Anne de Bretagne
She hated Albret all the more, because as she grew older and increased in beauty, he had conceived a violent passion for her, but her courage and firmness put a stop to the tyrannical meddling of her ministers and filled them with respect and admiration.
She then sent a messenger to England claiming the protection of Henry VII.
Her chancellor, Montauban, supported her, considering the match far beneath her, and told Albret plainly of the aversion and indignation of the Duchess and the preposterous nature of his claims. The Comte d’Albret flew into a furious rage, but was of course powerless in the matter. And just then Charles VIII. sent to claim the wardship of the Duchess and her sister, saying that he would marry them to the two sons of the Vicomte de Rohan and resign all his claims to the duchy.
But the Bretons, who hated the Rohans because they were considered friends to France and traitors to Bretagne, would not hear of this; Louis d’Orléans was in prison at Bourges, help did not come from England, and the friends of the Duchess, including the Maréchal de Rieux, who saw that it was hopeless to think of the Comte d’Albret, proposed the eldest son of the Emperor Maximilian, King of the Romans, who had been already suggested as a possible husband for her during the lifetime of her father, and to whom she had no objection. For, although Maximilian was also a widower and a great deal older than herself, he was a handsome, courteous, pleasant man in the prime of life, and could give her the most splendid position in Europe.
The duchy was by this time in a condition equally deplorable and dangerous. Charles VIII., exasperated at the English and other foreign troops being called in, made vigorous war upon Bretagne, town after town was besieged and taken by his army. Alain d’Albret continued to put forth his claims on the young Duchess, declaring that he had her father’s promise and her own consent, but ignoring the fact that this consent had been wrung from a weak and almost dying man, and a child of ten years old, who directly she was free had made a public protest against this arbitrary act. Madame de Laval for a long time continued her advocacy of her brother’s cause, while Anne steadily persisted that she would take the veil sooner than marry him.
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Meanwhile she waited anxiously for help from England, but Henry VII., unwilling to make war on France, lost a great deal of time in correspondence with the French King, hoping to arrange matters by this means. But the war went on, and the young Duchess fled from one town to another, and at length, finding herself in an unsafe position in the unfortified town of Rhédon, with her sister, where there was a great chance of being taken by the French, sent to her guardians, Rieux and Comminges, to come up with the troops and escort them to Nantes. There was no time to lose, for the French were in the neighbourhood, and the place could not be defended.
The princesses were waiting in great anxiety when they were told that Rieux and Comminges had both gone to Nantes, where they had joined Albret. Anne was very angry, all the more as she suspected that they would try to influence the people against her and her friends by making them believe that Dunois intended to deliver up both her and the town to the King of France. She set off from Rhédon on horseback with Isabelle and the Chancellor Montauban, with a bodyguard of ten Bretons as an escort, and rode to La Pasquelay, about three leagues from Nantes, where she was joined by Dunois at the head of some troops. She sent a message to Nantes ordering the gates to be opened for her entry, but the reply was that she was welcome to enter with her household and private guards, but not with Montauban, Dunois, or the troops; and seeing that the plan was to throw her into the power of Rieux and Albret, she angrily refused, upon which they marched out of the town with a large force to compel her to enter as they proposed. With undaunted courage Anne mounted on horseback behind Montauban and rode forward, while Dunois and the troops prepared for battle. But the townspeople no sooner saw her than they forbade any force to be used against her, but obliged the nobles to go back into the town. For some days negotiations went on, but Anne sent word that she would only enter Nantes as its sovereign, and turning away after a perilous journey took refuge at Rennes, where the people had begged her to come, and where they received her with bursts of enthusiastic loyalty and abuse of the traitors of Nantes.[284]