1453. René had the confidence of Charles VII., and is said to have initiated the reduction of the men-at-arms set on foot by the king, with whose military operations against the English he was closely associated. He entered Rouen with him in November 1449, and was also with him at Formigny and Caen. After his second marriage with Jeanne de Laval, daughter of Guy XIV., count of Laval, and Isabel of Brittany, René took a less active part in public affairs, and devoted himself more to artistic and literary pursuits. The fortunes of his house declined in his old age. The duke of Calabria, after repeated misfortunes in Italy, was offered the crown of Aragon in 1467, but died, apparently by poison, at Barcelona on the 16th of December 1470; the duke's eldest son Nicholas perished in 1473, also under suspicion of poisoning; René's daughter Margaret was a refugee from England, her son Prince Edward was murdered in 1471, and she herself became a prisoner, to be rescued by Louis XI. in 1476. His only surviving male descendant was then René II., duke of Lorraine, son of his daughter Yolande, comtesse de Vaudémont, who was gained over to the party of Louis XI., who suspected the king of Sicily of complicity with his enemies, the duke of Brittany and the Constable Saint-Pol. René retired to Provence, and in 1474 made a will by which he left Bar to his grandson René II., duke of Lorraine; Anjou and Provence to his nephew Charles, count of Le Maine. Louis seized Anjou and Bar, and two years later sought to compel the king of Sicily to exchange the two duchies for a pension. The offer was rejected, but further negotiations assured the lapse to the crown of the duchy of Anjou, and the annexation of Provence was only postponed until the death of the count of Le Maine. René died on the 10th of July 1480, his charities having earned for him the title of “the good.” He founded an order of chivalry, the Ordre du Croissant, which was anterior to the royal foundation of St Michael, but did not survive René.
The king of Sicily's fame as an amateur of painting has led to the attribution to him of many old paintings in Anjou and Provence, in many cases simply because they bear his arms. These works are generally in the Flemish style, and were probably executed under his patronage and direction, so that he may be said to have formed a school of the fine arts in sculpture, painting, gold work and tapestry. Two of the most famous works formerly attributed to René are the triptych, the “Burning Bush,” in the cathedral of Aix, showing portraits of René and his second wife, Jeanne de Laval, and an illuminated Book of Hours in the Bibliothéque nationale, Paris. The “Burning Bush” was in fact the work of Nicolas Froment, a painter of Avignon. Among the men of letters attached to his court was Antoine de la Sale, whom he made tutor to his son, the duke of Calabria. He encouraged the performance of mystery plays; on the performance of a mystery of the Passion at Saumur in 1462 he remitted four years of taxes to the town, and the representations of the Passion at Angers were carried out under his auspices. He exchanged verses with his kinsman, the poet Charles of Orleans. The best of his poems is the idyl of Regnault and Jeanneton, representing his own courtship of Jeanne de Laval. Le Livre des tournois, a book of ceremonial, and the allegorical romance, Conqueste qu'un chevalier nommé le Cuer d'amour espris feist d'une dame appelée Doulce Mercy, with other works ascribed to him, were perhaps dictated to his secretaries, or at least compiled under his direction. His Œuvres were published by the comte de Quatrebarbes (4 vols., Paris and Angers, 1845~46).
See A. Lecoy de la Marche, Le Roi René (2 vols., 1875); A. Vallet de Viriville, in the Nouvelle Biographie générale, where there is some account of the MSS. of his works; and j. Renouvier, Les Peintres et enlumineurs du roi René (Montpellier, 1857).
