Alexandre, Chevalier de Chaumont [SEP] place of death
Alexandre, Chevalier de Chaumont
Alexandre, Chevalier de Chaumont (1640 – 28 January 1710 in Paris) was the first French ambassador for King Louis XIV in Siam in 1685. He was accompanied on his mission by Abbé de Choisy, the Jesuit Guy Tachard, and Father Bénigne Vachet of the Société des Missions Étrangères de Paris. He was also bringing back to Siam the two ambassadors of the 1684 First Siamese Embassy to France.
He tried without success to convert King Narai the Great to Catholicism and to conclude significant commercial
farther afield, Siam dispatched an embassy in 1684, reciprocated by the French magnificently the next year under Alexandre, Chevalier de Chaumont. This, in turn, was succeeded by another Siamese embassy under Kosa Pan, superbly received at Versailles in 1686. Louis then sent another embassy in 1687, under Simon de la Loubère, and French influence grew at the Siamese court, which granted Mergui as a naval base to France. However, the death of Narai, King of Ayutthaya, the execution of his pro-French minister Constantine