defended Lusignan with great valour when it was besieged by the Catholics (1574–75). His son Henry, the first duke of Rohan, also distinguished himself in the Protestant army. His only child, Marguerite de Rohan, married in 1645 Henri Chabot, a. cadet of a great family of Poitou. This marriage was opposed by her mother, Marguerite de Béthune, who put forward a rival heir called Tancred, whom she claimed to be her son by the duke of Rohan. This Tancred perished in the Fronde in 1649. The property and titles of Henry de Rohan thus passed to the Chabot family, which under the name of Rohan-Chabot produced some distinguished soldiers and a cardinal archbishop of Besançon. The male line of the Rohans is now represented by an offshoot of the Rohan-Guéménée branch.
ROHAN, HENRI, Duc de (1579–1638), French soldier, writer
and leader of the Huguenots, was born at the chateau of Blain,
in Brittany, in 1579. His father was René II., count of Rohan
(1550–86), and head of one of the oldest and most distinguished
families in France, which was connected with many of the
reigning houses of Europe. He was educated by his mother,
who was a woman of exceptional learning and force of character.
Rohan was by birth the second son, but his elder brother René
dying young he became the heir of the name. He appeared at
court and in the army at the age of sixteen, and was a special
favourite with Henry IV., after whom, failing the house of
Condé, he might be said to be the natural chief of the French
Protestants. Having served till the peace of Vervins, he
travelled for a considerable time over Europe, including England
and Scotland, in the first of which countries he received the
not unique honour of being called by Elizabeth her knight,
while in the second he was godfather at Charles I.’s christening.
On his return to France he was made duke and peer at the age
of twenty-four, and two years later (1603) married Marguerite
de Béthune, the duc de Sully’s daughter. He served in high
command at the celebrated siege of Jülich in 1610, but soon
afterwards he fell into active or passive opposition to the government
over the religious disputes. For a time, however, he
abstained from actual insurrection, and he endeavoured to
keep on terms with Marie de’ Medici; he even, despite his
dislike of De Luynes, the favourite of Louis XIII., reappeared
in the army and fought in Lorraine and Piedmont. It was not
till the decree for the restitution of church property in the
south threw the Bearnese and Gascons into open revolt that
Rohan appeared as a rebel. His authority and military skill
were very formidable to the royalists; his constancy and firmness
greatly contributed to the happy issue of the war for the
Huguenots, and brought about the treaty of Montpellier (1623).
But Rohan did not escape the results of the incurable fractiousness
which showed itself more strongly perhaps among the
French Huguenots than among any other of the numerous
armed oppositions of the 17th century. He was accused of
lukewarmness and treachery, though he did not hesitate to
renew the war when the compact of Montpellier was broken.
Again a hollow peace was patched up, but it lasted but a short
time, and Rohan undertook a third war (1627–29), the first
events of which are recounted in his celebrated Memoirs. This
last war (famous for the defence of La Rochelle by Soubise,
Rohan’s younger brother) was one of considerable danger for
Rohan. In spite of all efforts he had in the end to sign a
peace, and after this he made his way quickly to Venice. Here
he is said to have received from the Porte the offer of the
sovereignty of Cyprus. It is more certain that his hosts of
Venice wished to make him their general-in-chief, a design
not executed owing to the peace of Cherasco (1631). At Venice
he wrote his Memoirs; at Padua, Le Parfait Capitaine. But
when France began to play a more conspicuous part in the
Thirty Years’ War Rohan was again called to serve his lawful
sovereign, and entrusted with the war in the Valtelline. The
campaign of 1633 was completely successful, but Rohan was
still considered dangerous to France, and was soon again in
retirement. At this time he wrote his Traité du gouvernement
des treize cantons. Rohan fought another Valtelline campaign,
but without the success of the first, for the motives of France
were now held in suspicion. The unfortunate commander
retired to Geneva and thence went to the army of Bernhard
of Saxe-Weimar. He received a mortal wound at the battle
of Rheinfelden on the 28th, of February 1638, and died at the
abbey of Konigsfeld, canton Berne, on the 13th of April. His
body was buried at Geneva, and his arms were solemnly
handed over to the Venetian government. With his daughter
Marguerite the honours of the family of Rohan-Gié passed to
the house of Chabot.
