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FRANCOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, 
MARQUIS DE MONTANDRE; 
MASTER-GENERAL OF THE ORDNANCE IN IRELAND AND A 
BRITISH FIELD-MARSHAL, 1739. 
BY 
CHARLES DALTON, ESQ. 
Editor of English Army Lists and Commission Registers, 1661-1714. 
‘Hn was esteemed by all the princes under whom he had the honour to serve, 
and well beloved by everybody that knew him.”—London Daily Post, August 
16th, 1739. 
Special interest attaches to this Field-Marshal from the fact of his 
being a Frenchman by birth and descent. Of ancient lineage—a 
scion of a house whose nobility dates from the 10th century—honour- 
able character, and endowed with military ardour, Francois de la 
Rochefoucauld was well fitted to hold high rank in the French army, 
but the short-sighted policy of ‘‘ Le Grand Monarque” drove the 
subject of this memoir, with many brave compatriots, into the service 
of France’s most bitter foe, William III., King of England. 
Francis; Ist Count de la Rochefoucauld, was Prince of Marsillac, 
Lord of. Barbezieux, of Mont Guyon, of Montandre, and Chamberlain 
of Kings Charles VIII. and Louis XH. He died in 1516 or 1517, 
leaving a younger son, Louis Seigneur de Montandre, who was great- 
great-grandfather of our Field-Marshal who was born in September 
1672. ‘“ He appears,” says Colonel Chester, “to have been bred a 
Canon in the Abbey of St. Victor at Paris, but fled to England on 
account of the change in his religious sentiments.” The young 
Huguenot refugee probably served as a volunteer in King William’s 
army in Ireland? prior to his being appointed Captain and Brevet- 
1 A yery full memoir of the Marquis de Montandre is to be found in My. Agnew’s Protestant 
Exiles from France (three vols.), published in 1871-4; biographical notices in La Haag’s La 
France Protestante and Colonel Chester’s Westminster Abbey Registers. Letters and MS. 
references in Treasury Papers and State Papers at Public Record Office ; newspapers and con- 
temporary diaries, ete. ; Boyer’s Annals of Reign of Queen Anne ; Captain George Carleton’s 
Memoirs ; Walpole’s Letters ; Cannon’s Regimental Records; The Marlborough Despatches ; 
Walpole’s Letters to Miss Berry (edited by Lady Theresa Lewis), Vol. I.; Parnell’s War of the 
Succession in Spain. 
2 An obituary notice of the Marquis de Montandre in the London Daily Post, August 16th, 
1739, says: ‘* Le made all the campaigns in Ireland and Flanders under William III.” 
6, VOL. XXIII. 
