who was taken first to the castle
of Sable and then to Lusignan, went ultimately to the Tower of Bourges,
where he was to await the king's decision.

It was a great success for Anne de Beaujeu. She had beaten her united
foes; and the most formidable of them all, the Duke of Orleans, was her
prisoner. Two incidents that supervened, one a little before and the
other a little after the battle of St. Aubin-du-Cormier, occurred to both
embarrass the position and at the same time call forth all the energy of
Anne. Her brother-in-law, Duke John of Bourbon, the head of his house,
died on the 1st of April, 1488, leaving to his younger brother, Peter,
his title and domains. Having thus become Duchess of Bourbon, and being
well content with this elevation in rank and fortune, Madame the Great
(as Anne de Beaujeu was popularly called) was somewhat less eagerly
occupied with the business of the realm, was less constant at the king's
council, and went occasionally with her husband to stay a while in their
own territories. Charles VIII., moreover, having nearly arrived at man's
estate, made more frequent manifestations of his own personal will; and
Anne, clear-sighted and discreet though ambitious, was little by little
changing her dominion into influence. But some weeks after the battle of
St. Aubin-du-Cormier, on the 7th or 9th of September, 1488, the death of
Francis II., Duke of Brittany, rendered the active intervention of the
Duchess of Bourbon natural and necessary; for he left his daughter, the
Princess Anne, barely eighteen years old, exposed to all the difficulties
attendant upon the government of her inheritance, and to all the
intrigues of the claimants to her hand. In the summer of 1489, Charles
VIII. and his advisers learned that the Count of Nassau, having arrived
in Brittany with the proxy of Archduke Maximilian, had by a mock ceremony
espoused the Breton princess in his master's name. This strange mode of
celebration could not give the marriage a real and indissoluble
character; but the concern in the court of France was profound. In
Brittany there was no mystery any longer made about the young duchess's
engagement; she already took the title of Queen of the Romans. Charles
VIII. loudly protested against this pretended marriage; and to give still
more weight to his protest he sent to Henry VII., King of England, who
was much mixed up with the affairs of Brittany, ambassadors charged to
explain to him the righ