Hanging on to Jeanne of France

Jeanne of France: Duchess, Queen, Saint (1464-1505)

The unfortunate Jeanne of France,
briefly queen of France

In the year and a half since I retired after thirty-five years of university teaching, I’ve been letting go—not only of stress and anxiety, but of stuff. 

The first thrilling purge was when I was cleaning out my office on campus. Although I would keep artwork and memorabilia, I was determined to get rid of all of the books and files.

The books were surprisingly easy—I invited majors to come by my office and “shop” on my bookshelves. And they came. One student brought two backpacks, another a couple of cardboard boxes. 

Once these literature majors had taken what they wanted, I put all the rest out on a table in the hallway, underneath a sign labeled “Free Books.” Sometimes the assorted titles disappeared so quickly that most of them were gone before I’d returned from my office with another armload for the table. 

(By the way, relatively expensive hardbound desk dictionaries proved to be losers—I had several, and not a single one of them disappeared from the "free" pile. I couldn't even give them away. But I thought for sure no one would want the Norton Critical Edition of Thomas Aquinas on Ethics and Politics—somehow I’d managed to acquire two copies—I was shocked that they both disappeared as quickly as I put them on the “free” table. Who knew?)

The files proved to be easy, once I'd gotten rid of the books—I had spiral notebooks filled with notes from college classes, binders filled with notes I’d taken to study for Ph.D. exams, boxes of 3 x 5 cards of dissertation research, and 35 years’ worth of student evaluations, recommendations, lecture notes, and course files. Shredding what was confidential and tossing what wasn’t into huge recycling bins were liberating acts. 

The clean-out has continued here at home. Slowly I’ve begun whittling down my personal library as I look ahead to downsizing. My research files have also begun to go—mostly file drawer after file drawer of notes on and photocopies of critical articles, all of which are now available online via JSTOR.

And what has this to do with Jeanne of France? Well, my son was here the other day, moving some of his long-stored boxes (children’s books and dinosaur reproductions) from my garage to his basement, and he pulled out a box labeled “Louise of Savoy (+ Jeanne de France).” 

I’d forgotten about this box, honestly. but once I saw it I remembered why it was there, labeled and stored. After finishing a project on Anne of France, I had in mind a couple of new possibilities and hoped to come back to them. I’d put into this box all of the material that might be needed when I decided to write about Louise of Savoy or Jeanne of France, who was, very briefly, queen of France.  

But now I’m at the point in my life where I am facing the reality that I will never write about all the things I’d like to write about—in part, my last year of blogging about women’s history was a way to write about as many women as I could, even if I just posted a short essay, realizing that I’d probably never have the time to write more. 

And I included a lengthy post about Jeanne's sister Anne of France, a powerful and canny politician, even though I’d already written at some length about her and translated her book of advice, written for her daughter Suzanne. I'm always ready to tell anyone who'll listen about this remarkable woman.

I also posted about Louise of Savoy, admitting to myself that I’d probably not get to that long-imagined project, and I at least mentioned Jeanne of France, though only briefly in a couple of posts.

At first I thought getting rid of the box of stuff wouldn’t be a problem—at this point, I could simply toss it all into the recycling bin with no regrets. And that’s what I did. Drafts of material I’d written and then revised out of my Anne of France project, photocopies of articles, a carousel of slides I’d had made for a presentation. (To be honest, the last time I used slides in class, my students laughed at me, and shortly after that, the university got rid of all of its slide projectors because no one was using them. Anyway, if I ever wanted or needed them, I now had an infinite number of Google images at my fingertips.)

But there was one thing in that box that surprised me: I didn't remember that I had a photocopy of René de Maulde La Clavière’s Jeanne de France, duchesse d’Orléans et de Berry (1464-1505), published in 1883. As soon as I saw it, I remembered having ordered the book through Inter-Library Loan. And I could remember the student worker I’d paid to photocopy all 483 pages for me. 

I hesitated before tossing that photocopied biography into the recycling. But, realizing that I’d probably never need it, much less read it for fun, and remembering that I was, after all, downsizing, I dumped it.

