After the annihilating defeat of the "Ansar", as Townshend looked over the battlefield full of thousands and thousands of dead "Ansar", he wrote in his diary, "I think Gordon has been avenged now". Townshend's "playboy" life-style finally came to an end when he married at the age of thirty-seven, which was late by the standards of the time. After Omdurman, he went to France and on 22 November 1898 married Alice Cahen D'Anvers in a Church of England ceremony at the Chậteau de Champs, despite the fact she was Jewish. Cahen d'Anvers was the daughter of the French aristocrats ennobled under Napoleon III, the Comte Louis Cahen d'Anvers and the Comtesse Cahen d'Anvers, who owned a beautiful estate, the Château de Champs, which was located in countryside close to Paris, where Townshend often stayed. Townshend regarded the Château de Champs as the best substitute for Raynham Hall, which he hoped to inherit one day provided that he won enough military glory for the marquess to leave him Raynham Hall in his will. When his duty was not him taking him all over the Empire, he preferred to live at the Château de Champs, a place he deeply loved. The Townshends had only one child, a daughter named Audrey.