This crusade was unsuccessful, the ships being damaged by a tempest.
Anne filled her household with her faithful Bretons. Her guard of gentlemen assembled always on the terrace at Blois, called “_la Perche aux Bretons_.” She never kept them waiting, but would rise and hasten towards them saying, “There are my Bretons on their perch expecting me.”[318] To her the French queens owed the right to have their especial guard, also the right to receive separately all foreign ambassadors.
She delighted in flowers and gardening, her favourite gardens being those of Amboise, given her by Charles VIII., and of Blois by Louis XII. She was also extremely fond of books, and had a splendid library, for, besides all she inherited from her father and the French kings, Charles VIII. brought her eleven hundred and forty from Naples and Louis XII. a thousand manuscripts from the library of the Visconti at Milan. She employed a colony of painters, sculptors, scribes, and architects brought from Italy and established at Tours by Charles VIII., and consequently possessed numbers of artistic treasures, including that wonderful illuminated book containing the psalms, prayers, and offices of the Church richly adorned with flowers, animals, landscapes, portraits and scenes in miniature well known as the “Livre d’Heures d’Anne de Bretagne,” and one of the most perfect examples of French art of that day.[319]
She had a little room with boxes and drawers full of costly jewels to give as presents. For dress personally she cared little, although especially on state occasions she was always magnificent in her toilette. The fashions in her reign were exceedingly graceful and artistic. Fine linen, velvet or satin shoes, long trailing dresses open in front, made of cloth of gold and crimson silk or velvet, with a golden girdle and chaplet of pearls, chains and jewels round the neck, headdress of white silk embroidered with gold and pearls, hoods of cloth, satin, or velvet, scarlet for bourgeoises, black for nobles. Sometimes long dresses of black velvet. These were purely French till late in this reign when Italian and Flemish costumes began to be copied.[320] Charles VIII., being short and ill-made, re-introduced the long robes of former times, but Louis XII., who was tall and graceful, usually wore short clothes. The Queen created an order for the ladies of the court, called the Cordelière, from the cords that bound Christ: the badge was a jewelled necklace in the form of a cord.