Anne did not hesitate as to her course, but marched into southern France, taking the king, the warrant of her authority, with her. This sudden diversion disconcerted the nobles, and one town after another opened its gates to Charles VIII., till, in March, 1487, he entered Bordeaux in triumph, and the old Duke of Bourbon and the Count of Angoulème made their submission. The Breton nobles, angry at the interference in their affairs by the rebellious French princes, who had completely won the confidence of the weak Duke Francois II., resolved to expel the foreigners, and appealed to Anne to help them. She responded by despatching a force of twelve thousand men into Brittany and besieging the duke and Louis d'Orléans in Nantes. But the town having received reinforcements from Maximilian, the royal army raised the siege and occupied strategic points in Brittany. While the season forbade military operations, Anne returned to Paris with her king, and had resort to law in her contest with the rebels. She issued a summons to the Dukes of Orléans and Brittany to appear before the court of Parliament. Upon their failure to appear, however, another summons was issued; but no sentence was passed, since Anne did not care to push matters to extremes in the case of these great personages, whom she hoped to conciliate; but Dunois, Comines, and others of the rebels were condemned for contumacy, their goods were confiscated, and, if their persons could be laid hold of, they were imprisoned. Comines, historian and scholar as he was, and favorite of Louis XI, had a taste of imprisonment in one of those famous iron cages of which his old master had been so fond.
In the spring of 1488 the power of the house of Beaujeu was increased by the death of the Duke of Bourbon, to whose duchy Anne's husband was heir. Nevertheless, fortune was not favoring Anne in all things; for the Breton nobles, having repented of their rebellion against their own duke, and beginning to suspect that Madame Anne meant to keep her troops in Brittany, now changed sides, and expelled the French garrisons from some of the towns. In retaliation, Anne's general, Louis de La Trémoille, began a vigorous campaign in Brittany early in April, which culminated in the decisive victory of Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier (July 27th). The Breton army was completely routed, and the rebel nobles, including Louis d' Orléans and the Prince of Orange, fell into the power of Anne. Louis, her most dangerous enemy, was confined in the tower of Bourges, where he might meditate, without endangering the public peace, upon the injustice of allowing a woman to govern France. Within a month after the battle, Francois II., humbly suing for peace to his "sovereign" Charles VIII., signed a treaty in which he promised to exclude from his court and dukedom the enemies of France, and to negotiate no marriage for his daughters without the advice and consent of Charles. In the name of Charles, as usual, all this was done; but it was really a signal triumph for Anne de Beaujeu. The pride of her Breton adversary was broken, and he did not long survive the treaty; some have declared that he died of chagrin at being no longer able to betroth his daughters first to one suitor and then to another. Whether of chagrin or of some more ordinary complaint, he died in September, 1488, and it then developed that his eldest daughter, Anne, a girl of not quite twelve, had indeed been promised to three parties simultaneously.
Out of the confused situation in Brittany it was Madame de Beaujeu's task to make profit for France. The eldest daughter and heiress of the late duke, Anne de Bretagne, was enjoined by the royal council from assuming her title of duchess until authorized to do so by the king, who claimed not only the feudal wardship of the heiress of Brittany, but her very coronet itself, under the terms of a treaty between the Crown and certain of the great barons of Brittany, including Marshal de Rieux, then guardian of Anne de Bretagne. This treaty, dating from 1484, had recognized the claims of the king as superior to those of the female heirs in Brittany, as in other fiefs where the court was endeavoring to enforce the Loi Salique. But Marshal de Rieux and his friends had now changed their views, seeing that the pretensions of the crown would result in the extinction of Brittany as a distinct and independent province; they preferred governing the province through the young duchess to being governed by Madame la Grande.
