Pictures of the old French court

AMBOISE.
Pictures of the Old French Court
Jeanne de Bourbon Isabeau de Bavière Anne de Bretagne
By Catherine Bearne
Author of “Lives and Times of the Early Valois Queens”
ILLUSTRATED BY EDWARD H. BEARNE FROM ANCIENT PRINTS, ORIGINAL DRAWINGS, &c.
NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 1900
In a former book I endeavoured, from information gathered out of the records of the first half of the fourteenth century, to give some idea of the court and social conditions of France at that time, and also of the first three Valois Queens, whose very existence appears unknown to the average English reader. This was no easy matter owing to the scarcity of details, which had to be carefully gleaned from amongst masses of histories and chronicles of battles, sieges, conspiracies, general councils, and other public events.
The present volume treats of the years between the latter part of the fourteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries, about which so much more information exists that I have found it necessary to abandon, for want of space, my intention of giving a short account of the courts of Marie d’Anjou and Charlotte de Savoie, wives of Charles VII. and Louis XI., who took very little part in public affairs; and to give a much shorter account of the reign of Anne de Bretagne.
Very little has been written about Isabeau de Bavière, and much less still concerning Jeanne de Bourbon, whereas a great deal is known of Anne de Bretagne, the history of whose life has more than once been related. To an interesting biography of her by Louisa Stuart Costello, and an invaluable one by Le Roux de Lincy I am much indebted. I have, as before, consulted many early chronicles, histories, and letters, French, English, German, Italian, and Spanish, besides the works of various excellent modern writers, whose names I quote. Accuracy being of the greatest importance in books like these, I give, in reply to the observation of a critic, that the lines I quoted referring to the siege of Cassel are incorrect, the original of De Nangis:—