no less, because she was very virtuous, wise, honourable, pleasant of
speech, and very charming and subtile in wit. She had been taught and
trained by Mme. de Laval, an able and accomplished lady, appointed her
governess by her father, Duc François. For the rest, she was very kind,
very merciful, and very charitable, as I have heard my own folks say.
True it is, however, that she was quick in vengeance and seldom pardoned
whoever offended her maliciously; as she showed to the Maréchal de Gié
for the affront he put upon her when the king, her lord and husband,
lay ill at Blois and was held to be dying. She, wishing to provide for
her wants in case she became a widow, caused three or four boats to be
laden on the River Loire with all her precious articles, furniture,
jewels, rings and money,--and sent them to her city and château of
Nantes. The said marshal, meeting these boats between Saumur and Nantes,
ordered them stopped and seized, being much too wishful to play the good
officer and servant of the Crown. But fortune willed that the king,
through the prayers of his people, to whom he was indeed a true father,
escaped with his life.
The queen, in spite of this luck, did not abstain from her vengeance,
and having well brewed it, she caused the said marshal to be driven from
Court. It was then that having finished a fine house at La Verger, he
retired there, saying that the rain had come just in time to let him get
under shelter in the beautiful house so recently built. But this
banishment from Court was not all; through great researches which she
caused to be made wherever he had been in command, it was discovered he
had committed great wrongs, extortions and pillages, to which all
governors are given; so that the marshal, having appealed to the courts
of parliament, was summoned before that of Toulouse, which had long been
very just and equitable, and not corrupt. There, his suit being viewed,
he was convicted. But the queen did not wish his death, because, she
said, death is a cure for all pains and woes, and being dead he would be
too happy; she wished him to live as degraded and low as he had been
great; so that he might, from the grandeur and height where he had been,
live miserably in troubles, pains, and sadness, which would do him a
hundred-fold more harm than death, for death lasted only a day, and
mayhap only an hour, whereas his languishing would make him die daily.
Such was the vengeance of this brave queen. One day she was so angry
against M. d’Orléans that she could not for a long time be appeased. It
was in this wise: the death of her son, M. le dauphin, having happened,
King Charles, her husband, and she were in such despair that the
doctors, fearing the debility and feeble constitution of the king, were
alarmed lest such grief should do injury to his health; so they
counselled the king to amuse himself, and the princes of the Court to
invent new pastimes, games, dances, and mummeries in order to give
pleasure to the king and queen; the which M. d’Orléans having
undertaken, he gave at the Château d’Amboise a masquerade and dance, at
which he did such follies and danced so gayly, as was told and read,
that the queen, believing he felt this glee because, the dauphin being
dead, he knew himself nearer to be King of France, was extremely
angered, and showed him such displeasure that he was forced to escape
from Amboise, where the Court then was, and go to his château of Blois.
Nothing can be blamed in this queen except the sin of vengeance,--if
vengeance is a sin,--because otherwise she was beautiful and gentle, and
had many very laudable sides.
When the king, her husband, went to the kingdom of Naples [1494], and so
long as he was there, she knew very well how to govern the kingdom of
France with those whom the king had given to assist her; but she always
kept her rank, her grandeur, and supremacy, and insisted, young as she
was, on being trusted; and she made herself trusted, so that nothing was
ever found to say against her.
She felt great regret for the death of King Charles [in 1498], as much
for the friendship she bore him as for seeing herself henceforth but
half a queen, having no children. And when her most intimate ladies, as
I have been told on good authority, pitied her for being the widow of so
great a king, and unable to return to her high estate,--for King Louis
[the Duc d’Orléans, her first lover] was then married to Jeanne de
France,--she replied she would “rather be the widow of a king all her
life than debase herself to a less than he; but still, she was not so
despairing of happiness that she did not think of again being Queen of
France, as she had been, if she chose.” Her old love made her say so;
she meant to relight it in the bosom of him in whom it was yet warm. And
so it happened; for King Louis [XII.], having repudiated Jeanne, his
wife, and never having lost his early love, took her in marriage, as we
have seen and read. So here was her prophecy accomplished; she having
founded it on the nature of King Louis, who could not keep himself from
loving her, all married as she was, but looked with a tender eye upon
her, being still Duc d’Orléans; for it is difficult to quench a great
fire when once it has seized the soul.
