Children of France

Front matter

Glass_

Book_

BEQUEST OF

Contents

CHAP. PAGE

I. Children of the Renaissance . . . i

II. The Children of Francois I . .18

Chapter I

CHILDREN OF THE RENAISSANCE HE rise of the Renaissance in France brought

1 into prominence a host of personalities, each with a special claim to remembrance, appealing strongly to the imagination of to-day.

Out of the crowd of arresting figures woven into that rich and varied tapestry those of two children stand forth clearly, a brother and sister, Francois and Marguerite d’Angouleme. Their memory burns still with a steady flame outshining others, full of the attraction that will always belong to those who ab¬ sorbed and gave forth the newborn spirit of the hour.

Emerging out of the grim confusions of the Middle Ages, with the light of the Renaissance spirit shining full upon them, the brother and sister were fitted in every fibre of their natures to reflect the dawning splendour, to bear a part in the great drama of their day. They carried within them the seeds of the new existence in all its colour, its fascination, its divine energy.

The record of Marguerite stands alone in history.

i

With the lapse of four centuries the story of her love for her brother rises into a beauty and completeness that isolates her memory from all the clamour of the time by a hundred distinctive touches.

The children’s parentage was royal, for their father was Charles d’Orleans, the descendant of Charles V of France, and their mother was Louise de Savoie, the daughter of the due de Savoie and Marguerite de Bourbon. The family home was the ancient Castle of Cognac, in the enchanting country of the Charente. Thither Charles d’Orleans had brought his bride of twelve years old, and there, in 1492, when she was sixteen, her first child was born, Marguerite, who was to write her name in golden characters on the records of her time. Two years afterwards, in 1494, came the little son : “ My King, my Lord, my Caesar,” his mother calls him in her Journal. This child was destined to reign as Francois I of France.

Marguerite and Francis grew up in the tranquillity of home. Their cousin, Charles VIII, was on the throne, but their father and mother never went to Court. The Due d’Angouleme had taken part in a treasonable rising in Navarre, which shut him out for ever from the royal favour, and he was expected to live in retirement at Cognac or Angouleme. His death in 1496 left Louise a young widow, with the care of the two children. Their guardian was Louis d’Orleans, afterwards Louis XII of France.

Louise de Savoie cherished great ambitions for her boy. From his birth she saw him in imagination on the throne of France. In the eyes of the nation Francis had only a slender chance of such an inherit¬ ance. His cousin, Charles VIII, was a young man, married to a young wife, Anne de Bretagne, and a succession of royal children 1 came and went, so that for years there was constantly either rejoicing for a birth, or mourning for a baby’s death at Court. 2

Of all the group, only one is clearly seen, the Dauphin Charles Orlando, who died at three years old.

“ A beautiful child,” writes an old chronicler, “ and audacious in speech, not the least afraid of things that other children fear.” He was born at Plessis, and held at the font by St. Frangois de Paule, ” the Holy Man of Calabria,” an unusual honour,f or the Children of France hitherto had been given royal god-parents. The King saw all his four children buried at Tours. Their beautiful Renaissance tomb may now be seen there. The King’s outward signs of grief for Charles Orlando soon ceased. “ But the Queen of France, called Anne, lamented the death of her son a long time, as much as was possible for a woman to do.”

Anne de Bretagne, the Queen first of Charles VIII, and afterwards of Louis XII, is closely linked with Louise de Savoie in the records of history. They were born and married in the same year, and Anne’s first Dauphin was born within six months of Louise’s little Marguerite. To rear children, in those days of

1 Children of France were the sons, daughters, grandchildren, nephews, and nieces of the King. All other members of the royal family were simply called Princes of the Blood. The Children of France had the right to sign themselves by their first name, followed by the words “ de France."

a The children of Charles VIII were as follows :—

(1) Charles Orlando, bom io October, 1492; died 6 December, 1495 -

(2) Charles, born 8 September, 1496 ; died 3 October, 1496.

