[282] Alphonse d'Ornano, colonel-general of the Corsican troops in the French service, and himself a native of Corsica, was the son of San Pietro di Bastelica, a man of low birth, who attained to the rank of colonel of the Corsican infantry in France, and who married (in 1548) Vanina d'Ornano, the daughter and heiress of one of the most wealthy nobles in Corsica. The avowed enemy of the Genoese, by whom himself and his family were proscribed and banished from their native island, San Pietro strangled his wife with his own hands on discovering that she had attempted to escape from Marseilles in order to obtain a revocation of the edict issued by the Genoese in 1563. Alphonse, the son of San Pietro, to whom his very name had become odious, adopted that of his mother, under which he rendered important services to Henri IV during the wars of the League, and by whom he was first appointed lieutenant of the King in Dauphiny, and subsequently Marshal of France (1595). He died in 1620, at the age of seventy-two. He was a man of probity, but had inherited the violent character of his father. [283] Le Vassor, vol. i. pp. 625-632. Brienne, _Mém_. vol. i. p. 327. Sismondi, vol. xxii. pp. 393-395. Mézeray, vol. xi. pp. 134-136. Matthieu, _Hist. des Derniers Troubles_, book iii. p. 603. [284] Richelieu, Unpublished MSS. The words underlined in the text are in the Cardinal's autograph on the margin of the manuscript. [285] Brienne, _Mém_. vol. i. p. 327. [286] Le Vassor, vol. i. p. 637. Sismondi, vol. xxii. p. 396. [287] _Lumières pour l'Histoire de France_. Le Vassor, vol. i. pp. 634, 635. [288] The Marquis de Bressieux was first equerry to Marie de Medicis. [289] Siri, _Mém. Rec_. vol. iv. pp. 61, 62. [290] Rambure, MS. _Mém_. vol. vii. p. 66. Mézeray, vol. xi. p. 138. Bassompierre, _Mém_. p. 126. [291] Louis, Sieur du Rouvray, was a Norman noble, and a descendant of the celebrated Louis du Rouvray, who was one of the hundred and eighty devoted men who in 1421 shut themselves up in the Mont Saint-Michel, in order to defend it against the English. [292] Richelieu, _Hist. de la Mère et du Fils_, vol. i. p. 219. CHAPTER X 1617