Moreover, she had been coerced and disregarded; for all her excessive stateliness men knew her as a humiliated and beaten woman. Before Louis left for the third Italian campaign, the betrothal of Claude to Francis had been ratified. Deputies from the different departments had visited Louis at Plessis-les-Tours. They called him “Father of his people;” then upon bent knees begged that he would “give madame your only daughter to Monsieur François here present, who is a thorough Frenchman.” Both Louis and the kneeling deputies shed tears, but though a sentimental emotion fluttered them in passing, the scene was essentially an organized drama, gone through in order to cut the last possible ground of resistance from under Anne’s feet. Two days later Francis, aged eleven, and Claude, aged six, were formally promised to one another.
There is one more outstanding incident in Anne’s life—her bitter warfare with the great Marechale de Gie. It has been called the inexcusable stain upon her reputation. The story certainly leaves her nakedly crude, fiercely elemental, but at least upon this occasion a glaring provocation roused her to fury. Louis fell ill. He had enjoyed his youth too coarsely, and paid heavily in after years for the absence of more delicate cravings. Anne nursed him with an affection made quick through terror. “She never left his room all day, and did everything she was able herself.” But Louis failed to get better. Each day he drew nearer the purlieus of finality; his doctors perceived no possibility even of return. Then Anne, sitting wearily by the bedside of the sick man, did undoubtedly think of practical matters. She remembered Louise and their mutual hatred. Historians express disgust at what followed, but in reality there is nothing to be deeply disgusted about. The brain in times of tense, overwrought excitement is assailed by many discordant and trumpery remembrances. Anne, alert and nervous both, gazed at the sinking patient, and recalled the valuable furniture, jewellery, and plate, whose possession might be contested later. Had she been a woman of momentous feeling, the knowledge could equally have flashed through her kindled intelligence, but would have left it bitterly indifferent. Anne was not strung with overwhelming affections, and her predominating common sense saw that after this man’s death she had still a future to organize. Without relaxing one personal nursing labour, she gave rapid orders to the household, until all the articles stated as hers in the marriage contract were despatched by ship to Brittany.
Gie had long ago placed his interests upon the side of the power to follow. Being informed of the queen’s arrangements, he stopped her vessels, definitely refusing to allow them to leave the country.
There was a certain reckless temerity in the action; but Louis, it was understood, could not live more than a few hours, and the new king would know how to reward such strenuous adroitness in his interests. But in this matter Gie was unlucky.
Louis suddenly—and apparently unreasonably—abandoned the notion of dying. From extreme collapse he rapidly recovered, and immediately afterwards banished Gie from court. There are slight variations in the story—in one account Anne was labouring to remove Claude to Brittany as well—but the above is the account given by the greatest number.
For a short time Gie remained thankfully at his magnificent place in the country, clutching at the fact that his punishment went very comfortably with his instincts. But Anne’s heart was too primitive for trivial retaliations. Mezerai did not say for nothing, “She was terrible to those who offended her.” Presently Gie received a summons to answer to the charges of lèse-majesté and peculation, was arrested, and after being treated with a shameless brutality, received a verdict of guilty, with a loss of all honours and five years’ banishment from court. The ugliest part of a story—in which from the beginning everybody behaved with a rather ignoble sagacity—is the report that Anne openly stated that she did not desire the Marechale’s death, since death gave relief from suffering, and she chafed for him to live and feel all the misery of being low when he had been high; in other words, that she craved a long and cankering duration to his discomfiture.
After the birth of another daughter—the child Renée, subsequently to be Duchess of Ferrara—Anne’s last fragment of happiness died in her. Jean Marot, father of the famous Clement Marot, referred to her in some verses with a singular realism and comprehension. He wrote—
“At this time was in Lyons
The uneasy queen. Always in grief
For the regrets her tired heart