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- Portrait of the Count of Tréville by Le Nain
Jean-Arnaud du Peyrer, Count of Tréville (or Troisville), was a French officer born in Oloron-Sainte-Marie in 1598 and died on May 8, 1672 in Trois-Villes, one of the characters in the novel by Alexandre Dumas :"The Three Musketeers".
Born in Oloron, Place du Marcadé in 1598, he was the son of a merchant in this city. It was his father, Jean du Peyrer, who introduced the name Trois-Villes or Tréville into the family. In 1607 he bought, near Sauguis, in the Basque valley of the Pays de Soule, the domain of Trois-Villes (Eliçabia and Casamajor) which gave him nobility, because, in the Basque Country, it was attached to the land. . And this is how he acquired the right to consider himself a gentleman and to sit among the gentlemen of the Viscounty of Soule.
In 1616, at the age of seventeen, he gave up the arms trade and left for Paris. He enlisted there as a cadet-gentilhomme in the French Guards. It was as a musketeer that Tréville took part in the siege of La Rochelle, from 1627 to 1628, where he was wounded. Tréville has the full confidence of King Louis XIII. In 1634 he became Captain Lieutenant of the company of Musketeers. Some of his famous recruits of 1640 come directly or indirectly from his family circle, for example:
Athos, one of his fashionable cousins from Brittany;
Porthos, recommended by François de Guillon, lord of Essarts and brother-in-law of Tréville;
Aramis, one of his first cousins.
It was then that the affair of Cinq-Mars and François-Auguste de Thou broke out. Louis XIII, as we know especially towards the end of his life, did not like Richelieu, but he could not do without him. Wholly for the king, Treville shared his sentiments. Knowing of this aversion, Cinq-Mars, who was plotting against Richelieu, came to sound out Tréville. He replies that he never got involved in murdering anyone. However, he implies that if the king thinks so, he will obey.
Richelieu discovers the plot and has Cinq-Mars and de Thou executed. He could not implicate Tréville in the plot, but as he knows that the latter was only waiting for an order from the king, he cannot tolerate such an adversary. He therefore demanded the immediate exile of Tréville. The king gives in.
On December 4, 1642, Richelieu died. The king immediately recalled the faithful Tréville and returned to him the command of the company of musketeers. A few months later, on May 14, 1643, Louis XIII also died.
Tréville loses its leader and protector. Yet Anne of Austria, regent, to reward her husband's faithful servant, erected Troisvilles into a county in 1643.
But, between the captain of the musketeers and the new minister Mazarin, a state of deaf animosity soon established itself. Also, in 1646, unable to get Tréville to willingly cede his position, which Mazarin would like to assign to his nephew Mancini, the minister had the company of musketeers dissolved.
Tréville's career is over, he is not yet forty-seven. He enters a period of passive resistance, remains deaf to the appeals of the Fronde, devotes himself to his Basque domain and ends up accepting the post of governor of the country of Foix. From 1660 to 1663, he built the castle of Eliçabéa in Trois-Villes, where he died in 1672.
M. de Tréville left two sons, both of whom died childless.