The wisdom and foresight of this great daughter of the hated tyrant of Plessis may be appreciated more fully if we will but consider for a moment the history of that Anne de Bretagne whose heritage she had secured for the crown of France. The early history of this princess has been already sketched in the preceding pages. She was but fifteen when Madame la Grande brought about the marriage with Charles VIII. Already, however, she had manifested traits that accorded but ill with the character of her royal mate. For she was not only handsome, spirited, and naturally independent and intelligent, but fond of intellectual pursuits, almost a scholar, knowing Latin and Greek, that new tongue that was just becoming the fashion in Europe, the tongue whose rich and deep literature, so long misunderstood or unknown during the Middle Ages, was to be most fruitful of inspirations for the Renaissance. Imagine her yoked with a prince of frivolous disposition, lacking even in ordinary intelligence, so ignorant that he could scarcely read and write, and interested chiefly in the idle shows of that chivalry in whose ranks he could not shine because of his awkward and weak frame. With admirable appreciation of her duty, Anne sunk the woman in the wife and queen, subordinating her own personality to that of a man whom she could not have respected, whom it seems impossible she could have loved. She resigned into his hands the administration of her own province of Brittany, and sought no share in the determination of the policy of the kingdom. Leaving politics to the king and his councillors, she devoted herself to the petty affairs of her court, regulated its accounts, decided its points of etiquette, kept its atmosphere pure and healthy, just as any little Breton housewife would have governed and made comfortable the home of her husband. Whether she loved Charles or not, she always treated him with respect.
The seven years of their married life were passed without a sign from her that the union had proved anything but the happiest in the world. On April 7, 1498, Charles, walking hurriedly through a dark corridor of the Château d'Amboise, where his father had kept him in confinement little different from imprisonment, struck his head against a scaffolding carelessly left in place by the workmen who were repairing the chateau, and died a few hours later. Anne made becoming show of grief, refused to be consoled, would not, it is said, touch food for three days, and insisted on wearing black in token of her grief, though as queen she was entitled to wear white. Grief, she said, had unfitted her for the life at court; she must return to her native Brittany and seek in the administration of its affairs to banish the memory of the lost husband.
The wisdom of Anne de Beaujeu had united Brittany to France; it now seemed as if the good results of her diplomacy were to be lost. There had been a stipulation, it is true, in the contract of marriage between Anne de Bretagne and Charles, that, in case of the death of the king, his widow could marry none but the successor or the heir presumptive to the crown of France; but this stipulation now seemed about to prove unavailing. For the heir presumptive at the time of Anne's widowhood was the little Count Francois d'Angoulème, a boy not yet out of the nursery, while the successor of Charles VIII. was already married to Jeanne, sister of the late king. It was a dilemma as serious as that solved by Anne de Beaujeu seven years before. But, as has been shown in this case, "be there a will, and wisdom finds a way," or if not wisdom, the hocus-pocus of diplomacy. In the present case it was soon apparent that, on both sides, there was a will; and though the way lay directly over the bleeding heart of a good woman, that way was found and followed by Louis XII.
Before the death of Charles, no one had suspected that Louis cherished any sentiments but those of loyal respect for Anne de Bretagne. When he saw her go away, taking with her the dowry that had cost so dear, the court discovered that the new king was hopelessly enamored of the mourning Breton widow. Anne was, it is true, personally attractive, and Louis was known to be not only susceptible to feminine charms but deplorably unhappy with his own wife; nevertheless, one cannot accord unquestioning faith to the genuineness of an affection that was so obviously politic, whether genuine or counterfeit. Anne, too, despite her widow's weeds and her tears, could not help showing that she left the court with regret. In justice to her, it cannot be said that she had betrayed her willingness to return Louis's sentiments; yet he must have felt reasonably sure of his standing in her heart before he undertook to make room for her by his side.
