page_title: Étienne François, duc de Choiseul
section_title: Rise
hierarchical_section_title: Étienne François, duc de Choiseul / Biography / Rise
context_page_description: Étienne François, Marquis de Stainville, Duc de Choiseul was a French military officer, diplomat and statesman. From 1758 and 1761 and from 1766 and 1770, he was Foreign Minister of France and had a strong influence on France's global strategy throughout the period. He is closely associated with France's defeat in the Seven Years' War and subsequent efforts to rebuild French prestige.
context_section_description: The eldest son of François Joseph de Choiseul, marquis de Stainville (1700–1770), Étienne François was born in Nancy in the Duchy of Lorraine where his father was one of the leading advisors to the Duke of Lorraine who ruled an independent French-speaking state with close cultural and political links with France. At birth, he bore the title of comte de Stainville. In 1737, Francis Stephen of Lorraine (the future Holy Roman Emperor Francis I) was pressured into giving up Lorraine and becoming ruler of Tuscany in Italy. Realising that continued loyalty to the House of Lorraine would limit his opportunities, Étienne François transferred his allegiance to France.
  After gaining experience during the Austro-Turkish War, the comte de Stainville entered the French army, and during the War of the Austrian Succession served in Bohemia (1741) and in Italy (1744), where he distinguished himself at the Battle of Coni. He was also present at the Battle of Dettingen in Germany and carried news of the French defeat there to Paris. He had been appalled by what he had witnessed of the French forces at Dettingen, particularly what he later described as their "indifference and ignorance", and his experiences motivated his later reforms of the French military.
  From 1745 to 1748, he was with the army in the Low Countries and was present at the sieges of Mons, Charleroi and Maastricht.  He attained the rank of lieutenant-general and, in 1750, married Louise Honorine Crozat, daughter of Louis François Crozat, marquis du Châtel (died 1750), who brought her husband her share of the large fortune of her grandfather Antoine Crozat as well as his brother Pierre's grand Hôtel de Crozat on the rue de Richelieu, and proved a most devoted wife.
  Choiseul gained the favour of Madame de Pompadour by procuring for her letters that King Louis XV had written to his cousin's wife, Charlotte-Rosalie de Romanet, comtesse de Choiseul-Baupré, with whom the king had formerly had an intrigue; and after a short time as bailli of the Vosges, he was given the appointment of ambassador to Rome in 1753, where he was entrusted with the negotiations concerning the disturbances called forth by the papal bull Unigenitus. He acquitted himself skillfully in this task, and, in 1757, his patroness obtained his transfer to Vienna, where he was instructed to cement the new alliance between France and Austria. He was one of the principal authors of the Second Treaty of Versailles, signed in May 1757, which pledged the two states to a combined war in Germany against Prussia.
caption: Choiseul rose to power in part through the patronage of Madame de Pompadour.
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