peer and marshal of France, favourite of Louis XV and Mme de Pompadour.

Soubise accompanied Louis XV in the campaign of 1744–48 and attained high military rank, which he owed more to his courtiership than to his generalship. Soon after the beginning of the Seven Years' War, through the influence of Mme de Pompadour (Pompadour, Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, marquise de), he was put in command of a corps of 24,000 men, and in November 1757 he sustained the crushing defeat of Rossbach at the hands of Frederick II the Great of Prussia. He was more fortunate, however, in his later military career, winning victories at the battles of Sonderhausen and Lützelburg (1758), and continued in the service until the general peace of 1763, after which he lived the life of an ordinary courtier and man of fashion in Paris.