Almost the first scene of our history has to do with just such an instance of shameless quibbling about sacred things as that we must now record. Louis's wife, Jeanne de France, was a good, gentle, loving woman, who had clung with despairing affection to a husband who despised her, who was unfaithful to her, who was now to humiliate her. The poor creature was unfortunately ugly, and deformed, and twenty-two years of unfailing devotion it was in great part owing to her incessant appeals that the young Charles VIII. had liberated Louis from Bourges--had not reconciled the ungrateful husband to the marriage. He now bethought himself that this marriage had been contracted when he was but a youth, under threat of death from Louis XI, that Jeanne had borne him no children, and that they were related within the degrees prohibited by the Church. He appealed to the head of the Church, the notorious Alexander VI., to annul an incestuous union that was a burden to his conscience. Needless to say that, in the corrupt papal court of that period, the appeal was supported by arguments more weighty than honorable. Needless to say that, in spite of the heartbroken protests of Jeanne, Alexander, and his son Cæsar Borgia, having received their price, granted a decree annulling the marriage.
Having disposed of his wife, Louis sought the disconsolate widow in Brittany. Anne made some show of reluctance, of inconsolable grief, and of scruples moral and sentimental. As a matter of fact, however, she had consented to marry Louis before the divorce from Jeanne had been secured, and within four months from the death of Charles. The decree of divorce, brought by magnificent Cæsar Borgia himself, was published in December, 1498, and the marriage of Anne and Louis XII. was celebrated at Nantes in January, 1499.
Anne had profited by her sojourn at the French court; the new contract of marriage was far from being as favorable to France as that imposed by Anne de Beaujeu. It was now stipulated that she should retain in her own hands the administration of Brittany, and that the administrative offices and the ecclesiastical benefices should be filled by natives of Brittany only and with the consent of the duchess; that the ancient rights and privileges so dear to the Bretons should be respected; and that the province should descend to the second child of the marriage, or to the second child of her child, if there should be but one born to her and Louis, or to her own heirs next of kin, in case the marriage should prove childless. But little hope was left in this contract that the dearest wish of Anne de Beaujeu should be gratified, and that Brittany should remain French.
A complete change of character and of policy in a woman of twenty-three is very remarkable; and we are therefore surprised to find that the Anne who returned to Paris as the queen of Louis XII. was a very different person from the meek lady who had submitted to the ignorant and light-headed Charles. Not only did she insist upon and exercise her authority in Brittany, but she made the weight of her will felt in the affairs of the whole kingdom, pursued with ungenerous vindictiveness those who thwarted or opposed her, was jealous of her husband, of Madame de Bourbon, and of Louise de Savoie, mother of the young prince who one day was to be King Francois I. For her second husband, a man infinitely more worthy of respect than Charles, she appeared to have little tenderness. He was always considerate and good humored, admiring her and loving her even when she was domineering and almost insolent in her attitude toward him and toward his favorites. Her prudence and her regard for the decencies of life, too apt to be forgotten in the dissolute life now fostered by increased luxury and culture, were the only traits of Queen Anne that could be considered admirable. Her patronage of art, and of letters to a certain extent, her liberality to her favorite Bretons, had endeared her to a small circle; but neither France, which she hated, nor the best counsellors of the king, whom she thwarted and discomfited by her absolute ascendency over the king, had any cause to regret the early death of the queen, in 1514. It was fitting that, according to her wish, her heart should be buried in Brittany, while the body rested in Saint-Denis; for that heart had been unwaveringly Breton. To Louis she was ma Bretonne; and Breton she was in the most marked traits of her character; a woman of more than usual intellect and ability, with appreciation for art and literature, with a high sense of domestic virtue, and yet always hard, cold, shrewd, and narrow-minded.