(3) Francis, born and died in 1497.

(4) Anne, born in 1498, and died as an infant.

ignorance and superstition, was a precarious task, and in this Anne had little success. She lost all the four children of Charles VIII and again three little sons by Louis XII. Two daughters of the second marriage lived, but daughters were of small account, and as years went on, Anne had the bitterness of seeing the son of Louise, the beautiful, high-spirited Francois, brought up in the expectation of inheriting the crown. 1

Louise de Savoie, brilliant as a stateswoman, great in love of art and letters, is one of the dazzling visions of the French Renaissance, but the real appeal of her character lies in her relation with her children. They engrossed her thoughts and filled her days. At a time when it was the custom of courts to confide the care of children to strangers, she kept her girl and boy tenaciously at her side.

The girl, Marguerite, possessed a rare combination of gifts, an amazing intellect, linked with a com¬ pelling charm. The key-note of her character was love, a love which chose and never altered its object all through life. Her devotion to her brother Francois is one of the outstanding beacons of history, one of the illuminating facts that will always make under¬ standing possible. The early love seems very natural. Even to-day the boyish figure of Francois strikes on the imagination with a gay and irresistible charm. But nothing that happened in after life ever shook Marguerite’s faithful adoration. Through the mists of the ages it keeps its clearness and its fragrance undimmed. She set herself to love greatly, with the

1 Francis succeeded his cousin, Louis XII, as King of France, as great-great-grandson of Charles V, through Louis, due d’Orleans, his second son.

THE DAUPHIN CHARLES ORLANDO, SON OF CHARLES VIII

From a drawing by Jean Bourdichon ? 1494 love that strengthens in forgiveness. “ To love God, one must first love a human creature perfectly,” was a saying of hers in later years, and towards the achieve¬ ment of this ideal her spirit spent itself.

Both children possessed happy temperaments. Full of eager enterprising life in that great flowering time of the world, all the interest and enchantment of the hour gathers round them. Stars in the rising brilliance of the new France, they seem to belong both to a far past and to the thoughts of to-day. In much that they said and did it is possible to feel the absolute understanding of contemporaries, and the centuries fade away in a flood of personal sympathy. At another moment they have drifted far away into the shadows, and great gulfs open between the modern mind and those of these children of the past. They hold in remembrance a host of grim traditions, for¬ gotten by the world of to-day, and even in their ancient standards of glory there is an element that finds no echo any more.

The sudden death of the young King Charles VIII, killed by an accidental blow at his Castle of Amboise, caused a change in the lives of the Angouleme children. Louis d’Orleans, their guardian, was now Louis XII. He caused the family to live at the Castle of Blois, where he was often with them, and treated the little girl and boy as his own children. After a time his manner changed, for he became suspicious of Louise, not entirely without reason, and easily assumed the tyrant. To Louise, self-willed and independent of spirit, the King’s interference was nearly intolerable. She never forgave Louis these years of anxiety, when she lived in desperate fear that her children would be taken from her. Night and day she kept them within sight, causing both boy and girl to sleep in her room, and not suffering them to go even to Mass without her. Her sense of danger was increased in 1499, when King Louis married her rival, the widowed Anne de Bretagne, making her again Queen of France.

The Castle of Amboise was finally chosen by Louis as the home of the Angouleme family. It lies six leagues from Tours, and is built on the summit of a rock. Already grey with age and full of secrets, the place formed a fit setting for the flowering and development of the girl and boy who were to prove so striking a link between the old feudal world and the new ideals.

Under the united adoration of his mother and his sister, the boy Francois stood a slender chance of growing up unspoiled. His early days were full of the sense of being a divinely chosen being, but tutors were probably able to give him a juster view of life and of his own importance. His first lessons were given him by his mother, but as his powers expanded, scholars were engaged, among others Christopher Longueuil, who was original enough to prefer France to Italy, and insisted in teaching Francois French history instead of Roman. There was a storm of dis¬ approval from the learned pedants of the day, but Louise approved of the change. A copy-book filled by the childish hand of Francois is still extant, con¬ taining a scrawl of jumbled facts and a list of the Kings of France.

