AGNES SOREL
In the face of conflicting records it is no easy matter to determine when Agnes Sorel first became the king's mistress. In 1435, when the Treaty of Arras was concluded between Charles and the Duke of Burgundy, Cardinal de Sainte-Croix (afterwards Pope Pius the Second) was Papal legate at the French Court, and aided in the negotiations. He tells in his memoirs that the relation between Charles and Agnes was known publicly at the time, and that the king could do nothing without her, even having her at his side at the royal councils. The trust-worthiness of this statement has, however, been so questioned, that it seems safer to endeavour to arrive at the truth from other sources, although, if the statement can be relied on, it seems to follow, almost as a matter of course, that Agnes must have been born earlier than 1422. It is an admitted fact that between 1433 and 1438 the manner of Charles's life entirely changed. In the year 1433 the infamous and once all-powerful favourite, La Tremoille, who had been the king's evil genius for six years, and was largely responsible for the king's treatment of his wife, Marie of Anjou, was dismissed at the instance of the politic Yolande. Yet even so, the king often relapsed into indolence and apparent indifference to his kingly duties, and it was not till after 1438, when he summoned a national Council at Bourges, that Charles showed himself to be a new man. It is also not long after this that we read of favours granted by the
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