Anne of Brittany

“ Brittany is a very rich country; the Duchess Anne is the greatest heiress in Christendom, and of course there is to be found at her court everything that the appetite craves, and some day all this may bring on the gout. There is nothing like taking things in time, and it may be a good while before I shall again be so near the good saint. ”

“ The majority of women have an intuitive knowledge of the emotions felt by men when in their company, and Anne possessed great powers of discernment. She could perfectly understand that Louis XII. wished desperately to retain Brittany. By the terms of her marriage settlement it now indisputably belonged to her once more. She also knew, with an acute sense of the potentialities flung open by the fact, that the idea of having his own marriage annulled had become an invincible necessity of his nature. ”

“ To this Anne had perforce to agree, and at the dictation of the King twelve persons were appointed on each side to examine the claims each had on the duchy of Brittany. Meanwhile, the city of Rennes was placed in sequestration, in the hands of the Dukes of Orleans and Bourbon, to be governed for the time by the Prince of Orange. The King, on this being agreed to, promised to withdraw his troops, and allow passage and safe conduct to the Duchess and ambassadors of Maximilian to Germany, where she might join the husband who had been too impecunious to come in person for his bride. ”

“ In 1489 the French army invaded Brittany. In order to protect her independence, Anne concluded an alliance with Maximilian of Austria, and soon married him by proxy (December 1489) . But Maximilian was incapable of defending her, and in 1491 the young duchess found herself compelled to treat with Charles VIII. and to marry him. The two sovereigns made a reciprocal arrangement as to their rights and pretensions to the crown of Brittany, but in the event of Charles predeceasing her, Anne undertook to marry the heir to the throne. ”

“ All her ministers desired a marriage with the Comte D’Albret, thought to be in a position to help Brittany against the claws of its enemy. D’Albret was a widower, old, ugly, bad tempered, and the father of twelve children. Anne hated him—he is said to have had a spotty face—and the shrinking antipathy of children is not controllable by reasons. Primarily she must have felt a little frightened when both her governess, and the great bearded men who controlled affairs, informed her that, whatever her feelings, the marriage must take place. ”

“ It was a time, therefore, when men went warily, mistrustfully, with eyes glancing to right and left for fear of enemies, and ears open to listen to the breath of treachery. Above all, on the borders of Brittany was such watchfulness needed. What wonder then if the Sieur de Mereac, riding homewards from the chase with his daughter and kinsman beside him, pondered first on the counsel of one and then of the other, finally deciding that the Frenchman's fate must be tempered with justice, but small mercy, and that the rope end was the best meed for the enemy of the Duchess Anne? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Anne, the queen-duchess, was staying for a time in one of her castles in the province of Brittany, it being her custom to visit her domain as often as she could make it convenient to do so. Hearing of the presence at the inn of the Princess of the Asturias, she sent to her an invitation, offering the hospitality of her roof for the Easter season. ”

“ Queen Anne was not a beauty, but at the age of sixteen, when she became King Richard's wife, she was a blooming, healthy girl, with a clear, fresh complexion and bright eyes. She had a high, narrow forehead, long upper lip and fat cheeks, but the remarkable head-dress she wore neutralized these defects somewhat. ”

“ But if you would dare her wiles you must come alone to her fountain by night, for she shuns even the half-gloom that is day in shadowy Broceliande. The peasants when they speak of her will assure you that she and her kind are pagan princesses of Brittany who would have none of Christianity when the holy Apostles brought it to Armorica, and who must dwell here under a ban, outcast and abhorred. ”

“ Anne sank down on the rug, and reached up her hand for Nancy, "and how happy you will be with your big son. Could you ever have loved a daughter as much, Mother Nancy?"
"I'm not sure; perhaps," smiling, "if she had been like you. And a daughter would have stayed with me. Men have wandering natures—they must be up and out."
"Women have wandering natures, too," Anne told her. "Do you know that last Christmas I cried and cried because I was tied to the Crossroads school and to Bower's? I wanted to live in the city and have lovely things. You can't imagine how I hated all Eve Chesley's elegance. ”

“ But no humble endeavours on the part of Anne could avail to soothe the irritations of her sister and brother-in law, whilst they perceived that, bred up amongst the people, she was dear to their subjects, and that on important occasions her interests became their cause; and a jealousy, aggravated in its bitterness by the well-known disposition of Anne to befriend her brother, and by her equally certain repentance for her conduct to her father, became a permanent sentiment in the mind of Mary. ”

“ But in the midst of its agitations and all its exuberant life—the wars abroad, the intrigues at home, the secret correspondences, the plots, the breathless hopes and fears—it is half ludicrous, half pathetic, to turn to the harmless figure of Queen Anne in the center of the scene—a fat, placid, middle-aged woman full of infirmities, with little about her of the picturesque yet artificial brightness of her time, and no gleam of reflection to answer to the wit and genius which have made her age illustrious. ”

“ Standing in dream-girt Broceliande of a hundred legends, its shadows mirrored by dim meres that may never reflect the stars, one feels the lure of Brittany more keenly even than when walking by its fierce and jagged coasts menaced by savage grey seas, or when wandering on its vast moors where the monuments of its pagan past stand in gigantic disarray. ”

