Charles de Lorraine, duc de Mayenne 26 March —3 October [ 1 ] was a French noble, governor, military commander and rebel during the latter French Wars of Religion. He fought at the siege of Poitiers for the crown in , and crusaded against the Ottomans in He served under the command of the king's brother Anjou during the siege of La Rochelle in the fourth war of religion, during which he was wounded.
While the siege progressed, his uncle was killed by a cannonball, and he inherited his position as governor of Bourgogne. He travelled with Anjou when he was elected as king of the Commonwealth and was a member of his court there until early when he departed on crusade again. Returning to France, he served in the fifth war of religion for Anjou, now king Henri III of France, but his badly underfunded army was unable to seriously impede the Protestant mercenary force under Casimir.
During , he married Henriette de Savoie-Villars , securing a sizable inheritance in the south west, and the title of Admiral on the death of her father in Mayenne was granted full command of a royal army during the seventh war of religion in , besieging the Protestant stronghold of La Mure successfully, and clearing several holdout towns after the peace. In he was obliged to surrender his title of Admiral to Joyeuse , a favourite of Henri.
The following year he was involved in an abortive plan to invade England, though it came to nothing due to lack of funds. This was unacceptable to Mayenne, and many other radical Catholics across France. Resultingly, Mayenne, his brother Guise and various family allies formed a second Catholic ligue at Nancy in September , to push the succession of Cardinal Bourbon , Navarre's Catholic uncle.
Mayenne seized many of the cities of his governate, and the crown was forced to terms in July, conceding to the ligue that Navarre would be excluded from the succession, and that the crown would conduct a war on heresy. Over the following years, Mayenne vigorously pursued attempts to campaign against the Protestants of the south, however Henri's participation was half hearted, and on a frustrated return to Paris in early , Mayenne was at minimum sympathetic to a failed ligueur plan to seize the capital.
