Editing House of Savoy-Carignano (section)

==Service with Spain==
The first recorded military service of Thomas Francis is as a commander in the [[Royal Sardinian Army|Savoyard army]] under his father against France during the [[War of the Mantuan Succession]] in 1630. [[Cardinal Mazarin]] induced him to become in effect a French agent at the Savoyard court between 1630 and 1632. When the new Duke Victor Amadeus I was forced to accept French occupation of [[Pinerolo]] in the Peace of Cherasco in 1631, there was widespread dissatisfaction in Savoy, and Thomas Francis, with his brother, [[Prince Maurice of Savoy|Prince Maurice]], withdrew from the duchy to join the forces of Spain, prompting Victor Amadeus to confiscate his uncles' Italian revenues. Although his kinship to both the French and Spanish royal families suggested that he could be useful to Spanish interests, Thomas Francis was not entirely trusted, and was obliged to send his wife and children to Madrid as hostages.<ref name=Guth>{{cite book|last= Guth|first= Paul|title= Mazarin|year = 1972|location= Paris|language= fr|pages= 182}}</ref>

When France launched the [[Franco-Spanish War (1635–1659)]], Thomas Francis served under the [[Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand]], brother of [[Philip IV of Spain|Philip IV]] in the [[Spanish Netherlands]]. Savoy was reluctantly dragged into the fighting alongside the French, consequently Thomas Francis was strictly fighting against his own homeland. He was completely defeated and his army entirely killed, captured, or scattered—the first in an unbroken career of military defeats. He managed to rally the remnants at [[Namur]], then retreated before the numerically superior French and Dutch forces, and he probably served the rest of the campaign with Ferdinand. In 1636, Thomas Francis served with the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand who organised a joint Spanish-[[Habsburg monarchy|Imperialist]] army for a major invasion of France from the Spanish Netherlands. The invasion was initially very successful, and seemed capable of reaching Paris, where there was a great panic; if Ferdinand and Thomas had pushed on, they might have ended the war at this point. Instead, they both felt that continuing to Paris was too risky, so they stopped the advance. Later in the campaign, Thomas had problems with the Imperialist general [[Ottavio Piccolomini]], who refused to accept orders from the Prince as a Spanish commander, arguing that his Imperialist troops were an independent force. In this year, when his brother-in-law [[Louis de Bourbon, comte de Soissons]], fled from France after his failed conspiracy against [[Cardinal Richelieu]], Thomas Francis acted as intermediary between Soissons and the Spanish in negotiations which led to a formal alliance between the count and Philip IV of Spain concluded 28 June 1637, although within a month Soissons had reconciled with France. In 1638, Thomas served in Spanish Flanders, helping to defend the fortress-city of [[Saint-Omer]] against a [[Siege of Saint-Omer|French siege]].<ref name="Hanotaux">{{cite book|last= Hanotaux|first= Gabriel|title= Histoire du cardinal de Richelieu|year = 1933–1947|location= Paris|language= fr|pages= vol. 5, p.319–21, 327|no-pp= true}}</ref>