But Gié, thinking the King’s death at hand, had the insolence to stop the Queen’s barges, placing 10,000 archers to watch the Loire and prevent the Princess Claude being carried out of France.[323] This attempt of one of her own subjects to take from her guardianship her daughter, the heiress of Bretagne, not of France, and to seize the property settled on her by two kings, was not likely to be forgiven by the Queen. Gié had overreached himself, for Louis suddenly recovered, and on hearing of his conduct, ordered his arrest. The judges who tried him hated him, and condemned him to death, but this sentence was quashed by the King, and Gié was heavily fined, deprived of his post, and banished from court for five years. Some French historians, who seem to think any means justifiable to gain a province for France, approve his conduct, and call Anne vindictive for insisting on its punishment; others will probably consider that he got what he deserved.
{1505}
Gié retired to his magnificent château of Verger, and the clercs de la Basoche gave a play called “Trop chauffer cuit, trop parler nuit” alluding to him. In another they said, “Un Maréchal avait voulu ferrer une Anne (âne), mais elle lui avait donné un si grand coup de pied qu’elle l’avait jeté hors de la cour, pardessus les murailles jusque dedans le verger.”[324]
They were very witty, often impertinent. When the King was told that they had ventured to represent him, because of some necessary retrenchment, as Avarice, he said that the people might laugh, and he would rather be called avaricious than extravagant; but when they attempted any ridicule of the Queen he sternly forbade it, saying he would suffer no disrespect to his wife, nor for that matter to any woman in his kingdom.
The Queen’s second coronation at St. Denis and entry into Paris took place when the King was convalescent—with the same splendour as the first. It was by torchlight, and after the usual fêtes and banquet at the Palais they returned to Touraine, and spent the rest of the summer at Blois, Loches, and Amboise with the Princess Claude.
The year 1505 opened with an unsatisfactory state of affairs in Italy,[325] where many of the best French officers, amongst them the Chevalier Bayard, were still engaged. The King became depressed and out of spirits, all the more because of the dispute about his daughter, whose marriage the Emperor kept urging him to celebrate immediately with the Duke of Luxemburg, while the French were so vehemently in favour of François, whom he had created Duc de Valois, that he felt both he and the Queen were for the first time becoming unpopular. These matters so preyed upon his mind as to bring on an illness more serious than the last. He was seized with fever and delirium, and all the country was plunged into grief and alarm. Again the Queen nursed him night and day, the people thronged the churches,[326] masses were chanted, long lines of cowled figures carried holy relics, with banners, crosses, and swinging censers through the streets, peasants left their work and multitudes with bare feet, tears and lamentations flocked after the processions. The Queen vowed that if he recovered she would make a pilgrimage to Notre Dame du Foll-Coat in Bretagne before the year was out.[327]
A romantic incident caused by this calamity was the death of Tommasina Spinola, a beautiful Genoese who had fallen in love with Louis in Italy. It was a platonic, chivalrous romance, to which neither her husband nor the Queen objected, and after the shock of hearing that Louis was dead had been fatal to her, he, having by this time recovered, desired Jean d’Auton to write a record of her, which was presented to him and the Queen at Tours.[328]
LOCHES.