Hercule de Rohan (27 August 1568 – 16 October 1654) was a member of the princely House of Rohan. The second Duke of Montbazon, he is an ancestor of the present Princes of Guéméné. His daughter was the famous Frondeur the duchesse de Chevreuse. He was a Peer of France.
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Biography
Born the seventh of fourteen children of Louis de Rohan, prince de Guéméné and his wife Eléonore de Rohan, he was given the title of Count of Rochefort-en-Yvelines prior to becoming the Duke of Montbazon in 1589 at the death of his brother. He married twice; firstly to Madeleine de Lenoncourt, daughter of Henri de Lenoncourt, third of the name, and his wife Françoise de Laval, sister of the maréchal de Bois-Dauphin. Madeleine was the widow of his elder brother, Louis VII de Rohan-Guéméné. The couple were married on 24 October 1594 and had two children.
His first son Louis, was the Prince of Guéméné and thus the head of the surviving main line of the House of Rohan; his eldest daughter, Marie was later a woman of great personal charm who placed herself at the center of many of the intrigues of the first half of the 17th century in France. She married Charles d'Albert, Duke of Luynes, a favourite of King Louis XIII, and had issue.
Hercule's first wife Madeleine died in 1602. In 1628, he married Marie de Bretagne d'Avaugour, daughter of Claude de Bretagne, Count of Vertus and Catherine Fouquet de La Varenne.
His second wife was hailed as one of the most beautiful and most notorious women of her time. Hercule and Marie had three children, of whom two, François and Anne, would have progeny. François founded the Soubise line of the Rohan's and married his cousin Anne de Rohan-Chabot (later mistress of Louis XIV) and Anne, his youngest child married Louis Charles d'Albert de Luynes, her nephew by her older sister Marie.