- Eleanor Of Aquitaine
Eleanor of Aquitaine, Duchess of Aquitaine and Gascony and Countess of Poitou (1122 – April 1 1204) was one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in Europe during the High Middle Ages. She was Queen consort of both France and England in turn and the mother of both King Richard I and King John. She is well known for her involvement in the Second Crusade. - Charles Martel
Charles Martel (or, in modern English, Charles "the Hammer") (23 August 686 - 22 October 741) was proclaimed Mayor of the Palace, ruling the Franks in the name of a titular King, and proclaimed himself Duke of the Franks (the last four years of his reign he did not even bother with the facade of a King) and by any name was "de facto" ruler of the Frankish Realms. He expanded his rule over all three of the Frankish kingdoms: Austrasia, Neustria and Burgundy. - Madame de Pompadour
Madame de Pompadour (December 29, 1721 - April 15, 1764) was a well known courtesan and the famous mistress of King Louis XV of France. - Marquis de Sade
Donatien Alphonse-François de Sade (pronounced) was a French aristocrat and writer of philosophy-laden and often violent pornography. He was a philosopher of extreme freedom (or at least licentiousness), unrestrained by morality, religion or law, with the pursuit of personal pleasure being the highest principle. Sade was incarcerated in various prisons and in an insane asylum for about 32 years of his life (a year in Paris, 10 years in the Bastille, … - Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville was a French political thinker and historian best known for his "Democracy in America" (appearing in two volumes: 1835 and 1840) and "The Old Regime and the Revolution" (1856). In both of these works, he explored the effects of the rising equality of social conditions on both the individual and the state in western societies. - Diane de Poitiers
Diane de Poitiers (September 3, 1499 - April 25, 1566) was a noblewoman and a fixture at the courts of Francis I and Henri II of France. She became notorious as the latter's favorite. - George Sand
Amantine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin, Baroness Dudevant (July 1, 1804 - June 8, 1876), best known by her pseudonym George Sand, was a French novelist and feminist. - Michel de Montaigne
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne-Delecroix (February 28 1533-September 13 1592) was one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance. Montaigne is known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. He became famous for his effortless ability to merge serious intellectual speculation with casual anecdotes and autobiography - and his massive volume "Essais" (translated literally as "Attempts") contains, to this day, … - Charlotte Corday
Charlotte Corday, more fully Marie Anne Charlotte de Corday d'Armont, was the assassin of Jean-Paul Marat. - Gaspard de Coligny
Gaspard de Coligny, "Seigneur" (Lord) "de Châtillon" held the office of Admiral of France and is best remembered as a Huguenot leader. - Nicolas Fouquet
Nicolas Fouquet, marquis de Belle-Isle, viscomte de Melun et Vaux was the Superintendent of Finances in France under Louis XIV - La Hire
Étienne de Vignolles, called La Hire was a French military commander during the Hundred Years' War. He fought alongside Joan of Arc in the campaigns of 1429. His most significant action was to lead the vanguard in the important victory at Patay. La Hire joined Charles VII for the first time in 1418, when the English army invaded France. Three years later, in 1421 he fought at the Battle of Baugé. He was a close comrade of Joan of Arc, … - Geoffroi de Charny
Geoffroi de Charny was a French knight and author of several works on Chivalry. A knight in the service of King John II of France and a member of the Order of the Star. Charny carried the Oriflamme, the standard of the crown of France, an immensely privileged, not to mention dangerous, honour, as it made the holder a key target of enemy forces on the battlefield. - Isabella Of Angoulême
- Clovis I
Clovis I (c. 466 - 27 November 511) was the first King of the Franks to unite all the Frankish tribes under one ruler. He succeeded his father Childeric I in 481 as King of the Salian Franks, one of the Frankish tribes, who were then occupying the area west of the lower Rhine, with their centre around Tournai and Cambrai along the modern frontier between France and Belgium, in an area known as Toxandria. - Vauban
Sébastien Le Prestre, Seigneur de Vauban and later Marquis de Vauban, commonly referred to as Vauban, was a Marshal of France and the foremost military engineer of his age, famed for his skill in both designing fortifications and in breaking through them. He also advised Louis XIV on how to consolidate France's borders, to make them more defensible. - Jacques-Charles Dupont de L'Eure
Jacques-Charles Dupont de l'Eure (February 27, 1767 - March 3, 1855) was a French lawyer and statesman. He is best know as first head of state of the Second Republic, after collapse of the July Monarchy. - Anne de Montmorency
Anne de Montmorency, duc de Montmorency, KG (March 15, 1493-November 12, 1567), was a French soldier, statesman and diplomat. He became Marshal of France and Constable of France. - Louise de la Vallière
Louise Françoise de La Baume Le Blanc, duchesse de la Vallière was a French courtesan, the mistress to Louis XIV of France from 1661 to 1667. - Françoise-Athénaïs, Marquise de Montespan
Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart-Mortemart, marquise de Montespan was a mistress of Louis XIV of France. - François-René de Chateaubriand
François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand (September 4, 1768 - July 4, 1848) was a French writer, politician and diplomat. He is considered the founder of Romanticism in French literature. - Charles de Secondat baron de Montesquieu
Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, more commonly known as Montesquieu, was a French social commentator and political thinker who lived during the Enlightenment. He is famous for his articulation of the theory of separation of powers, taken for granted in modern discussions of government and implemented in many constitutions throughout the world. - Louis I de Bourbon prince de Condé
