3rd Cuirassier Regiment (France)
former French cavalry regiment
The 3rd Cuirassier Regiment (French: 3e Régiment de Cuirassiers, 3e RC) was a cavalry regiment of the French Army, later reequipped as an armored regiment.
Ancien Régime
Timoléon de Sercourt d’Esclainvilliers inherited his father's company of Light Horse in 1635, when he was three years old. The same year in May, Cardinal Richelieu decided to reorganize the French cavalry, Esclainvilliers' company became part of the Cardinal Duc regiment. It fought in the Battle of Rocroi as a part of that unit. During this time the regiment became the Esclainvilliers Cavalry, the ancestor of the 3rd Cuirassier Regiment.
The regiment distinguished itself fighting in Flanders in 1650. In 1652, under the command of Turenne, it fought against the fronders in Paris and was present at Stenay. The unit was renamed as the Commissaire General Regiment in April 1656.
The regiment provided up to six companies in 1665 for the reconquest of Flanders, took part in the siege of Maastricht in 1673, and then served as a garrison for a time in Franche-Comté before it returned to Flanders. It stayed in Flanders during both the Nine Years' War and the War of Spanish Succession.
“3rd Cuirassier Regiment (France)” enters the record as former French cavalry regiment. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Cuirassier, Regiment and France can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “3rd Cuirassier Regiment (France)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.