Pierre-Louis Jean Casimir, Count of Blacas d'Aulps (10 January 1771 – 17 November 1839), later created 1st Duke of Blacas (1821), was a French antiquarian, nobleman and diplomat during the Bourbon Restoration. Biography Early life He was baptized at Avignon on 11 January 1771. He was the son of an aristocrat from Provence and took an opposing view of the French Revolution. In 1790, while a sous-lieutenant in the Noailles dragoons from Tarn, he fled across the Var to Nice in the Kingdom of Sardinia. From there, he went to the German frontier town of Coblenz and joined the counter-revolutionary émigré army of Louis XVI's cousin, the Prince of Condé. Later, he went through Italy before entering the service of Russia and fighting the French Republic in Switzerland under Alexander Suvorov. Serving the Bourbons While in the pay of Austria, he then travelled to Warsaw and rejoined the court-in-exile of the pretender to the throne of France, King Louis XVI's younger brother, the Comte de Provence, who charged him with various missions, including one to Saint Petersburg. Despite the help of Joseph de Maistre, the King of Sardinia's diplomatic envoy to the court of the Russian tsar Alexander I, he was only able to gain small advantages for the future king. However, his willingness to do anything for the exiled prince, quickly gained Blacas the trust and confidence of his royal master. In 1809, Blacas was made the pretender's grandmaster of the wardrobe (grand-maître de la Garde-Robe du Roi). After the death of the Comte d'Avaray in 1811, he became Provence's closest advisor and favorite. On 22 April 1814, he married a fellow exile, Henriette Marie Félicité du Bouchet de Sourches de Montsoreau, in London. She had been born in Paris on 20 February 1780 to Yves Marie du Bouchet de Sourches, Comte de Montsoreau, a maréchal de camp (major general) then lieutenant général during the Ancien Régime, and his wife Marie Charlotte Lallemand de Nantouillet. The Comte de Montsoreau was the nephew of the Marquise de Tourzel, the royal governess to the children of King Louis XVI of France and his wife, Queen Marie Antoinette, during the French Revolution. After Restoration When the Comte de Provence became the actual king of France after the defeat and abdication of Napoleon I in 1814, Blacas was appointed to the position of minister in charge of the royal household (ministre de la