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Colbert’s brother, Colbert de Maulevrier, and Beaufort’s nephew, the young Philippe de Vendôme. From the Pope, Beaufort received the title ‘Captain-General of the Naval Army of the Church’ and from the King the order that under no circumstances was he personally to set foot on Crete or engage in any fighting.
    The fleet reached Crete on 19 June and found the city in a worse plight than had been anticipated; one of the two bastions already fallen, the streets burning and blocked with debris, the population decimated and in despair, the garrison reduced to half its number, sick and demoralized. Beaufort joined Navailles in a council of war with the Venetian commanders. Morosini and Montbrun, at which it was decided to disembark the troops by night on the 24th for a sortie at first light on the 25th. Against the express orders of the King and the earnest advice of everyone else, Beaufort refused to be left on board. He went ashore with the troops and took command of the left wing with Colbert’s brother.
    When the attack began, the Turks, taken by surprise, ran for their lives and the French went after them deep into their camp. In the midst of the charging ranks, however, an ammunition dump, hit by a chance bullet, blew up; a battalion of French Guards was suddenly and completely annihilated. Shock and confusion at the tremendous explosion, horror and incomprehension at the appalling carnage, stopped the French army in its tracks; then, convinced that the ground ahead was mined, the front line turned back upon the rest. The French troops who stood firm were trampled by the troops who fled, or took them for Turks in the dark and cut them down. The Turks finding themselves at an advantage launched a counter-attack and what was left of the French army broke up. Beaufort, trying to rally his troops, was abandoned on the field and only when the beaten army had taken refuge inside the city was it realized that he was missing.
    Two days later, the Intendant of the Fleet, whose name was Brodart, wrote to Colbert to report that Beaufort was still missing and that whether he was ‘dead or captive’ no one could say. All that was known for certain was that he had been ‘left among the enemy’. Spies had been sent into the Turkish camp to find out what had happened. Sometime later one such spy was said to have reported that Beaufort was dead, that he had been killed in the fighting and his body, like the bodies of all the other French dead, had been beheaded and stripped; that his head had been thrown in a heap with the rest in front of the Grand Vizier’s tent and his armour had been sold. An officer named Flacourt, who was despatched under a flag of truce to the Turkish camp, could not find Beaufort among the prisoners and yet a prisoner named Montigny, who was allowed to examine the heads, could not find Beaufort’s amongst them. Morosini thought he had seen Beaufort’s headless body in golden armour on the field and Montbrun later maintained that the Grand Vizier had sent Beaufort’s head to Constantinople where for three days it had been carried throught the streets on the end of a pole as a sign that the Christians had been defeated.
    Proof of Beaufort’s fate could not be established, but under the circumstances it seemed reasonable to suppose that he was dead. It was presumed that the reason no trace of him could be found was due to the fact that among all those hundreds of dead men, the piles of bodies beheaded and stripped, the heaps of heads battered and mutilated, it would have been difficult to identify anyone. A solemn memorial service was held at Notre-Dame in Paris and all the courts of Europe went into mourning. Not that everyone had reason to mourn. Colbert, one may be sure, was not saddened by the loss. Since Beaufort had no children, the office of Grand Admiral was left open to anyone the King wished to choose and his choice fell upon the Comte de Vermandois,