Louis and Anne were as fond of animals as their predecessors. The Queen kept a large hawking establishment, and numbers of horses and mules; her stables were magnificent, and her litters and chariots branlants (suspended) lined with soft cushions and costly stuffs. She had many dogs of different breeds and sizes.
The position of the Queen’s ladies was very distinguished and important. Already in 1492 she had sixteen dames and eighteen demoiselles, of the noblest families. She was very strict, keeping constant supervision over their books, songs, and amusements, and forbidding them to be alone with the gentlemen of the court, or talk to them about love that had nothing to do with marriage. If they disobeyed her she was implacable, otherwise she treated them with unbounded kindness, gave them the same luxuries she had herself, and took the greatest care of them in illness. An existing account mentions silver plate and a fur-lined coverlet for the night, ordered for Anne de Foix when she was ill. She gave them dowries, arranged their marriages, and if their husbands lived far away sent somebody to take care of them and bring her news of them. Some she loved almost like her own children.
Ladislas, King of Hungary, Poland, and Bohemia, being a widower, wanted a French princess for his wife. The Queen selected Anne de Candale and Germaine de Foix, both pretty girls and princesses of Foix, and sent him their portraits. He chose Anne, who did not wish to be Queen of Hungary, but to marry the Comte de Dunois, son of the Queen’s old friend whom he did not resemble, for though handsome and agreeable he was supposed to be wanting in courage. The Queen would not hear of it, and notwithstanding the tears and objections of the young princess the marriage was celebrated by proxy, and she started with a brilliant retinue in charge of Bretagne, King-at-arms, whose account of the grandeur of her reception, presents, &c., still exists in the Bibliothèque Impériale. Ladislas was enchanted with her and wrote with enthusiastic gratitude to the Queen, who was very fond of and anxious about her, and many messengers and letters passed between them; but the princess, who never became reconciled to her splendid exile, died in giving birth to a son.
{1501}
Germaine de Foix became the second wife of Ferdinand, King of Spain.
The Queen apparently acted in an arbitrary manner towards Anne de Rohan, who clandestinely married a natural son of the house of Bourbon, and who, after a stormy scene with her royal mistress, left the court and was imprisoned by her father at a château in a forest until, hearing that her husband had married somebody else in Germany, she became the wife of her cousin, Pierre de Rohan.[313]
Cæsar Borgia had insisted on a wife being found for him, and the person so sacrificed was Charlotte, the youngest daughter of Alain d’Albret. His consent was bought by an enormous dowry from the Pope and a cardinal’s hat for one of his family. Five years later Cæsar Borgia was killed in a skirmish, and the Duchess de Valentinois, his widow, who was universally respected, retired in peace with her daughter to a castle in Berry.[314]
In April came disastrous news from Milan, which had revolted against the French, who now only held the fortress itself.[315] The King sent Louis de la Trémoille and the Cardinal d’Amboise immediately to take command, and the wise counsels of the one and the military capacity of the other so rapidly turned the tide that France was again victorious, Sforza was taken prisoner, “and thus,” says the chronicler, “was the duchy of Milan twice conquered in seven months and a half, and for this time the war in Lombardy finished.”[316]