Of this union, so inauspiciously begun, five children were born—three sons, of whom François was the eldest, and two daughters.[4]
Almost immediately after his marriage, Christophe was obliged to leave his bride, to take part in the siege of La Rochelle, which was interrupted by the news that the Duc d’Anjou (afterwards Henri III), who commanded the Catholic army, had been elected to the throne of Poland. Christophe was one of those chosen to accompany the prince to his kingdom, and set out for Poland, “with a great and noble retinue”; but, on reaching Vienna, he received orders from Charles IX to raise a levy of reiters for service against the Huguenots and “Politiques” and return to France with all speed. He performed a like service for Henri III in 1575, at the time of the revolt of Alençon, but in 1585 resigned his pensions and offices and threw in his lot with the Duc de Guise and the League, to whom his skill in recruiting mercenaries from Germany and Switzerland proved of great assistance.
After the King’s surrender to the demands of the League, at the Peace of Nemours, in July of that year, Christophe’s pensions and offices were restored to him, and in 1587, when the great army of reiters under Dohna and Bouillon invaded France, we find him commissioned by Henri III to raise a new levy of 1,500 horse. These troops were stationed with the main army, commanded by Henri III in person on the Loire, but Christophe himself preferred to serve under Guise on the Lorraine frontier. Here he was seized with a serious illness, which necessitated his return home and prevented him taking part in Guise’s victories at Vimory and Auneau.
Christophe was at Blois at the time of the assassination of Guise in December, 1588, but, warned in time, he succeeded in effecting his escape from the town before the principal adherents of the duke were arrested, and, exasperated by the fate of his friend and patron, raised large levies in Germany for the service of the Leaguer princes. He fought under Mayenne against Henri IV at Arques and Ivry, in which latter engagement he was twice wounded and obliged to return to Lorraine. He returned to France in 1593, to assist, as representative of Duke Charles III, at the Estates of the League, where he offered very effective opposition to the proposal of the ultra-Catholic party to confer the crown of France on the Infanta Clara Eugenia. The conversion of Henri IV having caused him to abandon any projects which he might have had in France, he now devoted himself to re-establishing the affairs of the Duke of Lorraine, which were in sad disorder, and was appointed by that prince Grand Master of his Household and Superintendent of Finance. In July, 1534, he signed, on behalf of the duke, in Henri IV’s camp before Laon, a treaty by which Charles III undertook to observe complete neutrality between France and Spain.
This gallant old warrior was an excellent father and spared no expense to give his sons the most thorough education which it was possible for them to obtain. François de Bassompierre’s early years were passed at the Château of Harouel.
“I was brought up in this house,” he writes, “until October, 1584, when I first remember seeing Henri, Duc de Guise, who was concealed at Harouel, for the purpose of treating with several colonels of landsknechts and reiters for the levies of the League. At this time I began to learn to read and write, and afterwards the rudiments. My tutor was a Norman priest, named Nicolas Ciret.”
In the autumn of 1587, on the approach of the invading army of Dohna and Bouillon, Madame de Bassompierre and her children had to leave Harouel and take refuge at Nancy. The invaders burned the town of Harouel, but appear to have left the château untouched.
On the return of the family to Harouel, François and his younger brother Jean, who now shared his studies, were given another tutor, named Gravet, “and two young men, called Clinchamp and La Motte, the one to teach us to write, the other to dance, play the lute and music.” They passed the next four years partly at Harouel and partly at Nancy, where, in the autumn of 1591, François saw for the first time Charles de Lorraine, Duc de Guise, who had recently effected his romantic escape from the Château of Blois,[5] and with whom he was to be on such intimate terms in later years.
In October, 1591, the two boys went, accompanied by their masters, to study at Freiburg, but only remained there five months, “because Gravet, our tutor, killed La Motte, who taught us to dance.” In consequence of this unfortunate affair, they returned to Harouel, but towards the end of 1592 were sent to continue their studies at the University of Pont-à-Mousson, founded by Duke Charles III and his uncle the Cardinal de Lorraine, and early in the following year reached the first class. They passed the Carnival of 1593 at Nancy, where they took part in a tournament, “dressed à la Suisse.” At its conclusion they returned to Pont-à-Mousson, where, shortly afterwards, their father brought them a German tutor, George von Springesfeld, in place of the homicidal Gravet. At the Carnival of 1594 they again went to Nancy, to assist at the marriage of William II, Duke of Bavaria, and Marie Élisabeth, younger daughter of the Duke of Lorraine, when it was decided that they should accompany the bridal pair back to Bavaria, and keep their terms at the University of Ingoldstadt. They travelled in the duke’s suite by way of Heidelberg, Spire, Neustadt, Donauworth and Landshut, the party being splendidly entertained by the various nobles at whose houses they stopped; but the journey did not end without a tragic incident, in which François de Bassompierre had a narrow escape of his life.