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| - Before the death of his father, he was known at court as the duc d'Agénois. He entered the army at the age of seventeen, and at the age of nineteen was made colonel of the regiment of Brie. His marriage in 1740 with Louise Félicité de Brehan, daughter of the Comte de Plélo, coupled with his connection with the Richelieu family, gave him an important place at court. Upon the death of King Louis XV's mistress, Madame de Vintimille, in childbirth in 1741, the king's best friend, the duc d'Agénois' uncle, the manipulative duc de Richelieu, began to cast about for another candidate to fulfil his royal friend's desires as he did not want Madame de Ventimille's older sister Madame de Mailly, to regain the king's affections. He eventually decided upon the younger sister of both Madame de Mailly and Madame de Ventimille, Marie Anne, the widow of the marquis de La Tournelle. At a masked ball on Shrove Tuesday, 1742, Richelieu led Marie Anne up to the king and introduced them. The beautiful marquise, however, at first rejected the royal advances. She already had a lover, the young Emmanuel-Armand, and was not inclined to give him up even for the king's sake. As a result, Louis conspired with Richelieu, who was d'Agénois's uncle, to rid himself of the young suitor. Richelieu was quite anxious to do anything to bring about a liaison between the king and Madame de la Tournelle because he knew Madame de Mailly did not view him in kindly light. The result of their deliberations was that Louis, in imitation of the biblical David, sent his rival to fight the Austrians in Italy during War of the Austrian Succession. The young duke was seriously wounded at the siege of Château-Dauphin (1744). Unlike the husband of Bathsheba, however, the duc d'Agénois recovered from his injuries, and returned to the court in glory. Louis was in despair, but Richelieu, who was a resourceful man, was not one to lightly accept defeat. He sent his nephew to Languedoc, where a beautiful young lady had been instructed to seduce him. This she did most effectively; letters of a very passionate nature were exchanged; the lady despatched those which she received to Richelieu, and in due course they were brought to the notice of Madame de La Tournelle, who, furious at her young duke's deceitfullness, turned her attentions to the king. The duke was later taken prisoner in (1746) and was made a maréchal de camp in 1748. He was a member of the so-called parti devot, the faction opposed to Madame de Pompadour, to the Jansenists and to the parlement, and his hostility to the new ideas drew upon him the anger of the pamphleteers. In 1753 he was appointed commandant (governor) of Brittany and soon became unpopular in that province, which had retained a large number of privileges called "liberties." He first came into collision with the provincial estates on the question of the royal imposts (1758),
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