A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Louisa, of Savoy
LOUISA,
Of Savoy, Countess of Angoulême, wife of Charles, Duke of Orleans, and mother of Francis the First, who succeeded to the throne of France in 1515. Immediately on his accession, he raised Angoulême into a duchy from motives of filial affection. Louisa had been eminently beautiful, and even then, time had diminished her charms but little, while the gifts of nature were carefully improved and embellished by cultivation. Gifted with strong talents, and a mind active, vigorous, penetrating, and decisive, she aimed at the acquisition of power, but, unhappily for the nation, her virtues were overbalanced by her vices; her passions were strong and impetuous, and to their gratification she sacrificed all a woman should hold dear; vain, avaricious, intriguing, jealous, and implacable, she thwarted the best concerted plans of her son, and occasioned the greatest distress to the nation.
After she had by her misconduct occasioned her son Francis to lose that valuable part of his possessions, the Duchy of Milan, and provoked a coalition against him of the Kings of England and France and the Duke of Bourbon, she became, it appeared, sensible of her errors.
Francis was at first successful in repelling the confederate princes, which encouraged him to attempt, in person, the recovery of the Milanese; in vain did his mother and his wisest ministers dissuade him from it; he departed, leaving the duchess regent of the kingdom. After the battle of Pavia, at which he had lost his army and his liberty, he addressed the following note to his mother:—"Madame, all is lost except our honour." The captivity of the king and the loss of a flourishing army, added to a discontent prevailing throughout the kingdom, seemed to threaten a general insurrection. In this trying emergency, the magnanimity of Louisa was eminently displayed, and the kingdom, which her passions had endangered, her abilities were exerted to save. She assembled, at Lyons, the princes of the blood, the governors of the provinces, and the notables of the realm, who generously resolved to ransom immediately the officers and soldiers taken at Pavia. The army and garrisons were recruited, and enabled to repel the Imperialists, while Louisa conciliated the favour of the King of England, whom she disengaged from the confederacy; and to her mediation Francis acknowledged himself indebted for his liberty, which he recovered in March, 1626. The terms of his liberation by the emperor were so exorbitant that he never intended to fulfil them, and the Pope absolved him from his oath.
Consequently, hostilities continued, till Margaret of Austria and the Duchess of Angoulême met at Cambray, and settled the terms of pacification, whence the peace was called the "Ladies' Peace." Louisa died, 1571. In obedience to her counsels, Francis completed, after her death, her favourite project of annexing the Duchy of Brittany to the crown.