And then I had second thoughts. I checked online—the biography is not available through Google Books, though I could buy one of those print-on-demand copies from Amazon for $39.95 if I found I needed it after all.

I could always get the book again through Inter-Library Loan, the same way I'd gotten it in the first place. It wasn't like I was throwing Jeanne herself away. Even so, I found myself late one evening, in the garage, digging the photocopies of the biography out of my recycling bin. 

It wasn’t just that I had spent the last decades of my professional life writing about women whose lives had been largely overlooked by standard histories, and teaching texts by women writers whose work had been “lost.” Although something of that did play a role in my “recovering” Jeanne of France. It was also the particular circumstances of her life:

Born in 1464, Jeanne of France was the second daughter of Louis of France and his wife, Charlotte of Savoy. Jeanne’s elder sister, Anne, had been born three years earlier. Jeanne was betrothed to Louis of Orléans when she was three weeks old and he was two. Since Louis XI had two daughters but, as yet, no son, the proposed marriage of his younger daughter to the heir presumptive to the throne was politically “useful.” 

In 1476, the marriage of the twelve-year-old French princess and the fourteen-year-old Louis was solemnized, though by this point, the king had a son and heir, Charles, born in 1470, and the young bridegroom was not eager to marry Jeanne—when asked if he consented to the marriage, he reportedly said, “I have to; there is no help for it.”

After the wedding, the young duke of Orléans refused to live with his new duchess, who was returned to Lignières, where she had been raised. Her father had no further use for her. Her “husband” threw himself into hunting, womanizing, and political scheming. 

After Louis XI’s death in 1483, the young duke prepared to annul his marriage, hoping both to find a wealthy bride in Brittany and to gain the throne of France for himself. In the meantime, he gathered his allies and travelled quickly to the chateau of Amboise, prepared to take over the regency of the new king, Charles VIII.

He was triply disappointed. Instead of gaining the regency for himself, he was forced to give way to Charles’s elder sister, Anne, who became regent of France. Instead of being able to rid himself of his unwanted wife, Louis found that, once again, political expediency required he maintain his alliance with the new king and with the regent--he couldn't dissolve his marriage to their sister. And in 1491, Charles VIII, married Anne of Brittany, the young heiress Louis had hoped to acquire as his second wife.

But the terms of the 1491 marriage contract between Charles VIII and Anne of Brittany were crucial to what would eventually happen to Jeanne of France: if the new French king predeceased his queen, she was to marry his successor. 

When Charles died childless in 1498, Louis of Orléans inherited not only the French crown, then, but the French king’s widow, Anne, and with her, control of Brittany. If only he could rid himself of the inconvenient wife he had--the woman to whom he'd been married for some twenty-two years.

Before he could marry the widowed queen, Louis had to have his first marriage, to Jeanne of France, annulled. To that end, he alleged several grounds for annulment—that they were too closely related (consanguinity), that they were spiritually related (Jeanne’s father was also Louis’ godfather), and that he had not freely consented to the marriage (he had been forced to marry under duress). All of these grounds were dismissed, leaving him with a fourth claim: that the marriage had not been consummated. 

Louis claimed that Jeanne’s physical deformity (there is a great deal of contemporary discussion about her “deformity”—including whether she had any physical defect other than being short and unattractive) had prevented consummation. Louis wanted Jeanne, now queen of France, to be subjected to physical examination, while she preferred to rely on testimony from witnesses that their marriage had been consummated (her father had reportedly made sure his son-in-law consummated the marriage in 1476 in order to ensure that there could be no grounds for annulment.)

But the witnesses proved to be not enough, and, thankfully for Jeanne, she was not subjected to the threatened physical examination. And so Louis supplied a sworn statement that, even after twenty-two years, his marriage had never been consummated. Oh, and that his wife was a witch. And since a statement under oath made by a ruling prince must be true, Pope Alexander VI obliged.

The marriage of Louis XII and Jeanne of France was declared void on 17 December 1498, and Louis was married to Anne of Brittany days later, on 8 January 1499. Louis "rewarded" Jeanne with the gift of the title “duchess of Berry.”

