Don Honoré Armand de Villars, 2e duc de Villars (4 October 1702, Paris – May 1770, Aix), Duke and Peer of France, Prince of Martigues, Grandee of Spain, Knight of the Golden Fleece, Viscount of Melun, Marquis of la Melle, Count of Rochemiley, was a French nobleman, soldier and politician. Life Early life He was the son of Claude Louis Hector de Villars and of Jeanne Angélique Rocque de Varengeville, and the grandson of Pierre de Villars. In 1721, he married Amable-Gabrielle de Villars, daughter of Adrien Maurice de Noailles. They had only one child, Aimable-Angélique de Villars, on 18 March 1723. Maître de Camp of a cavalry regiment and Brigadier in the Armées du Roi, he served in Italy in 1733 under his father's command. He carried back to Louis XIV the news of the capture of Milan castle. He was a member of the Académie française, succeeding his father in seat 18 on 16 August 1734. He received the nickname "friend of Man" as a famous homosexual. Bachaumont noted, in his Mémoires (5 May 1770) that "[the Duke of Villars] was taxed with a vice that he had made fashionable at court, and that had brought him very wide renown, as can be seen in la Pucelle". Voltaire, in the first editions of La Pucelle d'Orléans, mentioned him alongside the marquis de Thibouville, accused of the same vice, in the following verses: Life in Provence He succeeded his father as Gouverneur général des pays et comté de Provence and of la Tour du Bouc, holding that post from 1734 until his death. He lived in Provence, where he was protector of the Académie de Marseille, and rarely came to the Académie française despite his seat on it. Even so, he was a friend of Voltaire, D'Alembert and Duclos. In 1750, as governor of Provence, he bought the Hôtel d'Esmivy de Moissac, a hôtel particulier on what is the Cours Mirabeau. The hôtel had been built in 1710 by Lois d'Esmivy de Moissac, councillor to the Cour des Comptes on a prestige parcel of land, meant since 1664 for a "hôtel du gouvernement". However the Duke of Vendôme, the Governor to whom the parcel was given, finally preferred the isolation of the faubourg des Cordeliers, where he built his Pavillon Vendôme. The façade was completed in 1757, for the duke of Villars, by Georges Vallon : its four columns,