Anne of Brittany

Queen of France (r. 1491-1498, 1499-1514)

• Born: January 25, 1477
• Birthplace: Nantes, Brittany (now in France)
• Died: January 9, 1514
• Place of death: Blois, France

Duchess of Brittany and twice queen of France, Anne was one of the most educated and powerful women of her time. She devoted her life to preserving Brittany’s independence from France and her court was host to poets, musicians, and scholars.

Early Life

Anne of Brittany was the daughter of Francis II of Brittany and Marguerite de Foix. She was raised in the Nantes castle in her family duchy of Brittany (little Britain), a small but powerful neighbor of France that for the most part remained independent of the larger nation.

Brittany had its own army, minted its own currency, and established its own diplomatic relations. Unlike France, Brittany did not follow Salic Law, which prohibited women from inheriting direct rule. Anne had no brothers, but she did have one sister, Isabeau; being the eldest, Anne was raised from the age of three as the heir. She was taught Breton, which is related to Welsh, French, Latin, Greek, and some Hebrew, and from her father, she learned lessons of statecraft. Consequently, she was one of the most educated girls of her time.

Brittany had been in a long-standing struggle for independence from France. When Anne of Beaujeu became regent of France on behalf of her young brother, King Charles VIII, she saw the lack of a male heir in Brittany as a weakness that could permit France to finally take control of the duchy. Anne of Beaujeu’s French troops invaded Brittany in 1488 and defeated the Bretons and their coalition at Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier in July. Duke Francis II was compelled to accept the Treaty of Le Verger, which included a clause stating that Anne could marry only with the consent of the French crown.

Life’s Work

Anne of Brittany’s mother died in May, 1488, and her father died in September of the same year, just a few months after he signed the Le Verger treaty. Thus, Anne was left as a young orphan, merely eleven years old. She was a small child with a congenital deformity, one leg being shorter than the other, but she wore heels of unequal height to compensate. She was attractive, pleasant, quite pious, and extremely intelligent moreover, she was now the ruler of the richest and perhaps most powerful duchy in Europe.

Naturally, there were many claimants for her hand in marriage, including Juan of Spain and Duke Louis d’Orléans (the future King Louis XII), but Anne accepted the proposal of the twenty-nine-year-old Maximilian I , archduke of Austria, German king, and king of the Romans, who appeared to be the best choice for Brittany. The two were wed by proxy in 1490.

Anne of Beaujeu could not tolerate this union between Brittany, a formidable neighbor that had been a thorn in the side of France for years, and her country’s enemy, Maximilian I. The shrewd French regent sent troops into the duchy, forcing Anne of Brittany, a beleaguered teenager, to dissolve her union with Maximilian and to agree to marry the regent’s brother, the French king Charles VIII.

Anne married Charles in 1491, but she still ruled Brittany. Nevertheless, she was distressed to find herself wed to a foe who for years had devastated her beloved homeland. She eventually warmed to Charles, however, and her superior education and training soon gained her the respect and devotion of the king and the French people. The pair maintained a happy marriage but suffered disappointment, since none of Anne’s children survived infancy. Their seven-year union came to an end in 1498, when Charles died following a freak accident in which he bumped his head on a low door beam.

The duke Louis d’Orléans, Charles’s cousin and now Louis XII, assumed the throne, while the bereaved Anne returned to Brittany and aggressively worked toward reestablishing her government. The new French monarch, concerned about the powers of neighboring Brittany, annulled his marriage to the deformed and childless Jeanne de France, sister of Anne of Beaujeu and Charles VIII, and set his sights on his charming friend Anne of Brittany, whom he had known for years from the time she was a young child in her duchy. He recalled Anne on the basis of a stipulation in her original marriage contract, which stated that, if Anne and Charles VIII were childless and Charles died, the widow would have to marry the next king of France so that her duchy would not pass beyond the realm. Therefore, as the wife of Louis XII, Anne of Brittany became the queen of France for a second time. As she did when married to Charles, Anne maintained control over Brittany.

Anne and King Louis XII produced no sons, but they did have two daughters, Claude and Renée. Claude was heir to Brittany (which still was not bound by Salic Law), and Anne, who had devoted her life to safeguarding the autonomy of her duchy particularly keeping it independent from France made every effort to unite her infant daughter with the house of Austria. In 1501, on their way to Spain, Archduke Philip of Austria (King Philip I of Spain) and his wife Joan of Spain visited Blois to solidify a marriage treaty between Princess Claude and their son Charles (the future Holy Roman Emperor Charles V ). King Louis had no choice but to go against Anne’s wishes and invalidate the proposed union, since Claude’s large inheritance, which included Brittany, Burgundy, and the French claims to Milan, Asti, Genoa, and Naples, was too significant to alienate from the kingdom of France. Louis supported a marriage between Claude and his young cousin Francis, comte d’Angoulěme, a libertine youth known for his excesses, who would succeed to the throne in any event should Louis have no sons.

Anne of Brittany died in January of 1514 at the age of thirty-seven, knowing that with her daughter’s impending marriage, her family would forever lose Brittany. She had reigned alongside her husband Louis XII for fifteen years, during which time he treated her with the utmost respect. Likewise, he buried her in splendor: Her funeral ceremonies surpassed even those of her first husband, King Charles VIII. Her heart was removed and sent back to Brittany, where it always had been metaphorically, and now literally, enshrined in her hometown of Nantes.

Significance

Anne of Brittany was one of the most intelligent and powerful women of her time. As queen, she developed a great respect for Brittany and France and concern for its residents, was generous in her dealings with the people, and often provided her husband with wise advice on affairs of state.

She cultivated a brilliant court, frequented by the finest of poets, musicians, and scholars. She founded an order of ladies, the first queen to do so, which she called La Cordelière. She welcomed myriad women and girls into her association and provided them with a noble education and guidance. Aside from her daughters, her deepest love and consideration was toward the people of Brittany, whom she never forgot. She stayed most active in running her duchy, maintained its court, and brought many of her compatriots to France to work in her service and assist her in preserving contact with Brittany.

Bibliography

Baumgartner, Frederic. Louis XII. New York: Palgrave, 1994. Biography of King Louis XII, with information on Anne of Brittany and their court and political environment.

Brantome, Abbé de. The Book of the Ladies (Illustrious Dames). Boston: Hardy, Pratt, 1902. Written in the sixteenth century, this work includes an account of Anne of Brittany and personal tales from primary sources.

Hopkins, Lisa. Women Who Would Be Kings: Female Rulers of the Sixteenth Century. London: Vision Press, 1991. An accessible, compact history that includes information on several great women of the sixteenth century. A short book that sometimes oversimplifies issues.

Matarasso, Pauline. Queen’s Mate: Three Women of Power in France on the Eve of the Renaissance. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate Press, 2001. Focuses on the lives of Anne of Brittany, Anne of Beaujeu, and Louise of Savoy. Well cited, with a notable bibliography.

Neuschel, Kristen B. “Noblewomen and War in Sixteenth Century France.” In Changing Identities in Early Modern France, edited by Michael Wolfe. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997. Chapter on the role of aristocratic women in warfare and their obtaining weapons.

Sanborn, Helen J. Anne of Brittany. Boston: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, 1917. The most comprehensive book in English on Anne of Brittany, her life, and her relationships. Lacks detailed citation.