Quotation from: A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 3

Written by: Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot


Pacific as it was, this conquest cost some pains, and gave some trouble.
In person Charles VIII. was far from charming; he was short and badly
built; he had an enormous head; great, blank-looking eyes; an aquiline
nose, bigger and thicker than was becoming; thick lips, too, and
everlastingly open; nervous twitchings, disagreeable to see; and slow
speech. "In my judgment," adds the ambassador from Venice, Zachary
Contarini, who had come to Paris in May, 1492, "I should hold that, body
and mind, he is not worth much; however, they all sing his praises in
Paris as a right lusty gallant at playing of tennis, and at hunting, and
at jousting, exercises to the which, in season and out of season, he doth
devote a great deal of time." The same ambassador says of Anne of
Brittany, who had then been for four months Queen of France, "The queen
is short also, thin, lame of one foot, and perceptibly so, though she
does what she can for herself by means of boots with high heels, a
brunette and very pretty in the face, and, for her age, very knowing; in
such sort that what she has once taken into her head she will obtain
somehow or other, whether it be smiles or tears that be needed for it."
--[_La Diplomatic Venitienne au Seizieme Siecle,_ by M. Armand Baschet,
p. 325 (Paris, 1862).] Knowing as she was, Anne was at the same time
proud and headstrong; she had a cultivated mind; she was fond of the
arts, of poetry, and of ancient literature; she knew Latin, and even a
little Greek; and having been united, though by proxy and at a distance,
to a prince whom she had never seen, but whom she knew to be tall, well
made, and a friend to the sciences, she revolted at the idea of giving
him up for a prince without beauty, and to such an extent without
education, that, it is said, Charles VIII., when he ascended the throne,
was unable to read. When he was spoken of to the young princess, "I am
engaged in the bonds of matrimony to Archduke Maximilian," said Anne:
"and the King of France, on his side, is affianced to the Princess
Marguerite of Austria; we are not free, either of us." She went so far
as to say that she would set out and go and join Maximilian. Her
advisers, who had nearly all of them become advocates of the French
marriage, did their best to combat this obstinacy on the part of their
princess, and they proposed to her other marriages. Anne answered, "I
will marry none but a king or a king's son." Whilst the question was
thus being disputed at the little court of Rennes, the army of Charles
VIII. was pressing the city more closely every day. Parleys took place
between the leaders of the two hosts; and the Duke of Orleans made his
way into Rennes, had an interview with the Duchess Anne, and succeeded in
shaking her in her refusal of any French marriage. "Many maintain," says
Count Philip de Segur [_Histoire de Charles VIII,_ t. i. p. 217], "that
Charles VIII. himself entered alone and without escort into the town he
was besieging, had a conversation with the young duchess, and left to her
the decision of their common fate, declaring to her that she was free and
he her captive; that all roads would be open to her to go to England or
to Germany; and that, for himself, he would go to Touraine to await the
decision whereon depended, together with the happiness of his own future,
that of all the kingdom." Whatever may be the truth about these
chivalrous traditions, there was concluded on the 15th of September,
1491, a treaty whereby the two parties submitted themselves for an
examination of all questions that concerned them to twenty-four
commissioners, taken half and half from the two hosts; and, in order to
give the preconcerted resolution an appearance of mutual liberty,
authority was given to the young Duchess Anne to go, if she pleased,
and join Maximilian in Germany. Charles VIII., accompanied by a hundred
men-at-arms and fifty archers of his guard, again entered Rennes; and
three days afterwards the King of France and the Duchess of Brittany were
secretly affianced in the chapel of Notre-Dame. The Duke of Orleans, the
Duchess of Bourbon, the Prince of Orange, Count Dunois, and some Breton
lords, were the sole witnesses of the ceremony. Next day Charles VIII.
left Rennes and repaired to the castle of Langeais in Touraine. There
the Duchess Anne joined him a fortnight afterwards. The young Princess
Marguerite of Austria, who had for eight years been under guardianship
and education at Amboise as the future wife of the King of France, was
removed from France and taken back into Flanders to her father, Archduke
Maximilian, with all the external honors that could alleviate such an
insult. On the 13th of December, 1491, the contract of marriage between
Charles VIII. and Anne of Brittany was drawn up in the great hall of the
castle of Langeais, in two drafts, one in French and the other in Breton.
The Bishop of Alby celebrated the nuptial ceremony. By that deed, "if my
Lady Anne were to die before King Charles, and his children, issue of
their marriage, she ceded and transferred irrevocably to him and his
successors, kings of France, all her rights to the duchy of Brittany.
King Charles ceded in like manner to my Lady Anne his rights to the
possession of the said duchy, if he were to die before her with-out
children born of their marriage. My Lady Anne could not, in case of
widowhood, contract a second marriage save with the future king, if it
were his pleasure and were possible, or with other near and presumptive
future successor to the throne, who should be bound to make to the king
regnant, on account of the said duchy, the same acknowledgments that the
predecessors of the said Lady Anne had made." On the 7th of February,
1492, Anne was crowned at St. Denis; and next day, the 8th of February,
she made her entry in state into Paris, amidst the joyful and earnest
acclamations of the public. A sensible and a legitimate joy: for the
reunion of Brittany to France was the consolidation of the peace which,
in this same century, on the 17th of September, 1453, had put an end to
the Hundred Years' War between France and England, and was the greatest
act that remained to be accomplished to insure the definitive victory and
the territorial constitution of French nationality.

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