Women of Modern France | Page 4

she appropriated forty thousand
crowns allowed to Governor Lautrec of Milan for the payment of his
soldiers, and caused the execution of Samblancay, superintendent of
finances, who had been so unfortunate as to incur her displeasure. It
was Charles of Bourbon, who, with Marshal Lautrec, investigated the
episode of the forty thousand crowns and exposed the treachery and
perfidy of the mother of his king.
Finding that Bourbon intended to persist in his resistance to her
advances, Louise decided upon drastic measures of retaliation. With the
assistance of her chancellor (and tool), Duprat, she succeeded in having
withheld the salaries which were due to Bourbon because of the offices
held by him. As he took no notice of these deprivations, she next
proceeded to divest him of his estates by laying claim to them for
herself; she then proposed to Bourbon that, by accepting her hand in
marriage, he might settle the matter happily. The object of her
numerous schemes not only rejected this offer with contempt, but
added insult to injury by remarking: "I will never marry a woman
devoid of modesty." At this rebuff, Louise was incensed beyond
measure, and when Queen Claude suggested Bourbon's marriage to her
sister, Mme. Renée de France (a union to which Charles would have
consented gladly), the queen-mother managed to induce Francis I. to
refuse his consent.
After the death of Anne of Beaujeu, mother-in-law of Charles of
Bourbon, her estates were seized by the king and transferred to Louise

while the claim was under consideration by Parliament. When the
judges, after an examination of the records of the Bourbon estate,
remonstrated with Chancellor Duprat against the illegal transfer, he had
them put into prison. This rigorous act, which was by order of Louise,
weakened the courage of the court; when the time arrived for a final
decision, the judges declared themselves incompetent to decide, and in
order to rid themselves of responsibility referred the matter to the king's
council. This great lawsuit, which was continued for a long time,
eventually forced Charles of Bourbon to flee from France. Having
sworn allegiance to Charles V. of Spain and Henry VIII. of England
against Francis I., he was made lieutenant-general of the imperial
armies.
When Francis, captured at the battle of Pavia, was taken to Spain,
Louise, as regent, displayed unusual diplomatic skill by leaguing the
Pope and the Italian states with Francis against the Spanish king. When,
after nearly a year's captivity, her son returned, she welcomed him with
a bevy of beauties; among them was a new mistress, designed to
destroy the influence of the woman who had so often thwarted the
plans of Louise--the beautiful Françoise de Foix whom the king had
made Countess of Châteaubriant.
This new beauty was Anne de Pisseleu, one of the thirty children of
Seigneur d'Heilly, a girl of eighteen, with an exceptional education.
Most cunning was the trap which Louise had set for the king. Anne was
surrounded by a circle of youthful courtiers, who hung upon her words,
laughed at her caprices, courted her smiles; and when she rather
confounded them with the extent of the learning which--with a sort of
gay triumph--she was rather fond of showing, they pronounced her "the
most charming of learned ladies and the most learned of the charming."
The plot worked; Francis was fascinated, falling an easy prey to the
wiles of the wanton Anne. The former mistress, Françoise de Foix, was
discarded, and Louise, purely out of revenge and spite, demanded the
return of the costly jewels given by the king and appropriated them
herself.
The duty assigned to the new mistress was that of keeping Francis busy

with fêtes and other amusements. While he was thus kept under the
spell of his enchantress, he lost all thought of his subjects and the
welfare of his country and the affairs of the kingdom fell into the hands
of Louise and her chancellor, Duprat. The girl-mistress, Anne, was
married by Louise to the Duc d'Etampes whose consent was gained
through the promise of the return of his family possessions which, upon
his father's departure with Charles of Bourbon, had been confiscated.
The reign of Louise of Savoy was now about over; she had
accomplished everything she had planned. She had caused Charles of
Bourbon, one of the greatest men of the sixteenth century, to turn
against his king; and that king owed to her--his mother--his defeat at
Pavia, his captivity in Spain, and his moral fall. Spain, Italy, and France
were victims of the infamous plotting and disastrous intrigues of this
one woman whose death, in 1531, was a blessing to the country which
she had dishonored.
At the time of the marriage of Francis I. to Eleanor of Portugal (one of
the last acts of Louise), Europe was