Madame la Grande was well aware that her claims on behalf of the king would not be peaceably admitted; she was prepared to encounter armed resistance, and probably foresaw her opportunity in the quarrels that would inevitably break out among the Bretons as to who was to control the heiress, and, above all, as to who was to marry her. The ducal court of Brittany soon became the hotbed of intrigue, where divided counsel prevailed, and where alliances were made on all sides and adhered to on none. With the aid of Maximilian, of the Spaniards, and of the English,--all of whom were more or less concerned, and more or less willing to support Brittany against France,--the Bretons could have offered successful resistance to the French armies. But the jealousies of the Breton nobles, the craft and ability of Anne de Beaujeu, and the feminine caprice of Anne de Bretagne, made ineffective the best efforts of France's enemies. The Sire d'Albret, a man of hideous aspect, of detestable character, and very nearly four times as old as the bride he claimed, affirmed that Anne de Bretagne had been promised to him. Marshal de Rieux, Anne's guardian, upheld the claims of D'Albret, and in behalf of his protege resorted to fraud, in fabricating proofs of the alleged betrothal, and to force. Meanwhile, the enterprising Dunois formed a plot to kidnap the duchess and carry her off to France. Seeking to escape these two dangers, the poor girl fled to Nantes, where, however, De Rieux had the gates shut against her. Rennes, more compassionate and more patriotic, offered her a refuge till the immediate danger was passed. But there was no rest or safety for her as long as she remained unmarried. The Sire d'Albret was loathsome to her; therefore, under the temporary influence of other advisers, she gave her hand to the ambassador of Maximilian, and was secretly married to this proxy-husband, with every form and ceremony that could be thought of to make the strange compact binding.
A secret of such momentous consequence could not, in the nature of things, remain a secret for any long period. The mock marriage had taken place in the summer of 1490. Within a few months, the bride, bursting with the importance of her new dignity, was actually signing decrees as "Queen of the Romans," and the troubles in Brittany began with renewed violence on the part of the disappointed aspirants to the control of the duchy. Anne de Beaujeu, never dismayed, even by complications that might to others seem hopeless, at once took advantage of the resentment of D'Albret and De Rieux, secured the alliance of the latter and bought outright that of the former, and so was soon able to regain military supremacy in Brittany, and to begin her plans for breaking off the marriage between Anne de Bretagne and Maximilian. Had the latter been a native Burgundian, or had he concentrated his resources for the attainment of one capital object, the whole history of France might have been changed: we might have seen a second Burgundian power, now strengthened by the rugged and yet unsubdued Brittany, hemming France in on the east, on the west, on the north, and utterly stunting the growth of that national unity which was to make France a great and homogeneous power. But Maximilian was busy patching up the power of his Austrian dominions, and trying to keep on reasonably good terms with his Flemish subjects; meanwhile, he thought his bride might look out for herself, and was not aware that Anne de Beaujeu was preparing a coup that would deprive him forever of Brittany.
The influence of Anne de Beaujeu was already showing signs of a decline; and it therefore behooved her to work while it was yet day, for the time was fast coming when her boy king would no longer submit to sisterly tyranny. Charles was in his twentieth year when, in the spring of 1491, he made his first independent move, with a prospect of still more dangerous manifestations of independence. One evening he left Plessis, as if to go hunting, and rode toward Bourges. He had secretly given orders that Louis d'Orléans should be released, and went to meet and be reconciled with this dangerous adversary of his sister. Louis, who had been sobered by his confinement, was overjoyed at his release, and met the king with every manifestation of loyal devotion and respect. Fortunately, Louis cherished no feelings of resentment against the house of Beaujeu, and willingly acceded to the formal reconciliation proposed by the king, signing, with Pierre de Bourbon, a treaty of amity and fraternal love, in which all past wrongs and differences were to be forgotten. Louis was faithful to the spirit of this agreement, and France had no longer to fear his factious activity. And when Dunois, always ready to plot, always ready to undo his own plots, also agreed to a reconciliation, the personal power of Anne in the royal council may have been weakened, but the ultimate triumph of the principles for which she had contended was assured. Though no longer dominant in all things, she could yet shape the policy of the kingdom and contrive the ruin of Maximilian's ambitious schemes.
