Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886)/Chapter 1
(1491–1515.)
CHILDHOOD AND MARRIAGE.
When Louisa of Savoy, beautiful, accomplished, barely fifteen years old, was given in marriage to Charles of Orleans, Count of Angoulême, it can have seemed no brilliant alliance on her part. The bridegroom was twenty years older than the bride, of fallen fortunes, and banished from the Court of France. That he was a possible heir to the Crown can only have counted as a splendid piece of heraldry, for the young king, Charles VIII., was newly wedded to Anne of Brittany, and his sister's husband, the heir-presumptive, was a vigorous young man of nine-and-twenty, likely to live long and have many children.
These two young lives stood between the Crown and the Count of Angoulême. It was not likely that he, delicate, gentle, fastidious, should outlive them. But the Count's position as a possible heir made him an honourable match, though poor, for the girlish Princess of Savoy. Her father sanctioned the marriage gladly. Louisa's mother was dead, and he had children by his second wife. He was willing to marry his elder daughter honourably and without expense. On her marriage he gave with her a dowry of 35,000 livres—a small sum, considering that her mother had been a very wealthy heiress. But Philip of Savoy, with several children to endow, and a throne ever threatened by the surrounding kingdoms, had many uses for his money. The Count of Angoulême, for his part, assigned the Castles of Cognac and Romorantin to Louisa, and these were to remain to her as dower-houses in the event of her widowhood. Finally, all affairs being settled, Charles of Orleans, in the year 1491, was married to his youthful bride.
The Count went with his wife to live on his property in Angoulême. From the French Court he was debarred by the King's displeasure, for the reason that long ago he had joined the rebellion of Brittany. It was no punishment to Charles to live a country life. His gentle and quiet tastes, his benevolence, his gift for organization, all were employed and satisfied in the orderly routine of managing a great property. He had his reward in peaceful years and in the loving devotion of his tenantry. But such a life might easily have wearied a beautiful child of fifteen, exceedingly accomplished, a princess, brilliant, and fond of power. There was, however, in Louisa's nature a passionate capacity for devotion. This, in fact, is the key-note of her life. She fell in love, deeply and all-sufficingly, with her courteous, elderly husband: the banishment in which he shone delighted her; the delicate chivalry of his character won her passionate approval. At this age she must have been a beautiful girl, with aquiline features, in which the latent coarseness was as yet undeveloped, dark, with an ardent Italian air. She knew a little Latin, and was fond of quoting it; she was well and widely read in French, and could speak several modern languages; there were few better instructed princesses in Europe. Her manners at this time were gentle and submissive, for she had voluntarily bowed herself under the yoke of an impassioned reverence. The violent ambition of her later years was still unguessed and latent in her soul.
Charles and his bride spent the first year of their marriage in the Castle of Angoulême, and there, in the following spring, their eldest child was born. In the Journal in which, later on, Louisa noted the great events of her life, she thus records the date:—
"My daughter Margaret was born in the year 1492, the eleventh day of April, at two o'clock in the morning, that is to say, the tenth day, fourteen hours and ten minutes, counting after the fashion of the astronomers."
As the little girl grew out of babyhood, people noticed that her mother's aquiline features were softened in her face by the look and smile of her gentle father, and that in her character his delicate and benevolent nature qualified the love of learning and capacity for devotion which her mother gave her. More intense than he, more refined and unworldly than Louisa, the little Margaret displayed a singular and beautiful personality. The young Countess was very proud of her and, almost from her cradle, began to cultivate the sensitive intelligence of the child. But, while Margaret was still little more than a baby, a more important personage appeared upon the scene, one who henceforth should be the very centre of existence both to Margaret and to her mother.
"Francis, by the grace of God, King of France, and my pacific Cæsar, took his first experience of earthly light at Congnac, about ten hours after noon, the twelfth day of September 1494."
So triumphantly runs Louisa's journal. But the next entry sobers all that joy:—
"The first day of January 1496 I lost my husband."
An intermittent fever, common and fatal in those days of imperfect drainage, carried off the Count of Angoulême at forty, and left Louisa a widow in her twentieth year. For some weeks it appeared as though her two little children might be left utterly desolate, for, broken down with long nursing and a most bitter sorrow, the young Countess fell seriously ill. She was, however, too young, too vigorous, to die of grief. She recovered, finding in her children sufficient motive for existence. Retiring to her dower-house of Romorantin, Louisa busied herself in training Margaret. This girl she intended to become the most accomplished princess of her age. Madame de Chatillon, a lady of great learning, rank, and virtue, was engaged as governess to the young princess, and scholars of note were employed to instruct her in Latin, in philosophy, and in divinity. But if Louisa cared so well for her daughter, yet more absolutely was she engrossed by the future of her infant son. Her passionate heart, left empty by her husband's death, gave harbour to an unrestrained ambition, and her dreams began early to fulfil themselves. On the 6th April 1498 the young King died childless, and his childless brother-in-law, Louis, Duke of Orleans, succeeded him, under the title of Louis XII. These events made the little boy at Romorantin heir-presumptive to the throne of France.