Jeanne of France, in the habit of a sister

of the Order of the Annunciation

of the Blessed Virgin Mary,

painted by Jean Perréal

She earned a more enduring title for herself, however; after the annulment, she devoted herself to the religious life, establishing a new order, the Order of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The order was approved by Pope Alexander in 1502. 

Jeanne died at the Annonciade convent in Bourges in 1505. (Her grave was desecrated and her body burned in 1562 during the French Wars of Religion.)

In 1631, a case for her canonization was begun, and she was beatified in 1742. On 28 May 1950 she was canonized.

And that’s really why I couldn’t throw away Jeanne of France, even if it was just her life on paper. She’d been pretty much ignored by her father and then discarded by her husband. Silly as it may sound, I just couldn’t toss her in the recycling.

Update, 27 December 2017: Since writing this post at the beginning of 2016, I have moved. I downsized from my home--with garage!--and moved back to Seattle, where I went to graduate school. Although I am now living in a condo in the city, I still haven't let go of Jeanne of France. The box is now in my son's basement.

And, when I wrote in 2016, René de Maulde La Clavière’s Jeanne de France, duchesse d’Orléans et de Berry (1464-1505) was not available online. It's still not available through Google Books, but it is included in the Internet Archive; you can access it by clicking here. 

 

Update, 4 January 2024: René de Maulde La Clavière’s Jeanne de France, duchesse d’Orléans et de Berry (1464-1505) is now available on Google Books—click here. And, by the way, I’ve been helping my son clean his out basement. Although we’ve dumped lots of stuff, Jeanne de France is still there…

Anne of France, "Madame la Grande"

Anne of France, duchess of Bourbon and regent of France (died 14 November 1522)

One of the most powerful women of the late fifteenth century, Anne of France is relatively unknown today, at least to those of us whose first language is English.* While she is occasionally mentioned in the political biographies of her father, Louis XI of France, and her brother, Charles VIII, her own story remains unfamiliar--there have been no lavish feature films, costumed television dramas, or best-selling novels about her life, as there have been for her contemporaries in England, who fought so savagely during the Wars of the Roses.

Anne of France, detail,
Master of Moulins

Yet in the waning years of the fifteenth century, Madame la Grande, as she was known to her contemporaries, controlled the government of France for eight years, guiding it through a series of political crises that threatened the state from without and, perhaps more ominously, from within. 

Born in 1461, Anne was the third child of Louis of France and his second wife, Charlotte of Savoy, but the first to survive more than a few months after birth. Although we know where she was born—at the chateau of Genappe, some thirty miles north of Brussels—we do not know exactly when, only that her birth preceded the death of her grandfather Charles VII on 22 July of that year. 

Only a few months after her father became king, he began the process of securing political alliances through her marriage. On 27 November 1461, Louis betrothed his only child to Nicholas, the grandson of René of Anjou; by the end of 1462, that alliance was abandoned in favor of an Aragonese match, that project, in turn, giving way to proposals for her marriage to Edward IV of England, then to Francis of Brittany, and even to the French king’s own brother, Charles, duke of Berry.

Meanwhile, we have very few details about Anne’s childhood. On becoming king, Louis XI had installed his mother, his wife, and his infant daughter in the chateau of Amboise; there, the princess was attended by a demoiselle d’honneur, at least two chambermaids, several nurses, and a woman hired to rock her cradle. This female household has not been kindly assessed by Anne’s French biographers, who variously describe Amboise as a prison, an isolated fortress, or as a “royal gynecium”; we might instead regard it as a kind of “city of ladies,” a remarkable environment that made possible the development of a remarkable woman. 

Just as little is known about Anne’s life at Amboise, little has been written about her mother, Charlotte of Savoy, but that “little” is very negative. One contemporary noted that while she was “an excellent princess in other respects,” she was “not a person in whom a man could take any great delight,” another that she failed to inspire the king’s sexual desire. 