To unite France and Brittany had been the dream of the French kings, but again and again had the dream proved a delusion. Louis XI, always awake to every possible chance of advantage, had bought the claims of the heiress of the ancient line of Charles de Blois and Jeanne de Penthièvre; but no opportunity of profiting by these claims had been vouchsafed his greedy soul. Now the coveted province seemed more hopelessly alienated than ever. For Anne de Bretagne was married to Maximilian, and the young King of France was solemnly betrothed to the daughter of Maximilian, Marguerite, who had actually been reared at the French court on purpose to fit her for the post of queen, and who had already received, by courtesy, the titles and honors of her station, though her youth still precluded the consummation of the marriage. How to rob Maximilian of his bride and dispose of his daughter was a problem that might well have seemed hopeless of solution. But Madame de Beaujeu was not hopeless, nor was she over-scrupulous.
Before Maximilian could bring his Austrian-Hungarian war to a satisfactory conclusion, the French armies had established almost complete control of Brittany. The young duchess, none too pleased at the neglect of this treaty-husband, was easily persuaded that the marriage, contracted against the will of her feudal lord, and never consummated by a husband who seemed more absorbed in politics than fired by passion, was not really a religious compact, but a treaty that could be abrogated like any other treaty. She consented to break off the match with her King of the Romans, but, having once borne the title of queen, neither count nor duke would she have for a husband, only a king. Anne de Beaujeu promptly suggested that the heiress of Brittany should replace the daughter of Maximilian, and marry Charles VIII. On November 15th Charles entered Rennes. To Maximilian and the rest of Europe this seemed but the honest fulfilment of the terms of the treaty of peace extorted from unwilling Brittany; no one outside of the trusted friends of the duchess and of the king had the least suspicion that, three days later, the pair had had an interview, and that, in the presence of Louis d'Orléans, of Anne and Pierre de Bourbon, of the chancellor of Brittany, and of a few others, they were formally betrothed.
Secrecy was essential to the success of the plan. This secret was well kept, particularly as the time of repression was short, for Anne de Beaujeu was wise enough to conclude the matter as soon as possible. Within a month, Charles went to the château of Langeais, in Touraine, whither Anne de Bretagne followed him. Before the world knew what was intended, they were married and were on their way to Plessis-lez-Tours, where the gloomy old den of Louis XI was enlivened by brilliant royal festivities. The ghost of the old king, however unfriendly to mirth and jollity, must have looked on approvingly and grinned with joy at the thought of the splendid and long-coveted dowry that his wise daughter had won for France. He, too, would have taken a malicious pleasure in the very means Anne had used to hoodwink and cheat Maximilian. Duplicity, the most boldfaced trickery, had been resorted to, to lead Maximilian off the true scent. While the marriage articles that would rob him of his Breton bride were being arranged, Anne de Beaujeu was keeping him occupied with the details of an arrangement that would grant free passage to his bride when she saw fit to repair to the husband who could not find time to come to her. And while he was carrying on this negotiation, in good faith, came the news that Charles had robbed him of his bride and was sending back his daughter. It was a double insult, and one that might have cost France dearly had Maximilian's power equalled his anger and resentment. Nothing but "diplomacy" could have accomplished the union of France and Brittany, that sort of diplomacy which in a private individual would be condemned by every ethical law, but which often results most advantageously for the state, and hence is condoned.
With this marriage the great role of Anne de Beaujeu ceases; for though she continued to advise, she could no longer command, and the government of France was left to Charles VIII. Anne was one of those counsellors who raised their voices in unheeded protest against the impolitic rashness of Charles's campaign in Italy, a campaign whose mad extravagance and disastrous results fully justified all that Anne had said to dissuade her brother. But in this, as in other matters of less moment, it was evident that Anne's day of usefulness had passed. By the time her old rival, Louis d'Orléans, became Louis XII. she had completely retired from politics, and continued to govern nothing but her husband, in spite of the generous confidence shown in her by the new king. Louis XII. cherished no resentment for the injuries inflicted upon the young Louis d'Orléans by Madame la Grande, and gratefully acknowledged how important had been her services to the crown. But Madame la Grande intervened no more in public affairs, though she lived on until 1522.