During the first twenty years of the 1600s, runs for the European courts a figure who longs for a new crusade against the Turks. The rich character - as recalls Gino Benzoni in his biography - of good looks and with elegant attitudes, who has many and authoritative relatives, and, furthermore, with discerning acquaintance of several languages, has a numerous retinue with him.
Left Paris on 15 March 1602, he travels to Ostend, London, Bremen, Hamburg and then in Denmark, guest of King Christian IV, in Sweden, Pomerania, Brandenburg, Saxony, to Dresden, in Bohemia, where he has given homage in Prague to the Emperor Rodolfo II, to Cracow, festively greeted by King Sigismund III, to Venice and Vienna, where the Archduke Matthias welcomes him in a friendly manner. He insists, more explicitly and widespread, with the princes he has visited, on the necessity of a vigorous anti-Turkish fight, premise of which, if not the concord - very difficult to obtain - of all Christianity, at least a lasting truce between the European States . His king, Henry IV of France, could only agree with the project of his subject so intrepid, if nothing else because such a project constituted, in fact, a lightening of foreign policy problems that interfered with the work of reconstruction and internal reorganization to which he wanted to dedicate all his efforts. Henry IV is also interested in strengthening his own myth, and he understands that is good for him the fame of promoter of a "
res publica christiana" (
Expression coined by Emperor Frederick II), a European confederation in anti-Turkish function.
"Fervent Catholic, generous up to the prodigality with the religious Orders, ostentatiously and compassionately devoted, eager, for youthfulness and chivalrous spirit, to emerge as the protagonist of a great nobilitating exploit" this rich French figure says to "être descendu d'une fille des Paléologues" (to be descendant from a daughter of the Palaiologos): his grandmother was Margaret Palaeologa (1510–1566), daughter of William IX of Montferrat and Anne of Alençon, and wife of Federico II Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua.
Meantine, around this "Entreprise… mal fondée" (Richelieu), "it is all a succession of secret conventicles with adventurous Greek emissaries inclined to vocify impending anti-Ottoman revolts and widespread aspirations for the return of the Palaiologos - there was also a Turkish character, passing through Paris, Jachya, willing to ensure rivolts in his country -,of pressure on French diplomats to propagate the project into the various capitals, of appeals to the Pope and to the sovereign princes to encourage the crusade, of memorandum to Louis XIII, to the Duke of Lerma for Philip III and to the Count Adolph of Althan for Emperor Matthias." There is enough material and intrigue for a novel by Dumas!
A crusade project to which is not a stranger an influential and intriguing friend of this rich French figure, père Joseph (the capuchin father Joseph Du Tremblay).
The rich figure organizes, also, a sort of military order for the new crusaders, "l'institution des chevaliers du Saint-Sépulcre", become "Milice Chrétienne" on 8 March 1619 in Vienna.
This figure is Carlo Gonzaga-Nevers (1580–1637), then Duke of Mantua and of Montferrat.