Charles I Gonzaga
duke of Mantua and Montferrat (1580–1637)
Charles I Gonzaga (Italian: Carlo I Gonzaga; 6 May 1580 – 22 September 1637) was Duke of Mantua and Duke of Montferrat from 1627 until his death. He was also Charles III as Duke of Nevers and Rethel, as well as Prince of Arche and Charleville.
Biography
Born in Paris on 6 May 1580, Charles was the son of Louis de Gonzague, Duke of Nevers, and Princess Henriette de Clèves, Duchess of Nevers. In 1600, as duke of Rethel, he founded, in Nevers, the Order of the Yellow Ribbon, soon forbidden by the King, due to its peculiar character. In 1606, Charles decided the foundation of Charleville and the Principality of Arches ( fr ). He became 1st Prince of Arche and Charleville.
In 1612, Charles, a descendant of the Byzantine Emperor Andronicus II Palaeologus through his grandmother Margaret Paleologa, who was of the line of Theodore I, Marquess of Montferrat, Andronicus's son, claimed the throne of Constantinople, at the time the capital of the Ottoman Empire. He began plotting with Greek rebels, including the Maniots of Greece, who addressed him as "King Constantine Palaeologus". When the Ottoman authorities heard about this, they sent an army of 20,000 men and 70 ships to invade Mani. They succeeded in ravaging the Mani Peninsula and imposing taxes on the Maniots.
“Charles I Gonzaga” enters the record as duke of Mantua and Montferrat (1580–1637). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Charles, Gonzaga and duke can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q547017. VIAF identifies the subject as 64734701. The Library of Congress control number is nr93019166. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1580, 1637, 1627 and 1600.
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This entry incorporates text from “Charles I Gonzaga” 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.