Étienne de Vesc (ca 1445 – 6 October 1501), was a courtier of Louis XI of France and a formative influence on Charles VIII, whom he strongly encouraged in the French adventure into Italy in the First Italian War (1494–95).
Biography
Étienne de Vesc's forebears originated in Provence, appearing since the eleventh century, as modest seigneurs of Comps, Dieulefit, Béconne, Montjoux and Espeluche, with some experience in the Crusades; the chronicler Philippe de Commines, an enemy of Vesc, belittled his background. He spent his youth in the Dauphiné, not part of France until 1486, finishing a courtly training in the household of the Dauphin at Plessis-les-Tours, where he served as valet de chambre from the age of seventeen, about 1462. In 1470, Louis XI, looking for persons who would prove affidés et sûrs made Vesc the governor of the household at Amboise of Charles, the future Charles VIII, who remained attached to Vesc and to the château d'Amboise the rest of his life. The education he provided his young charge was largely derived from fanciful romans courtois the romances of chivalry; his services to the King included some embassies, as far away as Spain. In 1475 he took a wife, from a rich family of bourgeois background, whose late father had been an avocat au parlement de Paris and whose mother had remarried into a family of goldsmiths.
His devoted attendance during a long illness of the young prince and other services were well rewarded by Louis, and he took part in the dauphin's wedding, July 1483. After his attendance at the king's deathbed later that year, Vesc was a member of the council of regency. Among his duties was an embassy to Avignon to diplomatically check the ambitions of the Cardinal Legate Giulio Della Rovere, nephew of the late Pope Sixtus IV.
In the entourage of Charles, Vesc had doubtless made the acquaintance of Jean II de Châlons, prince of Orange, seigneur de Caromb, which Vesc purchased in 1484 for the very considerable sum of 10,000 livres and made into an important center of the Comtat Venaissin, which remained a papal enclave within France until 1792. Pope Innocent VIII confirmed his rights as seigneur in what was papal territory in 1489, and Vesc constructed a grand château, completed in 1486. In addition to the outright purchase, Jean de Châlons granted him fiefs as well, securing part of Vesc's allegiance as his vassal. Vesc scarcely had time to reside in his château; he was appointed sénéchal of Carcassonne, then of Beaucaire and Nîmes, largest in extent in France, positions of great importance.
In the Italian campaign
The extinction of the House of Anjou in the person of René, count of an independent Provence and King of Naples (1480), rendered Charles VIII the heir to Angevin titles to the Kingdom of Naples. According to Commines' chronicle, Étienne de Vesc was among the most ardent proponents of a chivalrous adventure to recapture the rights of the King of France to Naples, and to gain some duchies in the south, pressed by his own ambition, thirsty for grandeur and titles. Commines reflected on Vesc's naivety in matters of war. The preliminary arrangements for the entry into Italy were in Vesc's hands.