Marguerite soon outstripped her brother in scholar¬ ship. Everything came easily to her quick brain, and she learned with little effort Spanish, Italian, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, studying also philosophy and divinity. The children were surrounded with distinguished teachers and philosophers. It sounds a little dull and stiff, but both girl and boy were gifted with a faculty for light-hearted enjoyment, a radiant quality of diffusing warmth and light through all their surroundings. It is known that Marguerite played with dolls in company with a little girl named Frangoise, with whom the boy Francois fell in love.

In order that Francois might not study alone with his sister, a group of little boys came to Amboise to share his lessons and his games. Among these children were Gaston de Foix, the King’s nephew, who died at the battle of Ravenna; Charles de Montpensier, the magnificent Bourbon who fell at the siege of Rome; Anne de Montmorency, Connetable of France, who died at the battle of St. Denis. In turn these shining names cross the stage of history, each bearing some tragic or heroic memory.

A very clear picture of French boyhood, with all its knightly aspirations four hundred years ago, is given in the story of another playmate, Fleurange, " Le Jeune Aventureux.”

“Now history saith that when Le Jeune Aventureux was eight or nine years old, and dwelling in the house of Monsieur his father at Sedan, this young man, seeing he was of an age to ride a little horse . . . took counsel with himself that he would go and see the world and repair to the Court of the French King, Louis XII, who was then the greatest prince in Christendom. Le Jeune Aventureux, being come to Blois, sent forward one Tourneville to announce his arrival to the King, who was well pleased.

“ ‘ My son,’ quoth he, ‘ you are very welcome. You are too young to serve us, and therefore I send you to Monsieur d’Angouleme at Amboise, since he is of your age, and I think that you will get on well together.’ ‘ I will go whithersoever you may command me ; but am I old enough to serve you, and go to the wars if you desire it ? ’ Then spake his liege, ‘ My friend, your courage is good, but I should be afraid that your legs would fail you on the road. All the same, I promise you that you shall go, and when I start I will send you tidings.’ The next day the child was sent to Frangois at Amboise.

“ The Sieur d’Angouleme and Le JeuneAventureux, being almost of the same age and height, were speedily good comrades one with another, and whoever lacked good counsel would soon have found it betwixt these two gentlemen.”

A gallant pair of boys they made, absorbed with the amusements, the sports, the quarrels of their age. Le Jeune Aventureux describes some of the games. The boys played at escaigne, a kind of Italian tennis, and at gross boule, also an Italian game played with an air-ball. They shot with bows and arrows and built little castles and fortifications. In defending and attacking these, desperate battles were fought, often ending in real blows.

Patriotism in its modern form had hardly begun to exist. The ideals of knighthood, as expressed in single-hearted devotion to a liege lord, formed the foundation of the boys’ training, and knightly exercises their chief occupation. Fleurange, in later years, recorded his impression of his friend as a boy: “ I think there never was Prince who had more various pastimes than my Lord, nor was any fed with better doctrines than those which his mother gave him.”

Frangois had an invincible spirit of enterprise and a headlong courage in all these activities.

All his life he never feared personal risk. A dozen times he was nearly killed. His horse ran away with him when he was eight. He was dangerously struck with a stone when playing in the garden at Fontevralt. In the lists at Tournelles he was severely wounded in the hand. His mother left a record of these and other accidents which befell him in childhood. But she had done more than turn the minds of her children to knightly exploit. She realized that the development of the intellect was a greater aim. She surrounded the children with great Italian artists, architects, and sculptors, and with a host of illustrious artificers in the lesser crafts. Literature opened her doors to the eagerly receptive minds. That of Marguerite was peculiarly fitted to absorb the new influences. One of the greatest women in a century of great women, she has been honoured and sung.

“ Your royal Marguerite/' said a poet of the day, “ has always been the road and the path of those who have lost their way, the door at which they may knock.”

