Blaise de Lasseran-Massencôme, seigneur de Montluc, the…
October 1562 CE
Blaise de Lasseran-Massencôme, seigneur de Montluc, the eldest son of an impoverished branch of the great family of Montesquiou, had been brought up as a page at the court of Lorraine.
He had fought in northern Italy in 1521–22 and had been with King Francis I of France at his defeat at Pavia in 1525.
As lieutenant of a company he had played a brilliant part in the relief of Marseille from the Holy Roman emperor Charles V's siege in 1536, and in Italy he had been chiefly responsible for the great victory at Ceresole in 1544.
After a period as maître de camp (“master of the camp”) in the fighting in northeastern France against the English, he had become governor of Moncalieri in Piedmont in 1548 and remained in Italy for the next ten years.
A staunch royalist, Montluc is a partisan of the Roman Catholic house of Guise when the French Wars of Religion begin in 1562.
His victory at Vergt on October 9, 1562, breaks the Huguenot power in Guyenne.