But Louis was anxious to leave a nearer heir. He divorced his faithful, ugly wife, the crippled daughter of Louis XI., and espoused Anne of Brittany, the beautiful Queen Dowager, whom he had desired to marry in his early youth. Anne and Louisa were implacable at heart. The stern little Breton Queen was as obstinate as the Countess, but far more sedate: determined, ambitious, and secret. She had a great contempt for Louisa's violent aspirations; a very rigid Catholic, she looked with misliking on the free speech and wide reading of the young Countess of Angoulême. But King Louis was resolved to be friends with his handsome cousin and her children. It was, indeed, to Louisa's Castle of Romorantin that Anne repaired to await her first confinement. With what strenuous prayer and hope, and with what humiliating fear, that event was awaited, only those can understand who have sounded the deep, inexorable rivalry between these two women. On the 13th of October 1499 the child was born. It was a daughter, the Princess Claude of France. "Elle fut née en ma maison," writes Louisa in her diary. From that moment she determined the little girl should marry her boy Francis, and not some powerful foreign prince, who might forcibly break the Salic law. Naturally Anne was of a contrary opinion.
The Queen was young, was of Louise's own age, three-and-twenty. A son might be born to her to mock all Louisa's hopes and dreams. From this intense expectation neither one nor the other of these women was ever free. But the years went on, and no male child was given to Anne; then, one crucial morning, a son was born, but, writes Louisa in her journal, with an almost savage triumph, "he could not retard the exaltation of my Cæsar, for he had no life." Sharp anxiety and goading ambition had so changed by this time the gentle wife of Charles of Angoulême.
Louisa brought up her son as befitted a king. Her castle of Romorantin was scarcely large enough to hold the court and retinue of the young heir of France, and for this purpose the beautiful palace of Amboise was assigned to her by the King. As years went on, Louis grew to regard the young Count of Angoulême as his heir, and, despite the bitter jealousy of Queen Anne, he loved the boy, and treated him with care and kindness. He created Francis Duke of Valois; he consulted the child's taste with fatherly foresight; and when his young cousin came to court, Louis had the royal park filled with deer and game, so that Francis might not be debarred from his favourite pleasure of the chase.
Meanwhile, at Amboise, Francis was educated with the greatest nobles of France. Of these boy-companions, five, in especial, were to become conspicuous in the history of his life. Gaston de Foix, the King's nephew, "the thunderbolt of Italy" as people learned to call him, who, ten years later, in the flower of his youth, should perish in the moment of victory on the desolate Ravenna marshes. The light-hearted Bonnivet, Margaret's too daring lover, killed at Pavia. The brilliant and gay Philippe Brion, Sieur de Chabot, so often favoured and disgraced by Francis in later years. And, a more potent influence, Anne de Montmorency, the determined, stern, narrow-hearted boy, on whom his godmother, the Breton Queen, seemed to have bestowed her pure and relentless nature with her name. Lastly, the unfortunate Charles de Montpensier, the Bourbon cadet, whose passionate vindictive character and tragic Italian face betrayed the Gonzaga adventurer that doubled this French noble.
These boys were taught all things that befit young princes. Latin, courtly languages, hunting, the dance (music was as yet in embryo, a mere thrum of the lute or burr of the organ), jousting, tennis, tilting at the ring, fencing, and wrestling. At all their games there was one deeply interested looker on, one whom all strove to please, the Queen of the little court; this was Mademoiselle d’Angoulême.
At this time there was some talk of affiancing the little girl to the young Prince of Wales, afterwards Henry of England, eighth of the name. King Louis sent an embassy to the English court; Henry VII. despatched a special envoy to Paris; but though the English ambassador reported the little Princess "très belle et fort saige de son aage," nothing came of these negotiations. For Henry declared that though a daughter of Louis would be the alliance nearest to his heart, yet, while the King and Queen were still so young and vigorous, he could not consider Mademoiselle d'Angoulême as sister to the heir of France.
Nevertheless, with every day Francis became more evidently the heir, and at Plessis, on May 22nd, 1507, he married the little girl born at his mother's castle, in order to unite her inheritance of Brittany and Orleans with the crown. This was ample recognition, and yet the triumph of Louisa was not all sweetness, for we find her writing in her journal: "The 3rd August 1508, my son went from Amboise to live at court, and left me all alone."
