LUXEMBOURG, FRANOIS-HENRI DE MONTMORENCY-BOUTEVILLE, DUC

(duke of ) born Jan. 8, 1628, Paris, Fr. died Jan. 4, 1695, Versailles one of King Louis XIV's most successful generals in the Dutch War (167278) and the War of the Grand Alliance (168997). The posthumous son of Franois de Montmorency-Bouteville, he was reared by a distant relative, Charlotte de Montmorency, princesse de Cond. Although Bouteville was hunchbacked and physically weak, the princesse's son Louis II de Bourbon, prince de Cond (later known as the Great Cond), prepared him for a military career. In 1648 he distinguished himself fighting under Cond against the Spanish at the Battle of Lens. In 1650, during the second phase of the aristocratic uprising known as the Fronde (164853), Bouteville joined Cond's supporters in a revolt against Cardinal Jules Mazarin, who controlled the government of the young king Louis XIV. The uprising collapsed in 1653, and Bouteville then entered the Spanish army. He was pardoned and permitted to return to France in 1659. Through his marriage to an heiress, he acquired the title Duke de Luxembourg two years later. Cond procured a commission for him as lieutenant general in 1668. When Louis XIV invaded the United Provinces of the Netherlands in June 1672, Luxembourg was sent to command an army in the electorate of Cologne. In the winter of 1672 he was assigned to hold the captured Dutch city of Utrecht. The French position in Holland deteriorated rapidly, and in late 1673 the duke executed a masterful retreat from Utrecht in the face of the numerically superior forces of William of Orange. He was created a marshal of France in July 1675 and given command of the Army of the Rhine the following year. After being forced to surrender Philippsburg to Charles V, Duke of Lorraine, Luxembourg took revenge by devastating part of Flanders in 167778. On Aug. 14, 1678, he defeated William of Orange at Saint-Denis, near Mons, in a victory that brought him more criticism then honours, since it took place four days after the conclusion of peace. By the time Luxembourg returned to Paris, his name had been associated with the scandals that developed into the sensational criminal case known as the Affair of the Poisons. In March 1679 Louis XIV had him imprisoned on a charge of sorcery; on his acquittal 14 months later he was exiled from Paris and Versailles. Recalled to court as captain of the king's guards in 1681, Luxembourg was made commander in chief of the royal armies shortly after France went to war with the other major European powers in 1689. He prevented an invasion of France by crushing the army of George Frederick, prince of Waldeck, at Fleurus, in the Spanish Netherlands, on July 1, 1690. During the next four years Luxembourg consistently outmaneuvered his major opponent, William of Orange, who had ascended the English throne as King William III. The duke took Mons in April 1691, covered the successful siege of Namur from May to July 1692, and defeated William in major battles at Steenkerke (Aug. 3, 1692) and Neerwinden (July 29, 1693). He sent so many captured flags to be hung in the cathedral in Paris that wits called him the tapissier (upholsterer) of Notre Dame. In 1694 he returned in high honour to Versailles, where he died. History Ancient and medieval periods The earliest human remains found in present-day Luxembourg date from about 5140 BC, but little is known about the people who first populated the area. Two Belgic tribes, the Treveri and Mediomatrici, inhabited the country from about 450 BC until the Roman conquest of 53 BC. The occupation of the country by the Franks in the 5th century AD marked the beginning of the Middle Ages in the locality. St. Willibrord played a very important role in the area's Christianization in the late 7th century. He founded the Benedictine abbey of Echternach, which became an important cultural centre for the region. The area successively formed part of the Frankish kingdom of Austrasia, of the Holy Roman Empire under Charlemagne and Louis I the Pious, and then of the kingdom of Lotharingia. Luxembourg became an independent entity in 963, when Siegfried, Count de Ardennes, exchanged his lands for a small but strategically placed Roman castle lying along the Alzette River. This castle became the cradle of Luxembourg, whose name is itself derived from that of the castle, Lucilinburhuc (Little Fortress). Siegfried's successors enlarged their possessions by conquests, treaties, marriages, and inheritances. About 1060 Conrad, a descendant of Siegfried, became the first to take the title of count of Luxembourg. Conrad's great-granddaughter, Countess Ermesinde, was a notable ruler whose great-grandson, Henry IV, became Holy Roman emperor as Henry VII in 1308. This Luxembourg dynasty was continued on the imperial throne in the persons of Charles IV, Wenceslas, and Sigismund. In 1354 the emperor Charles IV made the county a duchy. In 1443 Elizabeth of Grlitz, duchess of Luxembourg and niece of the Holy Roman emperor Sigismund, was forced to cede the duchy to Philip III the Good, duke of Burgundy. Habsburg and French domination Along with the rest of the Burgundian inheritance, the duchy of Luxembourg passed to the Habsburgs in 1477. The division of the Habsburg territories in 155556 following Emperor Charles V's abdication put the duchy in the possession of the Spanish Habsburgs. In the revolt of the Low Countries against Philip II of Spain, Luxembourg took no part; it was to remain with what is now Belgium as part of the Spanish Netherlands. (For more specific information about the period, see The Netherlands.) The duchy was able to remain aloof from the Thirty Years' War (161848) for a time, but in 1635, when France became involved, a period of disaster began in Luxembourg, which was wracked by war, famine, and epidemics. Moreover, the war did not end for Luxembourg with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, but only with the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659. In 1679 France under Louis XIV began to conquer parts of the duchy, and in 1684 the conquest was completed with the capture of Luxembourg city. France restored Luxembourg to Spain in 1697, however, under the terms of the Treaties of Rijswijk. At the conclusion of the War of the Spanish Succession, by the treaties of Utrecht and Rastatt (171314), Luxembourg (along with Belgium) passed from the Spanish to the Austrian Habsburgs. In 1795, six years after the beginning of the French Revolution, Luxembourg came under the rule of the French again. The old duchy was divided among three dpartements, the constitution of the Directory was imposed, and a modern state bureaucracy was introduced. The Luxembourg peasantry were hostile toward the French government's anticlerical measures, however, and the introduction of compulsory military service in France in 1798 provoked a rebellion (the Klppelkrieg) in Luxembourg that was brutally suppressed.