Jacques II de Crussol

Jacques de Crussol, 2nd Duke of Uzès (1540-1584) was a Protestant, then Catholic military commander and duke during the French Wars of Religion. Converting to Protestantism early due to the influence of his mother he would be acclaimed as defender of the Protestant church in Languedoc in early 1562. He would conduct a brutal campaign during the first civil war, capturing several towns and massacring their garrisons.
With peace declared d’Acier involved himself in the conspiracy of Meaux that attempted to seize the king and execute his leading militant Catholic advisers. While the attempt to capture the king would be a failure, d’Acier would see success in the south, securing Nîmes and Montpellier for the rebels. With the conclusion of the civil war in early 1568 he would remain in the field, being defeated by Guillaume de Joyeuse shortly thereafter. When formal civil war resumed later that year d’Acier assembled a large army of the southern Protestant leaders and moved to join with forces under Condé, despite one detachment being destroyed he was successful, and his forces held off the royal army after the defeat at the Battle of Jarnac. Wounded at Poitiers he was made colonel-general of the Protestant infantry, before being captured at the Battle of Moncontour
Released thanks to the efforts of his brother Crussol he would survive the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew through the protection of his wife and sister-in-law. With the death of Crussol during the siege of La Rochelle he converted to Catholicism and inherited his brothers peerage and duchy. His final elevation would come when he was among the first granted the new Order of the Holy Ghost by Henri III in 1580. He died in 1584.