Women of Modern France | Page 2

to succeed. In politics much severe blame and reproach have been
heaped upon her--she is made responsible for breaking treaties, for
activity in all intrigues, participating in and inciting to civil and foreign
wars, encouraging and sanctioning assassinations and massacres,
championing the Machiavelian policy and practising it at every
opportunity.
It has been the aim of this history of French women to present the
results rather than the actual happenings of their lives, and these have
been gathered from the most authoritative and scholarly publications on
the subject, to which the writer herewith wishes to give all credit.

Hugo Paul Thieme.
_University of Michigan._
Chapter I
Woman in politics
French women of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries,
when studied according to the distinctive phases of their influence, are
best divided into three classes: those queens who, as wives, represented
virtue, education, and family life; the mistresses, who were instigators
of political intrigue, immorality, and vice; and the authoresses and
other educated women, who constituted themselves the patronesses of
art and literature.
This division is not absolute by any means; for we see that in the
sixteenth century the regent-mother (for example, Louise of Savoy and
Catherine de' Medici), in extent of influence, fills the same position as
does the mistress in the eighteenth century; though in the former period
appears, in Diana of Poitiers, the first of a long line of ruling
mistresses.
Queen-consorts, in the sixteenth as in the following centuries, exercised
but little influence; they were, as a rule, gentle and obedient
wives--even Catherine, domineering as she afterward showed herself to
be, betraying no signs of that trait until she became regent.
The literary women and women of spirit and wit furthered all
intellectual and social development; but it was the mistresses--those
great women of political schemes and moral degeneracy--who were
vested with the actual importance, and it must in justice to them be said
that they not infrequently encouraged art, letters, and mental expansion.
Eight queens of France there were during the sixteenth century, and
three of these may be accepted as types of purity, piety, and goodness:
Claude, first wife of Francis I.; Elizabeth of France, wife of Charles IX.;
and Louise de Vaudemont, wife of Henry III. These queens, held up to

ridicule and scorn by the depraved followers of their husbands'
mistresses, were reverenced by the people; we find striking contrasts to
them in the two queens-regent, Louise of Savoy and Catherine de'
Medici, who, in the period of their power, were as unscrupulous and
brutal, intriguing and licentious, jealous and revengeful, as the most
wanton mistresses who ever controlled a king. In this century, we find
two other remarkable types: Marguerite d'Angoulême, the bright star of
her time; and her whose name comes instantly to mind when we speak
of the Lady of Angoulême--Marguerite de Navarre, representing both
the good and the doubtful, the broadest sense of that untranslatable
term _femme d'esprit_.
The first of the royal French women to whom modern woman owes a
great and clearly defined debt was Anne of Brittany, wife of Louis XII.
and the personification of all that is good and virtuous. To her belongs
the honor of having taken the first step toward the social emancipation
of French women; she was the first to give to woman an important
place at court. This precedent she established by requesting her state
officials and the foreign ambassadors to bring their wives and
daughters when they paid their respects to her. To the ladies themselves,
she sent a "royal command," bidding them leave their gloomy feudal
abodes and repair to the court of their sovereign.
Anne may be said to belong to the transition period--that period in
which the condition of slavery and obscurity which fettered the women
of the Middle Ages gave place to almost untrammelled liberty. The
queen held a separate court in great state, at Blois and Des Tournelles,
and here elegance, even magnificence, of dress was required of her
ladies. At first, this unprecedented demand caused discontent among
men, who at that time far surpassed women in elaborateness of costume
and had, consequently, been accustomed to the use of their surplus
wealth for their own purposes. Under Anne's influence, court life
underwent a complete transformation; her receptions, which were
characterized by royal splendor, became the centre of attraction.
Anne of Brittany, the last queen of France of the Middle Ages and the
first of the modern period, was a model of virtuous conduct, conjugal

fidelity, and charity. Having complete control over her own immense
wealth, she used it largely for beneficent purposes; to her
encouragement much of the progress of art and literature in France was
due. Hers was an example that many of the later queens endeavored to
follow, but it cannot be said that they