Gaspard de Schomberg

Gaspard de Schomberg, comte de Nanteuil (c. 1540 –17 March 1599) was a French soldier, courtier, diplomat, statesman and governor during the French Wars of Religion. Of Sachsen descent, Gaspard naturalised as French. He began his career during the first French War of Religion, when he fought with the Protestants against the crown, raising mercenaries in the Holy Roman Empire for the prince of Condé. The crown was impressed with his abilities, and co-opted his services, during the third civil war he would fight against the Protestants. In 1570 he was made a gentilhomme de la chambre du roi, and then a Chambellan and in these years he would conduct a series of diplomatic missions to further French foreign policy with the princes of the empire. In 1573 he helped prepare the way for Anjou, travel to his new kingdom, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. When Anjou returned to France as Henri III Schomberg supported him in the civil war he inherited, reporting on the mercenary situation in the empire, and fighting at the Battle of Dormans. His wealth during this period allowed him to take advantage of the Duke of Guise's financial woes, securing for himself the county of Nanteuil-le-Haudoin in 1578 for several hundred thousand livres.

When the second Catholic ligue declared war on the crown in opposition to the prospect of the Protestant Navarre inheriting the throne, Schomberg was again tasked with raising mercenaries in the Empire. He was unable to do so however as the duke of Guise captured the border cities of Toul and Verdun, and instead participated in the peace negotiations and attempted reconciliation between Guise and the king's favourite Épernon. The peace between Henri and the ligue lasted until the final rupture in which Henri assassinated the duke in December 1588. Schomberg played a central role in the negotiations for an alliance between Henri and Navarre that established a united front against the ligue. With the assassination of Henri III in turn, Schomberg was among those nobles who switched their allegiance to Navarre, who now styled himself Henri IV. He fought at the royalist victory of Ivry where he led the right. In 1593 during the ligueur Estates General he was among the royal delegation that established a truce with the ligue. In early 1594, he assisted in the capitulation of Paris to the royalists, and soon thereafter took on a royal on the king's conseil des finances. Henri had by now abandoned his Protestantism, and many of his former co-religionists were frustrated with him. Schomberg led negotiations with them in 1595 after the fall of Amiens to the Spanish, to try and convince them to support Henri. He ultimately agreed to a series of concessions that would form the basis of the Edict of Nantes. Still at work planning the implementation of the Edict of Nantes he died on 13 March 1599.