All her life exquisite things were said concerning her. “ At fifteen,” says Sainte Marthe, “ the spirit of God began to be manifested and appeared in her eyes, in her face, in her walk, in her speech, and, generally, in all her actions.” Erasmus said she had “ an invincible force of soul.” She was “ L’Elixir des Valois ,” “ La Perle des Valois ,” “ La Marguerite des Marguerites ,” and most expressive of all is the saying of an old chronicler: " She was born smiling, and held out her little hand to each comer.”

There is no portrait of her as a child, but it is known that in spite of dreamy blue eyes, beautiful fair hair, and a mouth made for wistful smiles, she had no beauty of feature. Tall and slender in build, her wonderful presence bespoke originality and character, and all descriptions agree in giving her an infinite and magic grace. She possessed, besides, the happiest gift of the gods, a sweet, humorous nature.

Both Marguerite and Francois were summoned to take a definite place at the Court of Louis XII when Francois was fourteen. “ My son/’ writes Louise de Savoie in her Journal, “ went from Amboise to live at Court and left me all alone.” It is easy to imagine the element of light and laughter the brilliant pair of children brought with them to the austere Court of Louis and Anne. There was one little royal child there already, the King’s daughter Claude. 1 This child may be said to have been born the bride of Frangois, then five years old, so settled was the matter in the mind of the King, who saw in the match a solution of future difficulties, should he die without a son. Both mothers opposed the idea, but the King never wavered in his intention. He said he would “ marry his mice to rats of his own barn,” and the two mothers’ protests were unavailing.

Little Claude is but a shadowy personality. She is seen so seldom in sumptuous surroundings that her formal betrothal to Frangois when she was six should find record. On 21 May, 1506, a brilliant

1 The children of Louis XII were as follows :—

(1) Claude, born 14 October, 1499 ; married Francis 1 ,1514 ; died 20 July, 1524.

(2) A son born about 1500, and died an infant.

(3) A son born 20 January, 1502, and died an infant.

(4) Renee, born 25 October, 1510; married the due de Ferrare, 1528 ; died 15 June, 1575.

(5) A son born 21 January, 1512, and died an infant.

company assembled in the great hall of the Castle of Plessis-les-Tours. The King and Queen, all the Court, all the deputies from the provinces, and an array of cardinals and bishops were there. The little fiancee was held in the arms of Gaston de Foix, her first cousin. The Chancellor read the marriage contract, and every one present swore to uphold it. Louise, the bridegroom’s mother, shed tears of joy when she heard the terms of the agreement, which fully recog¬ nized Francis as the heir of France, and the Queen, who heartily disliked the whole connexion, could scarcely conceal her disapproval. A series of fetes and tournaments followed. Little Claude is described as good, not beautiful, wise, simple, sweet, straight¬ forward, very pious—a wonderful list of virtues for a little girl of six.

From his earliest boyhood Francois had the taste for sport of all kinds that seems to have been an hereditary passion in several generations of French Kings. To provide for the boy’s pleasure in hunting and hawking huge sums were spent. Most of his leisure time was passed in the saddle. At fifteen Louis XII created him due de Valois. He could not help loving the boy with all his eager en¬ thusiasms. But he saw with misgiving, for the future of the Kingdom, the reckless extravagance of his ideas.

“ Ce gros gars gatera tout ,” said he, noting the total disregard of his heir for the dull virtues of economy and foresight. But Louis himself had little consideration for the pockets of his subjects where his own object was concerned. Though Charles VIII had accomplished nothing by his Italian campaign, Louis XII followed his example and set forth to the conquest of Milan.