He was a handsome prince and very amiable, and she did not hate him for
that. Having taken her, he honoured her much, leaving her to enjoy her
property and her duchy without touching it himself or taking a single
louis; but she employed it well, for she was very liberal. And because
the king made immense gifts, to meet which he must have levied on his
people, which he shunned like the plague, she supplied his deficiencies;
and there were no great captains of the kingdom to whom she did not give
pensions, or make extraordinary presents of money or of thick gold
chains when they went upon a journey; and she even made little presents
according to quality; everybody ran to her, and few came away
discontented. Above all, she had the reputation of loving her domestic
servants, and to them she did great good.
She was the first queen to hold a great Court of ladies, such as we have
seen from her time to the present day. Her suite was very large of
ladies and young girls, for she refused none; she even inquired of the
noblemen of her Court whether they had daughters, and what they were,
and asked to have them brought to her. I had an aunt de Bourdeille who
had the honour of being brought up by her [Louise de Bourdeille, maid of
honour to Queen Anne in 1494]; but she died at Court, aged fifteen
years, and was buried behind the great altar of the church of the
Franciscans in Paris. I saw the tomb and its inscription before that
church was burned [in 1580.]
Queen Anne’s Court was a noble school for ladies; she had them taught
and brought up wisely; and all, taking pattern by her, made themselves
wise and virtuous. Because her heart was great and lofty she wanted
guards, and so formed a second band of a hundred gentlemen,--for
hitherto there was only one; and the greater part of the said new guard
were Bretons, who never failed, when she left her room to go to mass or
to promenade, to await her on that little terrace at Blois, still called
the Breton perch, “La Perche aux Bretons,” she herself having named it
so by saying when she saw them: “Here are my Bretons on their perch,
awaiting me.”
You may be sure that she did not lay by her money, but employed it well
on all high things.
She it was, who built, out of great superbness, that fine vessel and
mass of wood, called “La Cordelière,” which attacked so furiously in
mid-ocean the “Regent of England;” grappling to her so closely that both
were burned and nothing escaped,--not the people, nor anything else that
was in them, so that no news was ever heard of them on land; which
troubled the queen very much.[2]
The king honoured her so much that one day, it being reported to him
that the law clerks at the Palais [de Justice] and the students also
were playing games in which there was talk of the king, his Court, and
all the great people, he took no other notice than to say they needed a
pastime, and he would let them talk of him and his Court, though not
licentiously; but as for the queen, his wife, they should not speak of
her in any way whatsoever; if they did he would have them hanged. Such
was the honour he bore her.
Moreover, there never came to his Court a foreign prince or an
ambassador that, after having seen and listened to them, he did not send
them to pay their reverence to the queen; wishing the same respect to be
shown to her as to him; and also, because he recognized in her a great
faculty for entertaining and pleasing great personages, as, indeed, she
knew well how to do; taking much pleasure in it herself; for she had
very good and fine grace and majesty in greeting them, and beautiful
eloquence in talking with them. Sometimes, amid her French speech, she
would, to make herself more admired, mingle a few foreign words, which
she had learned from M. de Grignaux, her chevalier of honour, who was a
very gallant man who had seen the world, and was accomplished and knew
foreign languages, being thereby very pleasant good company, and
agreeable to meet. Thus it was that one day, Queen Anne having asked him
to teach her a few words of Spanish to say to the Spanish ambassador, he
taught her in joke a little indecency, which she quickly learned. The
next day, while awaiting the ambassador, M. de Grignaux told the story
to the king, who thought it good, understanding his gay and lively
humour. Nevertheless he went to the queen, and told her all, warning her
to be careful not to use those words. She was in such great anger,
though the king only laughed, that she wanted to dismiss M. de Grignaux,
and showed him her displeasure for several days. But M. de Grignaux
made her such humble excuses, telling her that he only did it to make
the king laugh and pass his time merrily, and that he was not so
ill-advised as to fail to warn the king in time that he might, as he
really did, warn her before the arrival of the ambassador; so that on
these excuses and the entreaties of the king she was pacified.
