D'Estrades was born in
Agen. He was the son of '''Francois d'Estrades''' (died 1653), a partisan of
Henry IV, and brother of ,
Bishop of Condom. He became a page to
Louis XIII, and at the age of nineteen was sent on a mission to
Maurice of Holland. In 1646 d'Estrades was named ambassador extraordinary to
Holland, and took part in the conferences at
Münster. Sent in 1661 as Ambassador to
England, he obtained in 1662 the restitution of
Dunkirk. In a dispute in London over precedence of the Ambassadors' carriages, he clashed with
Charles de Watteville, Ambassador of Spain, which degenerated into an armed struggle with several dead, and almost led to a new Franco-Spanish war. In 1667 he negotiated the
Treaty of Breda with the
king of Denmark, and in 1678 the
Treaty of Nijmwegen, which ended the war with Holland. Independently of these diplomatic missions, he took part in the principal campaigns of
Louis XIV, in
Italy (1648), in
Catalonia (1655), in Holland (1672); and was created
marshal of France in 1675. He left ''Lettres, memoires et négociations en qual d'ambassadeur en Hollande depuis 1663 jusqu'en 1668'', of which the first edition in 1709 was followed by a nine-volume edition (London (the Hague), 1743). ==Family==