Modern historians, at least the few who have mentioned her, have been no more kind, dismissing her as a charming but lifeless non-entity, as a sad, prematurely aged romantic, as a saint-like figure “crowned with a halo of sweetness and modesty” who knew nothing about politics, or as “feeble in health and weak in character.” But surely she was something more. As the daughter of Anne of Lusignan, Charlotte of Savoy was raised by a mother of considerable political influence and skill, while the contents of her personal library indicate the breadth of her intellectual interests. 

Louis XI’s mother, Marie of Anjou, was also part of the Amboise household for the first years of Anne’s life. The dowager queen was the daughter of the formidable Yolande of Aragon, who for fifteen years ruled Anjou as its regent; while Marie may have been “delicate,” as one modern biographer has described her, she is also credited with having been the source not only of her son’s good sense but also for the “discreet work” of diplomacy that reconciled her husband and her brother.

Whatever else happened in the chateau of Amboise during Anne’s childhood, her biographer Jehanne d’Orliac seems rightly to have concluded that her intelligence was “ripened” there. Meanwhile, her father may certainly have abhorred the “intrigues” and “coquetries” of women in general, and the person of his wife in particular, but he must also have recognized both the political expediencies of a female regent and the ability of women to succeed in such a role. 

His paternal grandmother, Isabeau of Bavaria, had been regent of France, and, as we have seen, his maternal grandmother had ruled Anjou for her son. One sister, Yolande of Valois, was regent of Savoy for her son, Philibert, another, Madeleine, was regent of Foix for her daughter, Catherine, who inherited the throne of Navarre as queen regnant; in England, the king’s cousin Margaret of Anjou played an active role in the battle to preserve the throne of England for her son, Edward.

St. Anne, Anne of France,
Suzanne of Bourbon,
part of triptych
by the Master of Moulins

Whatever he felt about his queen, Louis left his son, the dauphin Charles, in the female universe of Amboise, while his daughter Anne became part of his court at Plessis-les-Tours; after her marriage to Pierre of Beaujeu in November of 1473, Anne seems to have spent much of the next ten years in the company of her father. “She is the least foolish of women,” he is famously to have said, “—and as for wise women, there are none.” 

When Louis XI died in 1483, his son and heir Charles was thirteen years old, arguably old enough to succeed to the French throne in his own right, but the aging king circumvented the argument. Just before his death, Louis transferred custody of his son to his daughter and her husband. His son-in-law was a loyal and firm presence, but lacked political skill or insight; Louis named Pierre of Beaujeu lieutenant-general of France. 

The twenty-two-year-old Anne, on the other hand, was different. To this “least foolish of women,” he entrusted the dauphin’s care and education, leaving to her the responsibility to govern France, if not the title of regent. Lacking the name of regent, Anne of France was nevertheless recognized as controlling the person of the king, the finances of the state, and the power of the realm. In his account of her role during the period from 1483 to 1491, historian John Bridge concludes, “We can affirm . . . that the lady of Beaujeu really governed France during the first years of the nominal reign of her brother.” 

When Anne of France left the court in 1491, she was thirty years old, but rather than retiring, she was, instead, beginning a new phase of her political career. In the years following her marriage, she and her husband had been rewarded and enriched first by her father and then by her brother; when the duke of Bourbon, Pierre of Beaujeu’s oldest brother, died without an heir, she acted quickly and ruthlessly. In securing the title for her husband, she “gave herself alone the duchy of the Bourbons.” 

In gaining Bourbon, she secured independence for herself, and for her daughter, Suzanne, who was born on 10 May 1491. In her chateau of Chantelle, not far from the Bourbon capital of Moulins, Anne reigned as sovereign, signing acts with the royal formula Car tel est notre plaisir (“for such is our pleasure”) and reorganizing and codifying the laws of the Bourbonnais. 

She also recreated the “city of ladies” of her childhood at Amboise, educating and training a generation of young girls as they grew into women. As the inveterate gossip Pierre de Brantôme noted, “there were no ladies or daughters of great houses in her time who did not receive lessons from her, the house of Bourbon being one of the greatest and most splendid in Christendom”; on this point he had good authority, since his grandmother Louise de Daillon was among those daughters who had been brought up by Anne of France. 