Now, if the king loved and honoured her living, we may believe that, she
being dead, he did the same. And to manifest the mourning that he felt,
the superb and honourable funeral and obsequies that he ordered for her
are proof; the which I have read of in an old “History of France” that I
found lying about in a closet in our house, nobody caring for it; and
having gathered it up, I looked at it. Now as this is a matter that
should be noted, I shall put it here, word for word as the book says,
without changing anything; for though it is old, the language is not
very bad; and as for the truth of the book, it has been confirmed to me
by my grandmother, Mme. la Seneschale de Poitou, of the family du Lude,
who was then at the Court. The book relates it thus:--
“This queen was an honourable and virtuous queen, and very wise, the
true mother of the poor, the support of gentlemen, the haven of ladies,
damoiselles, and honest girls, and the refuge of learned men; so that
all the people of France cannot surfeit themselves enough in deploring
and regretting her.
“She died at the castle of Blois on the twenty-first of January, in the
year 1513, after the accomplishment of a thing she had most desired,
namely: the union of the king, her lord, with the pope and the Roman
Church, abhorring as she did schism and divisions. For that reason she
had never ceased urging the king to this step, for which she was as
much loved and greatly revered by the Catholic princes and prelates as
the king had been hated.
“I have seen at Saint-Denis a grand church cope, all covered with pearls
embroidered, which she had ordered to be made expressly to send as a
present to the pope, but death prevented. After her decease her body
remained for three days in her room, the face uncovered, and nowise
changed by hideous death, but as beautiful and agreeable as when living.
“Friday, the twenty-seventh of the month of January, her body was taken
from the castle, very honourably accompanied by all the priests and
monks of the town, borne by persons wearing mourning, with hoods over
their heads, accompanied by twenty-four torches larger than the other
torches borne by twenty-four officers of the household of the said lady,
on each of which were two rich armorial escutcheons bearing the arms
emblazoned of the said lady. After these torches came the reverend
seigneurs and prelates, bishops, abbés, and M. le Cardinal de Luxembourg
to read the office; and thus was removed the body of the said lady from
the Château de Blois....
“Septuagesima Sunday, twelfth of February, they arrived at the church of
Notre-Dame des Champs in the suburbs of Paris, and there the body was
guarded two nights with great quantities of lights; and on the following
Tuesday, the devout services having been read, there marched before the
body processions with the crosses of all the churches and all the
monasteries of Paris, the whole University in a body, the presidents and
counsellors of the sovereign court of Parliament, and generally of all
other courts and jurisdictions, officers and advocates, merchants and
citizens, and other lesser officers of the town. All these accompanied
the said body reverentially, with the very noble seigneurs and ladies
aforenamed, just as they started from Blois, all keeping fine order
among themselves according to their several ranks.... And thus was borne
through Paris, in the order and manner above, the body of the queen to
be sepulchred in the pious church of Saint-Denis of France; preceded by
these processions to a cross which is not far beyond the place where the
fair of Landit is held.
“And to the spot where stands the cross the reverend father in God, the
abbé, and the venerable monks, with the priests of the churches and
parishes of Saint-Denis, vestured in their great copes, with their
crosses, came in procession, together with the peasants and the
inhabitants of the said town, to receive the body of the late queen,
which was then borne to the door of the church of Saint-Denis, still
accompanied honourably by all the above-named very noble princes and
princesses, seigneurs, dames, and damoiselles, and their train as
already stated....
“And all being duly accomplished, the body of the said lady, Madame
Anne, in her lifetime very noble Queen of France, Duchesse of Bretagne,
and Comtesse d’Étampes, was honourably interred and sepulchred in the
tomb for her prepared.
“After this, the herald-at-arms for Bretagne summoned all the princes
and officers of the said lady, to wit: the chevalier of honour, the
grand-master of the household, and others, each and all, to fulfil their
duty towards the said body, which they did most piteously, shedding
tears from their eyes. And, this done, the aforenamed king-at-arms cried
three times aloud in a most piteous voice: ‘The very Christian Queen of
France, Duchesse de Bretagne, our Sovereign Lady, is dead!’ And then all
departed. The body remained entombed.