His people paid dearly for the whim. These Italian wars, so disastrous to France, would naturally form the great interest and excitement of the Courts of Queen Anne and of Louise de Savoie. To the little group of children, Claude de France, and her cousins, Marguerite and Frangois, life would seem a perpetual pageant of armies taking the field, of knights riding forth to the fray, or coming home in triumph with thrilling stories of battle and siege. Uncertain, hazardous, full of colour and change, the glories of life had always been those of war, and the Renaissance had not yet taught a different lesson. Sometimes the grim aspects of the struggle would be brought very close, in rumours of wounds, deaths, and captivities. To the children it was all a natural and inevitable course, for peace was unknown.

Negotiations for the marriage of Marguerite began before she was eight. Henry VII of England, Arthur, Prince of Wales, Henry VIII, and the heir of Spain were all in the list of possible husbands. At twelve years old the child herself flatly refused the English King. She was thinking more of playmates than suitors. A child still, but growing into an enchanting girlhood, she was the centre of the knightly group of boys at Amboise, all full of eager life and boyish devotion.

At seventeen she was married to Charles d’Alengon, first Prince of the Blood, an estimable but very dull young man. It is characteristic that at the wedding the figure of Francois, then fifteen years old, is more clearly seen than that of the bride. At the banquet he occupied the chief place at table, at the head of the Princes of the Blood. After the feast and the dance the ladies went out on the balcony to witness the jousting, which was designed solely to provide a triumph for Francois. He appeared in the lists dressed in cloth of gold, his escort following all clad in yellow silk. The King himself wore this yellow uniform and followed in the boy’s train as one of his retainers ! Next day Francois reappeared in white satin, and his sword-play was greatly admired. Very little is recorded of the bride, Marguerite, on this occasion.

In May, 1514, the marriage of Frangois to Claude de France was celebrated very quietly at the Palace of St. Germain. There was no repetition of the mag¬ nificence shown at the betrothal. The event made no break in the life of the young man. It did not even disturb his habits for a day. There was no romance or excitement about the affair, for the little delicate girl, plain, lame, and fat, had been assigned as his bride all her life. She is credited with a grace a parley , which went far in making up for lack of beauty. She had just lost her mother, Anne de Bretagne, and every one at Court, including the bride, was heavily draped in mourning. Francois wore black damask bordered with velvet. Very few were present at the ceremony. Even Louise de Savoie was not there to see her idol married. The day’s routine was scarcely interrupted, for, after the service, Frangois went hunting as usual. He was indifferent to the whole affair. His wedding presents to Claude were neither interesting nor princely. They were a four-post bed, a bolster, and a counterpane. Claude contributed the top of a bed, with trimmed curtains of white damask.

The bride went back to her home at Blois in a few days, and her husband returned to his amusements in Paris. He was with difficulty persuaded to spend a fortnight with Claude late in the summer.

Marguerite, married to a man without ideas, found life very dreary at her new home, in the Castle of Alengon, but it is difficult to believe that her spirits suffered eclipse. Never was anyone so full of the joy of life, so intensely alive to the pleasure and interest of the moment. Now she pursued her studies, and grew absorbed in the double rays of the new light—the great shaft of glory that meant the Re¬ naissance, the great shaft of enlightenment that meant the Reformation. With Marguerite religious belief was never a definite thing ; it was not an active and ardent faith in one creed, but a general leaning of the soul upon the mystical consolation of God. Her liberty-loving mind turned by instinct to the freedom of the new thought. Lutheranism did not, at this time, suggest revolt. It was an interesting study among the most cultivated men and women of the day.

She had always loved children, but no child came to brighten the grim silences of the mediaeval fortress she called her home. News of events at the Courts of Blois and Amboise would form the chief interest of her days. She must have suffered, with her mother Louise, all the feverish alternations of fear and relief connected with the births of the children of Louis XII. The fortunes of Frangois were constantly in the balance. But the Queen, Anne de Bretagne, died, leaving no living son. Her husband, Louis, was frantic with grief. He arranged an impressive funeral, ordered the grave at St. Denis to be made large enough for two, as he should soon join her, and within nine months married a sixteen-year-old English Princess, Mary, the pretty sister of Henry VIII. This marriage, with all its possibilities, was a crushing blow to Louise, who records in her J ournal:

“ The 22nd September, King Louis XII, very old and senile (he was fifty-two), went out of Paris to meet his young wife, Queen Mary. The 9th October was held the amorous wedding of Louis, King of France, and Mary of England.’’