Rohan’s Mémoires sur les choses ni se sont passées en France, &c., rank amongst the best products of the singular talent for memoir writing which the French noblesse of the 16th and 17th centuries possessed. Alike in style, in clearness of matter and in shrewdness, they deserve very high praise. The first three books, dealing with the civil wars, appeared in 1644; the fourth, containing the narrative of the Valtelline campaigns, not till 1758. Some suspicions were thrown on the genuineness of the latter, but, it would seem, groundlessly. His famous book on the history and art of war, Le Parfait Capitaine, appeared in 1631 and subsequently in 1637 and 1693 (see also Quincy, Art de la guerre, Paris, 1741). It treats of the history and lessons of Caesar’s campaigns and their application to modern warfare, and contains appendices dealing with phalangite and legionary methods of fighting and the art of war in general. He also wrote an account of his travels, the book on Switzerland mentioned above, De l’intérêt des princes et états de la chrétienté, etc. The Memoirs may be conveniently found in the collection of Michaud and Poujoulat, vol. 19.
See Fauvelet de Foix, Histoire du Duc Henri de Rohan (Paris, 1667); Sch bergson, Le Duc de Rohan et la charte du parti protestant en France (Paris, 1880); Bhüring, Venedig, Gustaf Adolf, und Rohan (Halle, 1885); Laugel, Henri de Rohan, son rôle politique et militaire (Paris, 1889); Veraguth, Herzog Rohan und seine Mission in Graubünden (Berne, 1894); and Shadwell, Mountain Warfare.
ROHAN, LOUIS RENÉ ÉDOUARD, Cardinal de (1734–1803), prince de Rohan-Guéménée, archbishop of Strassburg, a cadet of the great family of Rohan (which traced its origin to the kings of Brittany, and was granted the precedence and rank of a foreign princely family by Louis XIV.), was born at Paris on the 25th of September 1734. Members of the Rohan family had filled the office of archbishop of Strassburg from 1704—an office which made them princes of the empire and the compeers rather of the German prince-bishops than of the French ecclesiastics. For this high office Louis de Rohan was destined from his birth, and soon after taking orders, in 1760, he was nominated coadjutor to his uncle, Constantine de Rohan-Rochefort, who then held the archbishopric, and he was also consecrated bishop of Canopus. But he preferred the elegant life and the gaiety of Paris to his clerical duties, and had also an ambition to make a figure in politics. He joined the party opposed to the Austrian alliance, which had been cemented by the marriage of the archduchess Marie Antoinette to the dauphin. This party was headed by the duc d’Aiguillon, who in 1771 sent Prince Louis on a special embassy to Vienna to find out what was being done there with regard to the partition of Poland. Rohan arrived at Vienna in January 1772, and made a great noise with his lavish fêtes. But the empress Maria Theresa was implacably hostile to him; not only did he attempt to thwart her policy, but he spread scandals about her daughter Marie Antoinette, laughed at herself, and shocked her ideas of propriety by his dissipation and luxury. On the death of Louis XV. in 1774, Rohan was recalled from Vienna, and coldly received at Paris; but the influence of his family was too great for him to be neglected, and in 1777 he was made grand almoner, and in 1778 abbot of St Vaast. In 1778 he was made a cardinal on the nomination of Stanislaus Poniatowski, king of Poland, and in the following, year succeeded his uncle as archbishop of Strassburg and became abbot of Noirmoutiers and Chaise-Dieu. His various preferment's brought him in an income of two and a half millions of livres; yet the cardinal was restless and unhappy until he should be reinstated in favour at court and had appeased the animosity which Marie Antoinette felt against him. In pursuit of this object he fell into the hands of a gang of intriguers, the comtesse de Lamotte, the notorious Cagliostro and others, whose actions