[Illustration: _Tomb of Louis XII. and Anne de Bretagne_]
“During her life and after her death she was honoured by the titles I
have before given: true mother of the poor; the comfort of noble
gentlemen; the haven of ladies and damoiselles and honest girls;
the refuge of learned men and those of good lives; so that speaking of
her dead is only renewing the grief and regrets of all such persons, and
also that of her domestic servants, whom she loved singularly. She was
very religious and devout. It was she who made the foundation of the
‘Bons-Hommes’ [monastery of the order of Saint-François de Paule at
Chaillot], otherwise called the Minimes; and she began to build the
church of the said ‘Bons-Hommes’ near Paris, and afterwards that in Rome
which is so beautiful and noble, and where, as I saw myself, they
receive no monks but Frenchmen.”
There, word for word, are the splendid obsequies of this queen, without
changing a word of the original, for fear of doing worse,--for I could
not do better. They were just like those of our kings that I have heard
and read of, and those of King Charles IX., at which I was present, and
which the queen, his mother, desired to make so fine and magnificent,
though the finances of France were then too short to spend much, because
of the departure of the King of Poland, who with his suite had
squandered and carried off a great deal [1574].
Certainly I find these two interments much alike, save for three things:
one, that the burial of Queen Anne was the most superb; second, that all
went so well in order and so discreetly that there was no contention of
ranks, as occurred at the burial of King Charles; for his body, being
about to start for Notre-Dame, the court of parliament had some pique of
precedence with the nobility and the Church, claiming to stand in the
place of the king and to represent him when absent, he being then out of
the kingdom. [Henri III. was then King of Poland]. On which a great
princess, as the world goes, who was very near to him, whom I know but
will not name, went about arguing and saying: “It was no wonder if,
during the lifetime of the king, seditions and troubles had been in
vogue, seeing that, dead as he was, he was still able to stir up
strife.” Alas! he never did it, poor prince! either dead or living. We
know well who were the authors of the seditions and of our civil wars.
That princess who said those words has since found reason to regret
them.
The third thing is that the body of King Charles was quitted, at the
church of Saint-Lazare, by the whole procession, princes, seigneurs,
courts of parliament, the Church, and the citizens, and was followed and
accompanied from there by none but poor M. de Strozzi, de Fumel, and
myself, with two gentlemen of the bedchamber, for we were not willing to
abandon our master as long as he was above ground. There were also a few
archers of the guard, quite pitiable to see, in the fields. So at eight
in the evening in the month of July, we started with the body and its
effigy thus badly accompanied.
Reaching the cross, we found all the monks of Saint-Denis awaiting us,
and the body of the king was honourably escorted, with the ceremonies of
the Church, to Saint-Denis, where the great Cardinal de Lorraine
received it most honourably and devoutly, as he knew well how to do.
The queen-mother was very angry that the procession did not continue to
the end as she intended--save for Monsieur her son, and the King of
Navarre, whom she held a prisoner. The next day, however, the latter
arrived in a coach, with a very good guard, and captains of the guard
with him, to be present at the solemn high service, attended by the
whole procession and company as at first,--a sight very sad to see.
After dinner the court of parliament sent to tell and to command the
grand almoner Amyot to go and say grace after meat for them as if for
the king. To which he made answer that he should do nothing of the kind,
for it was not before them he was bound to do it. They sent him two
consecutive and threatening commands; which he still refused, and went
and hid himself that he might answer no more. Then they swore they would
not leave the table till he came; but not being able to find him, they
were constrained to say grace themselves and to rise, which they did
with great threats, foully abusing the said almoner, even to calling him
scoundrel, and son of a butcher. I saw the whole affair; and I know what
Monsieur commanded me to go and tell to M. le cardinal, asking him to
pacify the matter, because they had sent commands to Monsieur to send to
them, as representatives of the king, the grand almoner if he could be
found. M. le cardinal went to speak to them, but he gained nothing; they
standing firm on their opinion of their royal majesty and authority. I
know what M. le cardinal said to me about them, telling me not to say
it,--that they were perfect fools. The chief president, de Thou, was
then at their head; a great senator certainly, but he had a temper. So
here was another disturbance to make that princess say again that King
Charles, either living or dead, on earth or under it, that body of his
stirred up the world and threw it into sedition. Alas! that he could not
do.