The anxieties of Louise on behalf of her boy were, however, nearly at an end. The King’s health finally gave way under a complete change of habits and the new round of gaieties and fatigues exacted by the young bride. He lived only ten weeks, and then, as he had predicted, was laid beside Anne de Bretagne in the splendid Renaissance tomb still to be seen at St. Denis.

“ The first day of January, 1516,” writes Louise, “ my son was King of France.”

The boyhood of Francois was over, but for years he still loved as much as ever light and laughter and all the happiness of fresh, irresponsible youth. His sunny nature elicited sunshine in others, demanding freedom, enthusiasm, and j oy.

One last scene, belonging in its whole spirit to the ancient hazardous impulses of chivalry, forms a fitting close to the story of his boyhood, though it happened when he was twenty, and had just become King.

A great company had assembled at the Castle of Amboise to celebrate a royal marriage. Frangois thought of nothing but how to amuse his guests from day to day. He ordered his huntsmen to take alive in the forest a wild boar of four years old, and to bring it to the Castle.

The animal, a large and savage beast, was duly captured, and arrived at the Castle enclosed in an oak box bound with iron. Francois intended a per¬ sonal combat with the boar, but was dissuaded by the entreaties of his mother and wife. He conceived the idea of erecting stuffed images to represent men, in the courtyard, to see if the released boar would instantly attack them. The galleries surrounding the court were packed with onlookers, and every entrance carefully blocked up to prevent the boar dashing in among the spectators. The released boar at once flew up to the stuffed figures and began to tear them to pieces. For a long time this comedy continued. Then the animal, wearying of the unequal game, began to run round the courtyard. One of the entrances to the gallery was insufficiently blocked up; the boar rushed into it, overturning the barriers, and in a moment was in the crowded gallery. The crowd was so great that the terrified and defenceless spectators could not run away. A dangerous panic was the result. The boar noticed no one in the crowd. It made straight for King Frangois, who, from his position, could easily have saved himself by springing into his mother’s room from the gallery, but nothing was farther from his intention. He stood out alone, facing the beast, “ to see what it would do.” Five or six men rushed forward to stand between the King and the infuriated boar. The King forbade their interference. He drew his sword as the beast sprang upon him, and ran him through the body, to the wonder and admiration of the whole Court. Primitive in his instincts, Frangois loved to play such a part, to dominate, like a hero of old, the whole scene of action. He was made for all the hazards, the adventure, the movement of life.

Imagination catches the flying figures of his “ Petite Bande ” the company of happy girls with undimmed spirits who were his chosen comrades, hunting with him in the royal forests, dining at his table and charm¬ ing him with their careless gaiety. High spirits and wit were the only necessary qualifications for a member of the " Petite Bande .” But Frangois also had a grave strain in his nature that set him apart. At his lightest he was every inch a king. “ He is of a presence so royal/' says an old writer, “ that without knowing him, or even having seen his portrait, there is not one stranger who would not say when he saw him : * That is the King.' ”

Chapter II

F RANCOIS was King. As if the youth of the world were come again, there stirred a freshness in the air of France, a new impetus on all activities. No life in the kingdom was as transformed as that of Marguerite, the King’s sister. From the seclusion of Alent^on, from the drear dissatisfaction of her married life, she was called to the Palace of Blois, to the side of her brother, not to take a subordinate place, but to play the role of Queen in the most sumptuous and brilliant Court ever known.

Fran?ois may be said to have been the first French King to recognize the power of women, and to admit them not only to his companionship, but to his councils in great affairs. In the past, with some brilliant exceptions, the women of the Court had been shadows. Now the door of political life stood open, and they became moving spirits. Francois loved the company of women. He would not do without it. He said a Court without women was a Court without a garden, a garden without roses.