Saumur in 1611 he effected a union of all the Huguenot factions, and in the same year he decided openly for Condé against Maria de' Medici, with whom he came to an understanding in 1616. But his efforts for union were unavailing, and, upon the rising of the Gascons and Béarnois against the reëstablishment of the Catholic church among them, he took the field openly, raised the siege of Montauban and forced the signature of the Peace of Montpellier and the confirmation of the Edict of Nantes (1623). He was made Marshal of France by Louis XIII, but Richelieu's policy was heedless of the treaty, and the Protestants rose again in 1625 under the lead of Rohan and his brother, the Prince de Soubise. Peace was made in 1626, but the struggle was soon renewed, ending in the triumph of the royal cause (1629). Rohan retired to Italy and was named generalissimo of the Venetian troops in 1631; then returned to France on the invitation of Richelieu and after a brilliant campaign drove the Austrians and Spanish from the Valtelline (1635); and, after a brief retirement in Geneva, joined Bernhard of Weimar in 1638. In that year he was mortally wounded at Rheinfelden. Rohan wrote: Mémoires (1644), describing his three campaigns in France (ed. by C. Pradel, Paris, 1889) ; an account of his travels in 1598–1600 (printed 1646); Les intérêts des princes (1666); Traité du gouvernement des treize cantons (1644); Discours politiques (1693); and a fourth book of Mémoires on the war in the Valtelline (1785). Consult H. de La Garde, Le Duc de Rohan (Paris, 1884), and A. Laugel, Henri de Rohan (ib., 1889). The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XX (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 84-85. |