Francis of Vendome, Duke of Beaufort

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François of Bourbon-Vendôme (François, Duke of Beaufort) (January 16, 1616 – 25 June 1669) was the illegitimate grandson of Henri IV of France. He was a prominent figure in the Fronde, and later went on to fight in the Mediterranean.

In March 1665 he led a small fleet which defeated a small Algerian fleet near the Goletta, Tunisia (Action of March 1665).

In 1669 he led the newly arrived French troops defending Candia against the Ottoman Turks, and was presumed to be killed in a night sortie, on June 25, 1669. His body was never recovered.

A fictional portrayal of Beaufort was a main character in Alexandre Dumas' Twenty Years After which chronicles his escape on Whitsunday and humourously uses his famous malapropisms, and reappeared in the Man in the Iron Mask, the final installment of the d'Artagnan Romances. Ironically, Vendôme was one of the suspects to be the Man in the Iron Mask. He also made his first musical appearance in Le Roi Soleil, a French musical which opened in Paris in 2005.