I have told this little incident, possibly more at length than I should,
and I may be blamed; but I reply that I have told and put it here as it
came into my fancy and memory; also that it comes in _à propos_; and
that I cannot forget it, for it seems to me a thing that is rather
remarkable.
Now, to return to our Queen Anne: we see from this fine last duty of her
obsequies how beloved she was of earth and heaven; far otherwise than
that proud, pompous queen, Isabella of Bavaria, wife of the late King
Charles VI., who having died in Paris, her body was so despised it was
put out of her palace into a little boat on the river Seine, without
form of ceremony or pomp, being carried through a little postern so
narrow it could hardly go through, and thus was taken to Saint-Denis to
her tomb like a simple damoiselle, neither more nor less. There was also
a difference between her actions and those of Queen Anne: for she
brought the English into France and Paris, threw the kingdom into flames
and divisions, and impoverished and ruined every one; whereas Queen Anne
kept France in peace, enlarged and enriched it with her beautiful duchy
and the fine property she brought with her. So one need not wonder that
the king regretted her and felt such mourning that he came nigh dying in
the forest of Vincennes, and clothed himself and all his Court so long
in black; and those who came otherwise clothed he had them driven away;
neither would he see any ambassador, no matter who he was, unless he
were dressed in black. And, moreover, that old History which I have
quoted, says: “When he gave his daughter to M. d’Angoulême, afterwards
King François, mourning was not left off by him or his Court; and the
day of the espousals in the church of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, the
bridegroom and bride were vestured and clothed”--so this History
says--“in black cloth, honestly cut in mourning shape, for the death of
the said queen, Madame Anne de Bretagne, mother of the bride, in
presence of the king, her father, accompanied by the princes of the
blood and noble seigneurs and prelates, princesses, dames, and
damoiselles, all clothed in black cloth made in mourning shape.” That is
what the book says. It was a strange austerity of mourning which should
be noted, that not even on the day of the wedding was it dispensed with,
to be renewed on the following day.
From this we may know how beloved, and worthy to be beloved this
princess was by the king, her husband, who sometimes in his merry moods
and gayety would call her “his Breton.”
If she had lived longer she would never have consented to that marriage
of her daughter; it was very repugnant to her and she said so to the
king, her husband, for she mortally hated Madame d’Angoulême, afterwards
Regent, their tempers being quite unlike and not agreeing together;
besides which, she had wished to unite her said daughter to Charles of
Austria, then young, the greatest seigneur of Christendom, who was
afterwards emperor. And this she wished in spite of M. d’Angoulême
coming very near the Crown; but she never thought of that, or would not
think of it, trusting to have more children herself, she being only
thirty-seven years old when she died. In her lifetime and reign, reigned
also that great and wise queen, Isabella of Castile, very accordant in
manners and morals with our Queen Anne. For which reason they loved each
other much and visited one another often by embassies, letters, and
presents; ‘tis thus that virtue ever seeks out virtue.
King Louis was afterwards pleased to marry for the third time Marie,
sister of the King of England, a very beautiful princess, young, and too
young for him, so that evil came of it. But he married more from policy,
to make peace with the English and to put his own kingdom at rest, than
for any other reason, never being able to forget his Queen Anne. He
commanded at his death that they should both be covered by the same
tomb, just as we now see it in Saint-Denis, all in white marble, as
beautiful and superb as never was.
Now, here I pause in my discourse and go no farther; referring the rest
to books that are written of this queen better than I could write; only
to content my own self have I made this discourse.
I will say one other little thing; that she was the first of our queens
or princesses to form the usage of putting a belt round their arms and
escutcheons, which until then were borne not inclosed, but quite loose;
and the said queen was the first to put the belt.