Anne of Brittany, detested Louise of
Savoy, widow of Charles d'Orleans, Count of Angouleme, and mother of
Francis d'Angouleme, heir presumptive to the throne, since Louis XII.
had no son. Anne could not bear the idea that her daughter, Princess
Claude, should marry the son of her personal enemy; and, being more
Breton than French, say her contemporaries, she, in order to avoid this
disagreeableness, had used with the king all her influence, which was
great, in favor of the Austrian marriage, caring little, and, perhaps,
even desiring, that Brittany should be again severed from France. Louis,
in the midst of the reverses of his diplomacy, had thus to suffer from
the hatreds of his wife, the observations of his advisers, and the
reproaches of his conscience as a king. He fell so ill that he was
supposed to be past recovery. "It were to do what would be incredible,"
says his contemporary, John de St. Gelais, "to write or tell of the
lamentations made throughout the whole realm of France, by reason of the
sorrow felt by all for the illness of their good king. There were to be
seen night and day, at Blois, at Amboise, at Tours, and everywhere else,
men and women going all bare throughout the churches and to the holy
places, in order to obtain from divine mercy grace of health and
convalescence for one whom there was as great fear of losing as if he had
been the father of each." Louis was touched by this popular sympathy;
and his wisest councillors, Cardinal d'Amboise the first of all, took
advantage thereof to appeal to his conscience in respect of the
engagements which "through weakness he had undertaken contrary to the
interests of the realm and the coronation-promises." Queen Anne herself,
not without a struggle, however, at last gave up her opposition to this
patriotic recoil; and on the 10th of May, 1505, Louis XII. put in his
will a clause to the effect that his daughter, Princess Claude, should be
married, so soon as she was old enough, to the heir to the throne,
Francis, Count of Angouleme. Only it was agreed, in order to avoid
diplomatic embarrassments, that this arrangement should be kept secret
till further notice. [The will itself of Louis XII. has been inserted in
the _Recueil des Ordonnances des Bois des France,_ t. xxi. p. 323, dated
30th of May, 1505.]

When Louis had recovered, discreet measures were taken for arousing the
feeling of the country as well as the king's conscience as to this great
q