François de Vendôme, duke de Beaufort (born January 16, 1616, Paris—died June 25, 1669, Crete) was a French prince, one of the leaders of the Fronde (1648–53) and later admiral in the Mediterranean.
Beaufort won a high reputation in King Louis XIII’s army during 1635–40 but linked himself with the opposition to Louis’s minister, Cardinal de Richelieu, and became known as a devoted partisan of the queen, Anne of Austria. In 1642 Beaufort fled to England to avoid interrogation about the conspiracy of Cinq-Mars, but upon Richelieu’s death later that year he promptly returned to France. When Jules Mazarin became head of the government after Louis XIII’s death in 1643, Beaufort, with others, plotted to supplant Mazarin but was arrested (September 1643) and imprisoned.
In May 1648 Beaufort escaped. In January 1649 he presented himself to the rebellious Parlement of Paris and became one of the generals of the first Fronde (Fronde of the Parlement, June 1648–March 1649). His handsome appearance and sincerity, as well as his sorties against the royal forces blockading Paris, won him the adoration of the populace.
After the Peace of Rueil (March 1649) he allied himself with J.F.P. de Gondi, later Cardinal de Retz, who obtained from the court Beaufort’s designation as admiral. Gondi plotted with Anne and Mazarin the arrest of their rival, the Prince de Condé (January 1650). This event triggered the second Fronde, or Fronde of the Princes. After Condé’s release and Mazarin’s flight from Paris (February 1651), Beaufort organized the patrols around the Palais-Royal to prevent Anne from taking the young Louis XIV to join Mazarin. Thereafter Beaufort and Gondi became progressively estranged.
When Mazarin returned to France from exile (January 1652), Beaufort led the troops of Gaston, Duke d’Orléans, on Condé’s side against the royalist forces. On July 30, 1652, he shot his sister Élisabeth’s husband, Charles-Amédée de Savoie, Duke de Nemours, in a duel. Upon the collapse of the Fronde he was banished from Paris.
Restored to royal favour in 1658, Beaufort concerned himself with his duties as admiral. In 1664 he led the first French attempt on Algeria. Sent as admiral and as “general of the church” to Crete to help the Venetians in Candia against the Turks, he was lost in battle.