Peter, Count of Alençon

Peter of Alencon

Peter I of Alencon (b. 1251 in Holy Land - d. April 6, 1284 in Salerno, Italy) was the son of Louis IX of France and Margaret of Provence.[1][2] He became Count of Alençon in 1269 and in 1284, Count of Blois and Chartres, and Seigneur de Guise in 1272 and 1284. He was also Count of Perche.[3]

He was born in the Holy Land while his father headed the Seventh Crusade. He did not live through the battles in Egypt because since his birth, Louis had already negotiated peace with the new Sultan of Egypt and was responsible for reorganizing the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Back in France, he lived in Paris until 1269 when his father gave him appanage the County of Alençon.

He accompanied his father to Tunis during Eighth Crusade (1270), but this expedition was a fiasco, because of the dysentery epidemic that decimated the army of crusaders. His father and his brother Jean Tristan succumbed to the disease.

Back in France Peter married in 1272 Joan of Châtillon, which brought him the lands Blois, Chartres and Guise. They had two sons who did not live:

In 1282, after the Sicilian Vespers, he went in Naples to rescue his uncle Charles I of Naples. He waged war on behalf of Charles, but died in Salerno in 1284. His body was taken to Paris, where he was buried, with his heart interred at the now-demolished church of the Couvent des Jacobins, also in Paris. After his death without surviving son, his portion of Alençon returned to the Crown. His widow did not remarry and sold Chartres in 1286 to King Philip IV the Fair. On her death Guise and Blois passed to her cousin Hugh of the House of Châtillon.

Tombs of Peter’s sons

Ancestry

Sources

  1. ↑ Chronique anonyme des rois de France
  2. ↑ Gesta Philippi Tertia Francorum Regis
  3. ↑ Peter’s family
  4. ↑ Kerrebrouck (2000), p. 142
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