Joyeuse

Joyeuse, French peerage-duchy of the 16th century. Its seat was at Joyeuse in the Vivarais region of Languedoc (in the modern departement of Ardèche), which had been held by a branch of the house of Chateauneuf de Randon as a barony from the 13th century and as a viscounty from 1432.

Anne de Joyeuse (1561–87), the handsome favourite of Henry III of France, was created duc de Joyeuse and married to the king’s sister-in-law Marguerite de Vaudémont in 1581. Anne was appointed admiral of France in 1582 and governor of Normandy in 1586. A leader in the Roman Catholic reaction against Henri I, duc de Montmorency’s tolerant policy toward the Huguenots in Languedoc, he led an army against the Huguenots in Guienne. He massacred some Huguenots at Mont-Saint-Éloi but was captured and killed at Coutras (October 20, 1587).

Of his surviving brothers, the eldest, François (1562–1615), was archbishop of Narbonne from 1582 and cardinal from 1583, later to be archbishop of Rouen (1604). Consequently the leadership of the Catholic extremists in Languedoc passed on Anne’s death to his third brother, Antoine Scipion, who campaigned for some years with Spanish help but was drowned in the Tarn after defeat at Villemur in 1592. Thereupon his brother Henri (1567–1608), who had at first been known as the comte de Bouchage but had become a Capuchin friar under the name of Frere Ange on his wife’s death (1587), laid aside his habit to continue the duchy and the warfare. Reconciled with Henry IV of France in 1596 and made a marshal of France, he returned to the Capuchins in 1599. His daughter Henriette Catherine (1585–1656) was married first, in 1599, to Henri de Bourbon, duc de Montpensier, and second, in 1611, to Charles de Lorraine, duc de Guise, whose descendants inherited the duchy.