Charles Louis Auguste Fouquet de Belle-Isle (22 September 1684-26 January 1761) was Secretary of State for War of France from 3 March 1758 to 26 January 1761, succeeding Marc Antoine Rene de Voyer and preceding Etienne Francois de Choiseul.
Biography[]
Charles Louis Auguste Fouquet de Belle-Isle was born in Villefranche-de-Rouergue, France in 1684, and he became proprietary colonel of a dragoon regiment in 1708 and rose to brigadier during the War of the Spanish Succession. He served in northern Spain during the War of the Quadruple Alliance and commanded a corps on the German front of the War of the Polish Succession, and he became governor of Metz, Toul, and Verdun on the war's end. Belle-Isle became a leader of the anti-Austrian faction of French politics on the eve of the War of the Austrian Succession, and he became a Marshal of France in 1741. Cardinal Fleury, regent of France, turned against Belle-Isle due to the failure of his campaigns on Austrian soil from 1742 to 1743, but he rescued his reputation with victories in Italy. He went on to reform the officer corps as Secretary of War during the Seven Years' War, and he died in 1761.