Anne of Brittany
Anne of Brittany (Breton: Anna; 25/26 January 1477[1] – 9 January 1514[2]) was reigning Duchess of Brittany from 1488 until her death, and Queen of France from 1491 to 1498 and from 1499 to her death. She was the only woman to have been queen consort of France twice. During the Italian Wars, Anne also became Queen of Naples, from 1501 to 1504, and Duchess of Milan, in 1499–1500 and from 1500 to 1512.
"Anne de Bretagne" redirects here. For the rock opera, see Anne de Bretagne (rock opera).Anne
9 September 1488 –
9 January 1514
10 February 1489
19 December 1490 –
15 February 1492
6 December 1491 –
7 April 1498
8 February 1492
8 January 1499 –
9 January 1514
18 November 1504
2 August 1501 –
31 January 1504
15 February 1514
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Anne was raised in Nantes during a series of conflicts which the King of France sought to assert his suzerainty over Brittany. Her father, Francis II, Duke of Brittany, was the last male of the House of Montfort. Upon his death in 1488, Anne became duchess regnant of Brittany, countess of Nantes, Montfort, and Richmond, and viscountess of Limoges. She was only 11 at that time, but she was already a coveted heiress because of Brittany's strategic position. The next year, she married Maximilian I of Austria by proxy, but Charles VIII of France saw this as a threat since his realm was located between Brittany and Austria. He started a military campaign which eventually forced the duchess to renounce her marriage.
Anne eventually married Charles VIII in 1491. None of their children survived early childhood, and when the king died in 1498, the throne went to his cousin, Louis XII. Following an agreement made to secure the annexation of Brittany, Anne had to marry the new king. Louis XII was deeply in love with his wife and Anne had many opportunities to reassert the independence of her duchy. They had two daughters, although neither could succeed to the French throne due to the Salic Law, the elder was proclaimed the heiress of Brittany. Anne managed to have her elder daughter engaged to Charles of Austria, grandchild of Maximilian I, but after Anne's death in 1514, her daughter married her cousin Francis I of France. This marriage later led to the formal union between France and Brittany.
Anne was highly regarded in Brittany as a conscientious ruler who defended the duchy against France. In the Romantic period, she became a figure of Breton patriotism and she was honoured with many memorials and statues. Her artistic legacy is important in the Loire Valley, where she spent most of her life. She was notably responsible, with her husbands, for architectural projects in the châteaux of Blois and Amboise.
Life[edit]
Early years and education[edit]
Anne was born on 25 or 26 January 1477 in the Castle of the Dukes of Brittany[3] in the city of Nantes in what is now the Loire-Atlantique département of France, as the eldest child of Duke Francis II of Brittany and his second wife Margaret of Foix, Infanta of Navarre.[2] Four years later (before 10 May 1481), her parents had a second daughter, Isabelle. Her mother died when Anne was nine, while her father died when Anne was eleven years old.[2]
It is likely that she learned to read and write in French, and perhaps a little Latin. Contrary to what is sometimes claimed, it was unlikely that she learned Greek or Hebrew[4] and never spoke or understood the Breton language.[5] She was raised by a governess, Françoise de Dinan, Lady of Chateaubriant and by marriage Countess of Laval.[6] In addition, she had several tutors, including her butler and court poet, Jean Meschinot, who is thought to have taught her dancing, singing and music.[7]
Heiress of Brittany[edit]
In this period, the law of succession was unclear, but prior to the Breton War of Succession mainly operated according to semi-Salic Law; i.e., noble women could inherit, but only if the male line had died out. The Treaty of Guérande in 1365, however, stated that in the absence of a male heir from the House of Montfort, the heirs of Joanna of Penthièvre would succeed. By the time Anne was born, her father was the only male from the Breton House of Montfort-Brittany, and the Blois-Penthièvre heir was a female, Nicole of Blois, who in 1480 sold her rights over Brittany to King Louis XI of France for the amount of 50,000 écus.
The lack of a male heir gave rise to the threat of a dynastic crisis in the Duchy, or to its passing directly into the royal domain. To avoid this, Francis II had Anne officially recognised as his heiress by the Estates of Brittany on 10 February 1486;[8] however, the question of her marriage remained a diplomatic issue.