Louis I de Bourbon, prince de Condé was a Huguenot leader and general, the founder of the house of Condé, a cadet branch of the House of Bourbon. He was the fifth son of Charles de Bourbon, duc de Vendôme, the younger brother of Antoine de Bourbon who married Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of Navarre; their son, Condé's nephew, became Henry IV of France. As a general in the French army, Condé fought against the Spanish at the siege of Metz in 1552 and the Battle of St. - Gaston Duke of Orléans
Gaston Jean-Baptiste, Duke of Orléans, was the third son of the French king Henry IV and of his wife Marie de' Medici. Known at first as the Duke of Anjou, he became duc d'Orléans, Count of Blois and Count of Chartres in 1626, and had nominal command of the army which besieged La Rochelle in 1628, having already entered upon that course of political intrigue which would occupy the remainder of his life. - Hortense de Beauharnais
Hortense Eugénie Cécile de Beauharnais, Queen of Holland, Grand Duchess of Berg and Cleves, Countess of Saint-Leu (April 10, 1783 - October 5, 1837), was the wife of Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland and the mother of Napoleon III, Emperor of the French. Hortense was born in Paris, France, the daughter of Alexandre, Vicomte de Beauharnais and of his wife Josephine Tascher de la Pagerie. In 1794 her father was executed during the Reign of Terror. - Louis Jean Marie de Bourbon duc de Penthièvre
Louis Jean Marie de Bourbon, duc de Penthièvre was a French nobleman and admiral - Louis-Alexandre de Bourbon comte de Toulouse
Louis-Alexandre de Bourbon, Comte de Toulouse was a French admiral. He was Count of Toulouse from 1681, Duke of Penthièvre from 1697 and Duke of Rambouillet from 1711, all until his death. - Louis III, Prince of Condé
Louis III of Bourbon was Prince of Condé (pronounced: kôNdā') for a short period of time, following the death of his father Henry III in 1709. For the most part of his life he thus was styled Duke of Bourbon. In 1685, Louis married Louise-Françoise de Bourbon, Mademoiselle de Nantes (1673-1743), an illegitimate daughter of King Louis XIV of France. In an age and society where dynastic considerations played a major role in all but the most trivial of decisions, … - Gabrielle D'Estrées
Gabrielle d'Estrées, duchesse de Beaufort et Verneuil, marquise de Monceaux was a French mistress of King Henry IV of France, born at Château de la Bourdaisière in Montlouis-sur-Loire, in the Indre-et-Loire "département" of France. - Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (November 24, 1864 - September 9, 1901) was a French painter, printmaker, draftsman, and illustrator, whose immersion in the decadent and theatrical life of fin de siècle Paris yielded an "oeuvre" of provocative images of modern life. - Alfred de Musset
Alfred Louis Charles de Musset, (December 11, 1810 - May 2, 1857) was a French dramatist, poet, and novelist. - Armand Jean Du Plessis, Cardinal Richelieu
Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu, Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu, was a French clergyman, noble, and statesman. Consecrated as a bishop in 1607, he later entered politics, becoming a Secretary of State in 1616. Richelieu soon rose in both the Church and the state, becoming a cardinal in 1622, and King Louis XIII's chief minister in 1624. He remained in office until his death in 1642; he was succeeded by Jules Cardinal Mazarin. - Louis de Rouvroy duc de Saint-Simon
Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon (January 16, 1675 - March 2, 1755), French soldier, diplomatist and writer of memoirs, was born at Versailles. The peerage granted to his father, Claude de Saint-Simon(1608-1693), previously titled the "Vidame" of Chartres, is the central fact in his history. - Marie de Luxembourg
Marie de Luxembourg was a French noblewoman. She married Jacques de Savoie, Count of Romont, and brought rich estates to her second husband, François, Count of Vendôme, when they were married in 1487, including the counties of Saint Pol and Soissons in Picardy. At François's death in 1495, she became regent of Vendôme for her minor son Charles de Bourbon. The period of her regency was the most brilliant in the history of Vendôme. - Margaret Of Burgundy
Margaret of Burgundy (1393 - 1441) was the daughter of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, and Margaret of Bavaria. Her maternal grandparents were Albert I, Duke of Bavaria and Margaret of Brieg. In 1412, she married the Dauphin Louis. Widowed in 1415, she remarried to Arthur III, Duke of Brittany on 10 October 1423 in Dijon. - Alphonse de Lamartine
Alphonse Marie Louise Prat de Lamartine (October 21, 1790 - February 28, 1869) was a French writer, poet and politician, born in Mâcon into French provincial nobility. He is famous for his partly autobiographical poem, "Le Lac" ("The Lake"), which describes in retrospect the fervent love shared by a couple from the point of view of the bereaved man. Lamartine was masterly in his use of French poetic forms. - Philippa Of Toulouse
Philippa Maude of Toulouse (c. 1073-28 November 1118), also known as Philippa de Toulouse or Philippa de Rouergue, was the Duchess Consort of Aquitaine, and Countess of Toulouse. She is also considered by some historians as a Queen consort of Aragon and Navarre; however, that designation is based on a claimed marriage to King Sancho Ramirez of Aragon, which is now considered suspect. - Joséphine de Beauharnais
Joséphine de Beauharnais was the first wife of Napoléon Bonaparte and thus the first Empress of the French. Through her daughter, Hortense, she was the maternal grandmother of Napoleon III. - Françoise D'Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon
Françoise d'Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon was the morganatic second wife of Louis XIV of France. - Jean de Dunois
Count Jean de Dunois (Jean d'Orléans also known as the Bastard of Orléans was the son of Louis d'Orléans (Duc d'Orléans 1372-1407) and Mariette d'Enghien. The term "Bastard of Orléans" was the preferred name for most of his career. In his era this was a term of respect since it acknowledged him as the acting head of a leading ducal family during his half-brother's captivity and a first cousin to the king. His father died in 1407.
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