RENÉE OF FRANCE (1510–1575), second daughter of Louis XII. and Anne of Brittany, was born at Blois on the 25th of October 1510. After being betrothed successively to Gaston de Foix, Charles of Austria (the future emperor Charles V.), his brother Ferdinand, Henry VIII. of England, and the elector Joachim II. of Brandenburg, she married in 1528 Hercules of Este, son of the duke of Ferrara, who succeeded his father six years later. Renée's court became a rendezvous of men of letters and a refuge for the persecuted French Calvinists. She received Clément Marot and Calvin at her court, and finally embraced the reformed religion. Her husband, however, who viewed these proceedings with disfavour, banished her friends, took her children from her, threw her into prison, and eventually made her abandon at any rate the outward forms of Calvinism. After his death in 1559, Renée returned to France and turned her duchy of Montargis into a centre of Protestant propaganda. During the wars of religion she was several times molested by the Catholic troops, and in 1562 her château was besieged by her son-in-law, the duke of Guise. She died at Montargis.
See B. Fontana, Renata di Francia (Rome, 1889 seq.); and E. Rodocanachi, Renée de France (Paris, 1896).
RENEVIER, EUGÈNE (1831–), Swiss geologist, was born at Lausanne on the 26th of March 1831. In 1857 he became professor of geology and palaeontology in the university at Lausanne. He is distinguished for his researches on the geology and palaeontology of the Alps, on which subjects he published numerous papers in the proceedings of the scientific societies in Switzerland and France. With F. J. Pictet he wrote a memoir on the Fossiles du terrain aptien de la Perle-du-Rhone (1854). In 1894 he was appointed president of the Swiss Geological Commission, and also of the International Geological Congress held that year at Zürich, in the previous meetings of which he had taken a prominent part. He published a noteworthy Tableau des terrains sédimentaires (1874); and a second more elaborate edition, accompanied by an explanatory article Chronographe géologique, was issued in 1897 as a supplement to the Report of the Zürich Congress. This new table was printed on coloured sheets, the colours for each geological system corresponding with those adopted on the International geological map of Europe.
RENFREW, a royal, municipal and police burgh and county town of Renfrewshire, Scotland, near the southern bank of the Clyde, 7 m. W. by N. of Glasgow, via Cardonald, by the Glasgow & South-Western and Caledonian railways (5 m. by road). Pop. (1891) 6777; (1901) 9296. Industries include shipbuilding (the construction of dredgers and floating docks is a speciality), engineering, dyeing, weaving, chemicals and cabinetmaking. The Clyde trust has constructed a large dock here. Renfrew belongs to the Kilmarnock district group of parliamentary burghs (with Kilmarnock, Dumbarton, Rutherglen and Port Glasgow). Robert III. gave a charter in 1396, but it was a burgh (Renifry) at least 250 years earlier. About 1160 Walter Fitzalan, the first high steward of Scotland, built a castle on an eminence by the side of the Clyde (still called Castle Hill), the original seat of the royal house of Stewart. Close to the town, on the site of Elderslie House, Somerled, lord of the Isles, was defeated and slain in 1164 by the forces of Malcolm IV., against whom he had rebelled. In 1404 Robert II. bestowed upon his son James (afterwards James I.) the title of Baron of Renfrew, still borne by the prince of Wales.
RENFREWSHIRE, a south-western county of Scotland, bounded N. by the river and firth of Clyde, E. by Lanarkshire, S. and S.W. by Ayrshire and W. by the firth of Clyde. A small detached portion of the parish of Renfrew, situated on the northern bank of the Clyde, is surrounded on the landward side by Dumbartonshire. The county has an area of 153,332 acres, or 239.6 sq. m. Excepting towards the Ayrshire border on the south-west, where the principal heights are Hill of Stake (1711 ft.), East Girt Hill (1673), Misty Law (1663) and Creuch Hill (1446), and the confines of Lanarkshire on the south-east, where a few points attain an altitude of 1200 ft.—the surface is undulating rather than rugged. Much of the higher land in the centre is well wooded. The Clyde forms part of the northern boundary of the shire. In the N.W. Loch Thom and Gryfe Reservoir provide Greenock with water, and Balgray Reservoir and Glen Reservoir reinforce the water-supply of a portion of the Glasgow area. The other lakes are situated in the S. and S.E. and
