Pictures of the old French court - Mrs. Bearne

Always under the influence of some unworthy favourite, he had for many years been governed by Antoinette de Maignelais, Dame de Villequier, niece of Agnes Sorel, and her successor in the affections of Charles VII. After his death she carried on a liaison with François, which embittered the life of his first wife, daughter of the last Duc de Bretagne, so that the people declared that his having no son to succeed him was a punishment from heaven for his conduct.

Anne, as the heiress of Bretagne, was of especial importance, and proposals for her marriage and her sister’s with the King of the Romans, the young sons of Edward IV. of England, the Infant of Spain, or some of the chief Breton nobles, were perpetually being entertained.

Some French writers have originated a romantic story of love between Anne and Louis, Duc d’Orléans, who had quarrelled with Charles VIII. and his sister, the Regent,[279] and was a great deal at the court of Bretagne. But as Anne was from eight to eleven years old at that time, by comparing dates and details given by early chroniclers, it becomes evident that this was not possible, and that if Louis, who was then from two to five and twenty, thought of such a child at all, it could only be as the heiress of Bretagne. He was, like his grandfather, the brother of Charles VI., always involved in some love affair, besides being already married to Jeanne, the deformed daughter of Louis XI., who had forced the marriage upon him in childhood, notwithstanding his opposition and that of his parents,[280] Charles Duc d’Orléans and Marie de Clèves, hoping thereby to extinguish that branch of the family. And, notwithstanding his aversion to his wife, he could not get rid of her whilst her brother was King and her sister Regent of France.

Jeanne, Duchesse d’Orléans, was greatly to be pitied. She loved Louis as Valentine Visconti had loved his still handsomer and more dissipated grandfather. But Valentine was a brilliant, attractive woman of the world, with whom the Duke, in spite of his frequent infidelities, had got on very well. Jeanne, besides being deformed, was a meek, ascetic person, whose life had been passed in slavish submission to her father, the terrible Louis XI., and despairing love for her husband; her tastes and ideas were those of the cloister.

Although his follies were the cause of many calamities to the duchy, François II. was very popular, he was good-looking and pleasant, encouraged art, literature, and commerce, and spent his money freely.

The greatest danger in which he involved the State arose from his constant enmity to France, whose fugitives he protected, and whose enemies he encouraged and assisted on all occasions; and from the credulous weakness which placed him always under the influence of some objectionable person. Antoinette de Maignelais died in 1475, but still more fatal was his infatuation for one Landais, a man of obscure birth and abominable character, whom he made his treasurer, and whose crimes and cruelties so exasperated the Bretons that they rose in rebellion, surrounded the palace with threats and cries, and demanded that he should be given up to them. The Comte de Foix tried to appease them, but returned in haste, exclaiming, “I would rather be Prince over a million wild boars than over such people as your Bretons; you will certainly have to give up your treasurer, or we shall all be murdered.”[281] Landais was accordingly tried, condemned, and executed, but the harm he had done and the disastrous state of affairs still remained.