Betrothals[edit]
Being the first eldest surviving child and heiress of the Duchy of Brittany, Anne was, above all, the instrument of paternal politics. Francis II indeed promised his daughter to various French or foreign princes in order to obtain military and financial aid, and to strengthen his position against the King of France. The prospect for these princes to add the duchy to their domain thus allowed the Duke of Brittany to initiate several marriage negotiations and to forge various secret alliances which accompanied these matrimonial projects. Anne became the stake of these rival ambitions, and her father, reassured by the signing of these alliances, could afford to refuse various marriage projects and contracts.[a] These political calculations thus led to Anne's engagement with different European princes:[10]
Her marriage with Charles VIII of France produced six documented pregnancies:
Her marriage with Louis XII of France, produced at least another five recorded pregnancies:
Each miscarriage or stillbirth is said to have delighted the ambitious Louise of Savoy, whose son Francis was the heir presumptive under the Salic Law. There even existed contemporary rumours that Louise used witchcraft to kill Anne's sons.[73]
Through her granddaughter Margaret, Duchess of Savoy (Claude's youngest daughter), Anne of Brittany was the ancestor of Vittorio Emanuele, Prince of Naples, House of Savoy the current pretender to the throne of Italy. Through her great-granddaughter Claude, Duchess of Lorraine (daughter of Henry II of France), Anne is also the ancestor of Karl von Habsburg, the current head of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine.
Through her granddaughter Anna d'Este (Renée's eldest daughter), Anne of Brittany is also the ancestor of the House of Guise and Savoy-Nemours.
Anne had inherited from her predecessors the Breton dynastic emblems: a bandwidth Ermine (from John V), a simple Ermine (from John III) and a cord (from Francis II). As a widow of Charles VIII, and inspired by her father, she founded in 1498 the Order of the Ladies of the Cord.[74]
As a personal emblem, she also used the letter "A" crowned, with the motto Non mudera ("I will not change") and a particular form of the father's cord, knotted at 8. Her emblems were joined in the decoration of her castles and manuscripts with those of her husbands: the flaming sword of Charles VIII and the porcupine of Louis XII. She also used the motto Potius Mori Quam Foedari ("Rather die than dishonor") (in Breton "Kentoc'h mervel eget bezañ saotret").
This could be found in many places related to her functions as Duchess or Queen:
The Hunters Enter the Woods
The Unicorn is Found
The Unicorn is Attacked
The Unicorn Defends Itself
Statue of Anne of Brittany in the Reines de France et Femmes illustres series, Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris.
Statue of Duchess Anne of Brittany, by Johann Dominik Mahlknecht. Cours Saint-Pierre, Nantes, France.
Even while she was alive, the royal propaganda of Charles VIII and of Louis XII depicted Anne of Brittany as a perfect queen, a symbol of union and peace between the Kingdom of France and the Duchy of Brittany (the popular tradition of the "Good Duchess"). In the following centuries, historians and popular culture sometimes presented Anne of Brittany in differing fashions, ascribing to her physical and psychological characteristics that are not necessarily supported by historical evidence.
After her death, she was gradually forgotten until the mid-19th century. After the foundation of the Breton Association in 1843, Breton regionalists sought a figure which could embody their ideal of agrarian and regional renewal, while expressing their attachment to the French nation.[75] Their choice was Anne of Brittany (hence the legend of the "Duchess in clogs").[76]
Many myths now surround Anne of Brittany, as a woman forced into an arranged marriage with Charles VIII, the Duchess of Brittany committed to the independence and happiness of her country, or otherwise of a Queen symbol of union and peace between Brittany and France. It has become an issue between those Breton historians pursuing a mythologizing of their past, and those forging a national historiography with the myth of a French nation one and indivisible.[77]
This symbolism explains the release of fifty books during the last 200 years giving contrasting visions of Anne: at one extreme there is Georges Minois, who presented her as a person "limited, petty and vindictive", and at the other Philippe Tourault, who gave her a "quite richly and favorable personality, ardently attached to her country and people".[78]