Within the year the little Charles of Spain sent an embassy to King Louis, requesting the hand of Mademoiselle d'Angoulême. This would have been a far more brilliant alliance than the English match, and Louisa would gladly have given her consent. But the King refused. Perhaps he thought it dangerous to wed a French princess with the natural rival of France; very probably Anne, who still counted on Charles for some yet unborn daughter of her own, persuaded him not to break her heart and grant this second triumph to her rival. The heir of Spain was dismissed, and Queen Anne selected a very different bridegroom, more suitable in years, but not at all in spirit. This was Charles of Alençon, first Prince of the Blood, a duke with power of life and death in his duchy, almost a petty sovereign. He was a handsome, dull, inefficient youth of twenty, without ideas or presence, and of a brooding and jealous temper. There was, however, no ground for rejecting the choice of the Queen, eager to humiliate her insatiable rival. The Duke of Alençon was an honourable match for Mademoiselle d'Angoulême. Descended from that Charles I. of Valois who was made Count of Alençon by his brother Philip the Fair, Monsieur d'Alençon came of a house which for two centuries had been glorious and quasi-royal. And yet he was stupid and mean of spirit; a sad mate for the gay, brilliant, mystical girl he was to marry, whose tender radiance and smile of wistful rapture deserved a happier destiny. It was also a profound disappointment to Louisa that, having refused the King of Spain, her pearl of princesses should be given to a simple duke. Yet this came to pass—Margaret obediently suffering her dismal fate. So, for a while, mother and children were divided. Francis, living in impatient restraint at court; Louisa, filling her craving heart with infinite ambitions in her childless castle at Cognac; Margaret, unhappy, dispirited, drooping in her husband's palace at Alençon, far from the gaiety, the cultured intercourse, the love and happiness to which she had been accustomed all her life.
Margaret was now seventeen years old. She was not beautiful, but very charming. She was tall, graceful of carriage, slim and delicate in air. Her thick blonde hair was hidden away under a black coif; and this fashion gave a certain severity to her long pale face. The eyes, blue and expressive, smiled sweetly under arching brows. Her nose was the long, large nose of Francis, but more delicate and irregular in her, with a sort of ripple in it. She had a little, neatly rounded chin, and a very sweet mouth, with a wistful pathetic smile, well knowing the way "dire Nenny avec un doux sourire." Yet, despite her pensive countenance, she was—we have her word for it—"de moult joyeuse vie, quoique toutefois femme de bien."
At Alençon, alas! there was no joyous life. The Duke, gloomy, jealous, mediocre, interested merely in the details of his estate, was a respectable youth, but not the man to make a Margaret happy. She pursued her studies as the one means of escape from this irksome existence. Madame de Chatillon, her governess, had accompanied the young Duchess as first Lady of Honour. Under her direction, doubtless, Margaret began to give more and more of her attention to her favourite study of Divinity. Her mystical, indefinite mind was attracted towards religious speculation, and Madame de Chatillon was well acquainted with the New Ideas then already beginning to stir the soul of France. This lady was, in later years, suspected of Lutheranism, and it was said that she had secretly married the innovating Cardinal du Bellay. But as yet Lutheranism did not exist. She and her pupil, however, had gone forth to seek it.
Meanwhile, Louisa was perplexed with more earthly anxieties. In 1510 the nation became aware that a new heir might be expected to the Crown of France. These were months of exultation to Queen Anne, while Louisa understood how terribly all her ambitions would be overthrown should a royal prince be born. In October a little girl came into the world: Madame Renée de France. Then for a moment the anxiety of Louisa was appeased. But a worse trial was in store. The Queen never recovered that disappointment. Three years afterwards she died; and Louisa discovered that the death of her enemy had brought a new and terrible evil upon her. Nine months after the death of Anne, the King, who had mourned her with little less than frenzy, married Mary, the beautiful young sister of the English King. Louisa's hatred for this new rival, and her contempt for the King, are manifest even in the meagre lines of her diary.
"The 22nd September, King Louis XII., very old and feeble (fort antique et debile), 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 3rd day of November 1514, before eleven o'clock, I arrived at Paris, and the self-same day, without resting, I was advised to go and salute Queen Mary at Saint Denis, and I left Paris at three o'clock with a great number of gentlemen.
"The 5th of November 1514, Queen Mary was crowned at Saint Denis, and the sixth day made her entry into Paris."
Then the journal no longer chronicles the triumphs of a rival.
"The first day of November 1515, my son was King of France."