[Illustration: De gueules à la croix d’argent.]
_REIGN OF ANNE DE BRETAGNE, WIFE OF CHARLES VIII. AND LOUIS XII._
Birth of Anne and Isabelle--Their childhood--Louis d’Orléans--Alain d’Albret--Death of François II.--First Council--French war--Marriage ceremony--Siege of Rennes.
Anne, eldest daughter of François II., Duc de Bretagne, and his second wife, Marguérite de Foix, was born at Nantes, January 26, 1476,[278] and her sister, Isabelle, four or five years after.
Their mother died in 1485, leaving the children under the care of Françoise de Dinan, Dame de Laval, a member of one of the greatest families of Bretagne, who had been their governess from their infancy. They continued to be brought up at the court of their father, who seems to have kept them constantly with him, but whose affection for them did not prevent his promising them to anybody whose alliance he thought might be useful to him amidst the difficulties and dangers he had brought upon the duchy which had been so prosperous when he succeeded to it.
Always under the influence of some unworthy favourite, he had for many years been governed by Antoinette de Maignelais, Dame de Villequier, niece of Agnes Sorel, and her successor in the affections of Charles VII. After his death she carried on a _liaison_ with François, which embittered the life of his first wife, daughter of the last Duc de Bretagne, so that the people declared that his having no son to succeed him was a punishment from heaven for his conduct.
Anne, as the heiress of Bretagne, was of especial importance, and proposals for her marriage and her sister’s with the King of the Romans, the young sons of Edward IV. of England, the Infant of Spain, or some of the chief Breton nobles, were perpetually being entertained.
Some French writers have originated a romantic story of love between Anne and Louis, Duc d’Orléans, who had quarrelled with Charles VIII. and his sister, the Regent,[279] and was a great deal at the court of Bretagne. But as Anne was from eight to eleven years old at that time, by comparing dates and details given by early chroniclers, it becomes evident that this was not possible, and that if Louis, who was then from two to five and twenty, thought of such a child at all, it could only be as the heiress of Bretagne. He was, like his grandfather, the brother of Charles VI., always involved in some love affair, besides being already married to Jeanne, the deformed daughter of Louis XI., who had forced the marriage upon him in childhood, notwithstanding his opposition and that of his parents,[280] Charles Duc d’Orléans and Marie de Clèves, hoping thereby to extinguish that branch of the family. And, notwithstanding his aversion to his wife, he could not get rid of her whilst her brother was King and her sister Regent of France.