“ But Anne’s happiness was soon troubled by quarrels with the king and queen. According to the duchess of Marlborough the two sisters, who had lived hitherto while apart on extremely affectionate terms, found no enjoyment in each other’s society. Mary talked too much for Anne’s comfort, and Anne too little for Mary’s satisfaction. But money appears to have been the first and real cause of ill-feeling. ”

“ She could not picture herself living alone in a little house in New York, dependent on Drovers and Tresseltons, and on the good Fred Landers, for [87] her moral sustenance. To be with Anne, to play the part of Anne’s mother—the one part, she now saw, that fate had meant her for—that was what she wanted with all her starved and world-worn soul. To be the background, the atmosphere, of her daughter’s life; to depend on Anne, to feel that Anne depended on her; it was the one perfect companionship she had ever known, the only close tie unmarred by dissimulation and distrust. ”

“ Anne bore her friend's intolerable pride, blended with disdain, for a long time after her accession. But her own character also began to change. Sovereigns do not like dictation from subjects, however powerful. And when securely seated on her throne, Anne began to avow opinions which she had once found it politic to conceal. She soon became as jealous of her prerogative as her uncle Charles and her father James had been of theirs. ”

“ If we are to conclude that Princes may discard natural feeling, and ties of duty, from their consideration, in times of difficulty, we may commend the prudence of Anne in absenting herself from a scene of distress wherein her father was the chief actor; we may excuse her from remaining to receive the deserted and degraded king, justly expiating grave offences by the bitterest mortifications, but stung most by 105the utter alienation of one daughter, and the heartless discretion of the other. ”

“ It cannot be disputed but that the Princess acted with a degree of pusillanimity which was a feature in her character, and throughout her subsequent life made her the victim of daring minds, of whose intrigues she was the slave, and at the same time, from her exalted station, the active principle. Anne knew her father too well to suppose, that whilst he retained the power to defend his daughter, he would suffer her to be treated with indignity, or allow violence to be done to her feelings as a wife, or to her opinions as a Protestant. ”

“ Who can describe the feelings of the Lady Anne—alone, in her chamber, looking up at the portrait of her mother, upon which she had so often gazed with delight and reverence! "Is it possible?" said she to herself, "can this be she, of whom I have read such dreadful things? Have all my young and happy days been but a dream, from which I wake at last? Is not this dreadful certainty still as a hideous dream to me?"
She had another cause of bitter grief. She loved the young and noble-minded Lord Russell, the Earl of Bedford's eldest son; and she had heard him vow affection and faithfulness to her. ”

“ Dear Sir Julien, rub your eyes! I want you to see—all the way to the skies. Lady Anne is a sweet girl who will look nice at the head of any one's table. She will read the papers and take an intelligent interest in her husband's work, and ask him trite and obvious questions to prove that she understands all about it. She will give you phenacetin when you have a headache, she will fill your house with the right sort of people. She will be very amiable and very satisfied. She'll always read the debates and she'll sit up for you at night in a pretty dressing-gown. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This Princess was, at the time of her sister’s marriage, in Holland, with her husband, William of Nassau.
Anne was a personage altogether of an inferior stamp. In many points she resembled strongly the other members of her family who have figured in history. Like Charles the First, she was pious, generous, and affectionate, but obstinate, and not devoid of duplicity when it suited her purpose. Her religion had not, however, the sublimated character of that which consoled the unhappy Charles in adversity ”

“ Anne, considered the most lovely woman of the period in which she lived, gained by the beauty of her person and her intellectual capacity such ascendency over her husband, from the time of his coming to the throne, that she not only disposed of all the honours and appointments of the duchy, but founded several useful industrial establishments. She gave the best proof of her own industry and attention to domestic duties by being the mother of sixteen children, most of whom grew up to man’s and woman’s estate. ”

“ Anne was born in 1664, two years before the great fire of London, on which the astrologers (there were some left, and Louis XIV. was born with the assistance of an astrologer, and swaddled in a horoscope) predicted that, being the elder sister of fire, she would be queen. And so she was, thanks to astrology and the revolution of 1688. She had the humiliation of having only Gilbert, Archbishop of Canterbury, for godfather. To be godchild of the Pope was no longer possible in England. A mere primate is but a poor sort of godfather. Anne had to put up with one, however. ”

“ Anne, had she lived, might have possessed, as a Protestant, and as a woman of understanding, a salutary influence over the mind of her husband;—an influence which prudent women are found to retain, even when the affections of the heart are alienated 14on both sides. But her death, which happened in 1671, deprived England of a queen-consort who professed the national faith; and, in her, James lost a faithful and sensible wife, and the court a guide and pattern which might have checked the awful demoralization that prevailed. ”

“ Now we must take a look at Queen Anne to see what sort of a ruler she made, for thus far we have touched lightly on this important matter, or given the Duchess of Marlborough the precedence. As far as personal affection goes, this queen was the most popular one who had occupied the English throne; the lower classes always [454] called her "our good Queen Anne," and do so to this very day. ”

“ Anne’s position was very much changed by the Revolution. If any ambitious hopes had been entertained or plans formed by her household, they were speedily and very completely brought to an end. The dull royal pair with their two brilliant guides and counselors now found themselves confronted by another couple of very different mark: the serious, somewhat gloomy, determined, and self-concentrated Dutchman, and the new queen, Mary, a person far more attractive and imposing than Anne; two people full of character and power. ”