Pierre de Bourdeille Brantôme

Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme (about 1540–1614), was a French soldier, courtier and chronicler. The younger son of a noble family of Périgord, he held the abbey of Brantôme as a lay benefice, fought in Italy, Africa and the French wars of religion, and knew everyone at the courts of Charles IX and Henry III. A fall from his horse around 1584 ended his career, and he spent thirty years writing the memoirs that were published only in 1665: Lives of Illustrious Men and Great Captains, Lives of Illustrious Ladies, and the Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies, a frank, gossiping record of the loves of the Valois court.