BY R. H. HORNE, AUTHOR OF "ORION," ETC.
Agnes Sorel was born in 1409, at the village of Fromenteau, in Touraine. Her father was the Seigneur de St. Gérand, a gentleman attached to the house of the Count de Clermont. At the age of fifteen, she was placed as maid of honor to Isabel of Lorraine, duchess of Anjou, and accompanied this princess when she went to Paris, in 1431.
At this period, Agnes Sorel was considered to be the most beautiful woman of her day. Her conversation and wit were equal to her beauty. In the "Histoire des Favorites" she is said to have been noble-minded, full of generosity, with sweetness of manners, and sincerity of heart. The same writer adds that every body fell in love with her, from the king to the humblest officers. Charles VII. became passionately attached to her; and in order to insure her constant presence at court, he placed her as maid of honor to the queen. The amour was conducted with secrecy; but the fact became manifest by the favors which the king lavished upon the relations of Agnes, while she herself lived in great magnificence amidst a very poor court. She was fond of splendor, and has been quaintly described by Monstrelet as "having enjoyed all the pleasures of life, in wearing rich clothes, furred robes, and golden chains of precious stones, and whatever else she desired." When she visited Paris, in attendance upon the queen, the splendor and expense of Agnes were so excessive that the people murmured greatly; whereupon the proud beauty exclaimed against the Parisians as churls.
During the time that the English were actually in possession of a great part of France, it was in vain that the queen (Mary of Anjou) endeavored to rouse her husband from his lethargy. That the king was not deficient in energy and physical courage, is evident from the manner in which he signalized himself on various occasions. At the siege of Montereau in 1437, (according to the Chronicle de Charles VII. par M. Alain Chartier, Nevers, 1594,) he rushed to the assault, now thrusting with the lance, now assisting the artillery, now superintending the various military engines for heaving masses of stone or wood; but during the period above-mentioned he was lost to all sense of royal glory, and had given himself up entirely to hunting and all sorts of pleasures.
He was recalled by Agnes to a sense of what was due to his kingdom. She told him, one day, says Brantoine, that when she was a girl, an astrologer had predicted that she would be loved by one of the most valiant kings of Christendom; that when His Majesty Charles VII. had done her this honor, she thought, of course, he was the valiant king who had been predicted; but now, finding he was so weak, and had so little care as to what became of himself and his affairs, she saw that she had made a mistake, and that this valiant prince could not be Charles, but the King of England. Saying these words, Agnes rose, and bowing reverentially to the king, asked leave to retire to the court of the English king, since the prophecy pointed at him. "Charles," she said, "was about to lose his crown, and Henry to unite it to his." By this rebuke the king was much affected. He gave up his hunting, left his gardens for the field of battle, and succeeded in driving the English out of France. This circumstance occasioned Francis I. to make the following verses, which, it is said, he wrote under a portrait of Agnes:—
"Plus de louange et d'honneur tu mérite,
La cause étant de France recouvrer,
Que ce que peut dedans un cloitre ouvrer,
Close nonnain, ou bien dévol hermite."
The king lavished gifts and honors upon Agnes. He built a château for her at Loches; he gave her, besides the comté de Penthièvre, in Bretagne, the lordships of Roche Servière, of Issoudun, in Berri, and the Château de Beauté, at the extremity of the wood of Vincennes, that she might be, as he said, "in deed and in name the Queen of Beauty." It is believed that she never made a bad use of her influence with the king for any political purposes or unkind private feelings; nevertheless, the Dauphin (afterwards Louis XI.) conceived an implacable jealousy against her, and carried his resentment so far, on one occasion, as to give her a blow.
She retired, in 1445, to Loches, and for nearly five years declined appearing at court; but the king's love for her still continued, and he took many journeys into Touraine to visit her. But eventually the queen, who had never forgotten her noble counsels to the king, which had roused him from his lethargy, persuaded her to return to court.
The queen appears to have felt no jealousy, but to have had a regard for her. It seems, also, that Agnes had become very popular, partly from her beauty and wit, partly because she was considered in a great measure, to have saved France, and partly because she distributed large sums in alms to the poor, and to repair decayed churches.
After the taking of Rouen, and the entire expulsion of the English from France, the king took up his winter-quarters in the Abbey of Jumiège. Agnes hastened to the Château de Masnal la Belle, a league distant from this abbey, for the purpose of warning the king of a conspiracy. The king only laughed at the intelligence; but the death of Agnes Sorel, which immediately followed, gives some grounds for crediting the truth of the information which she communicated. At this place Agnes, still beautiful, and in perfect health, was suddenly attacked by a dysentery which carried her off. It is believed that she was poisoned. Some affirm that it was effected by direction of the Dauphin; others accuse Jacques Cœur, the king's goldsmith (as the master of the treasury was then called), and others attribute it to female jealousy.