The contrast between the two Annes who fill so large a place in the closing years of the fifteenth century is as complete as it is striking. Both were so placed by the accident of birth and fortune as to have much power, for good or for ill, in the destiny of France. But while Anne de Bretagne showed herself merely a woman, ruled by personal motives, jealous of power in small things and blind to or unconscious of the far-reaching results that might spring from the exercise of that power, Anne de Beaujeu had the broad mind, the far-seeing and calculating intellect of the statesman. Her intellect, indeed, was essentially masculine: "Madame de Beaujeu," says a contemporary historian, "would have been worthy to wear the crown, by her prudence and by her courage, if nature had not excluded her from the sex in whom the right to rule was vested." Anne de Bretagne was self-willed and obstinate, seeking the gratification of mere caprice; Anne de Beaujeu was inflexible and tenacious of purpose, but that purpose had in view the consolidation of an empire, not the gratification of some whim or of some petty spite. One is tempted to compare the daughter of Louis XI. with that other great woman whose firm hand guided France through a perilous crisis in the second quarter of the thirteenth century. Blanche de Castille, too, had to rule and consolidate a kingdom menaced by feudal anarchy during the minority of the sovereign. But she had constitutional right to support her regency; Anne de Beaujeu had no such right, and the difficulties with which she had to contend, though sooner ended, were more serious in themselves, perhaps, than those domestic intrigues and rebellions which Blanche could face without having to guard her frontiers from powerful and hostile neighbors. By her political achievements Madame la Grande merits comparison with the mother of Saint Louis. And yet it is in the very success of her tortuous, unscrupulous, dishonest policy that we find witness against the character of Anne. Political trickery, political duplicity, however beneficent in its results, leaves us with a strong aversion to the trickster; even as we have an unconquerable distrust of and contempt for the spy, howbeit he has risked life and honor for love of country, even so we grudge our praise to those who, like Louis XI and his daughter, seek and attain great ends by despicable means, sacrificing truth, honor, sentiment, to win for the nation the provinces of a Marie de Bourgogne, who does not know how to govern them, or the bride of a Maximilian, who does not know how to keep hold of her.
Great has been the change in France since Constance came from fair Provence to scandalize the monkish Robert's court; since Eleanor d'Aquitaine and her romantic troubadour friends taught France how to love gracefully and sing of love sweetly; since Mahaut d'Artois was a paire de France, with feudal power in her domain not to be questioned even by the sovereign; since Jeanne de Montfort, at the head of her knights, charged the mailed hosts. Provence has ceased either to scandalize or to enliven and instruct, for there is no more Provence save in name; no more gay and immoral troubadours; peers of France, you too are gone with "the snows of yesteryear," for when Charles VIII. was crowned at Rheims, the only lay peer, Philippe de Flandre, was not represented, the ancient domains of the other five having been annexed to the crown; and "the knights are dust." The little duchy of France, hedged about by vassals subject only in name, has grown into a great and almost unified kingdom, where provincial boundaries will soon be but imaginary lines on the map, a kingdom so rich and powerful, thanks to Louis XI. and Anne de Beaujeu, that it can afford to let a childish Charles VIII. dissipate its forces and its treasure in Italian wars, bringing back nothing more precious than the memory of the culture, the art, the restless new learning that make Florence, Venice, Milan glorious in this day of Renaissance. And France will cherish these memories of Italy, will kindle with enthusiasm for all these new cinque-cento marvels, will emulate and eclipse Italy. The monarchy is now the central power, the unquestioned power, in France, for which blessed consummation France must thank some of the women whose stories we have told no less than her kings. For without Blanche de Castille, no Saint Louis; without Jeanne d'Arc, no Charles VII.; without Madame de Beaujeu, no Charles VIII. Soon the state will be the king, long before boastful Louis XIV. thunders forth, L'état, c'est moi Already the eyes of all France are drawn to the court. There power resides, there literature and the arts will flourish, no longer leading a troubled and precarious existence. At the most brilliant court in Christendom a Francis I. no longer will indite Latin hymns, like the good Robert, but a cynical souvent une femme varie, while his sister, La marguerite des marguerites de Navarre, will rival Boccaccio with her fashionable tales of gallant and amorous gentlemen and ladies.