And she also remained involved in affairs of state. When her brother invaded Italy in 1494, he arranged for his sister, not his wife, to manage in his absence, and like his father, in making this unorthodox arrangement he avoided the official designation of regent; instead, by the “express order of the king,” his queen Anne of Brittany was placed in his sister’s guardianship, and the government of France was “transported” to her court at Moulins. 

By the time the king returned from Italy in 1495, his son, the French dauphin, was dead; three years later, Charles VIII of France, not quite twenty-eight years old, was also dead. The new king was Louis XII, whose rebellion in the first years of Charles VIII’s reign had culminated in the aptly named “Mad War.”

At least one observer thought that Anne of France might intervene in the succession—it was reported that “she thought for a moment to claim the crown for herself, saying that ‘she was the first among the descendants of the kings of France.’” Although she had no such intention, the new king decided “to call his old adversary to his aid”; in exchange for her support, he awarded her more land, more titles, more revenue and, more important, the assurance that her daughter Suzanne would inherit Bourbon after Pierre’s death.

Although Anne of France would also survive Louis XII, we will end our discussion of her life here. It is important to note, however, that she never withdrew entirely from the political center of government; she regularly attended affairs of state, like Louis XII’s entry into Paris, to name only one example, and in 1503, when he fell ill, it appeared as if the king might called upon her to take control of the government of France once more. 

Although he survived this illness, when his death was imminent in 1514, he designated Anne of France to take charge of any posthumously born prince. She was in Paris in 1515 when Louis XII died, and it was again said that she would take control of the government herself. But that was just a rumor; she was in Reims for the coronation of Francis I and in Paris to witness his entry into the city. She herself would live until 1522, her life spanning the reigns of four French kings. 

By the time she died at the age of sixty-one, on 14 November 1522, Anne of France had outlived all her contemporaries, and Madame la Grande had become Madame la Vielle, “the old Madam.” Her brother had died in 1498, her sister Jeanne in 1505. Isabella of Castile, with whom Anne had conducted business for eight years, died in 1504. Ludovico Sforza, who had lured her brother to Italy and who had tried to arrange for the marriage of one of his sons to Suzanne, died in 1508. Anne saw her one-time enemy Louis of Orléans succeed her brother as king of France; Louis died in 1515. Anne of Brittany, married first to Charles VIII and then to Louis XII, was also gone; she died in 1514. And in what must have been a terrible series of blows, Anne’s grandson François, born in July 1517 and named after his royal godfather, died within months of his elaborate baptism. Just a year later, Suzanne gave birth to stillborn twins. Suzanne herself died in 1521, just thirty years old.

Her biographers have viewed the last months of Anne’s life as a period of “darkness and despair”: “She fell victim to the blows of a malady that remains mysterious to us,” comments one, adding that it was a malady “doubtless fed by grief.” Another concludes that “agony of mind and heart finished her off.” 

But one of Madam’s formidable contemporaries faced her own losses and defeats with the unflinching gaze so characteristic of Anne herself. “I am habituated to grief,” wrote Caterina Sforza, “I have no fear of it.” Surely Anne of France would have agreed.

And at some point in her life, probably toward the end of the fifteenth century, Anne of France composed a series of enseignements, or "lessons" for her daughter, Suzanne. Several years ago, as I was working on an English translation of her Lessons, I found myself remembering the words of Virginia Woolf.

In A Room of One’s Own, Woolf suggested that “we think back through our mothers if we are women.” I found myself thinking of this claim as I was at work translating Anne of France’s lessons for her daughter. The process was a strangely intimate one: slowly, word by word, sometimes even letter by letter, I was deciphering the admonitions, advice, and warnings a fifteenth-century princess directed to her daughter, all the while and against all logic hearing my own mother’s voice in my mind. 

And then one day, midway through the process of turning French into English, I looked away from my pile of dictionaries to the framed portraits of Anne and Suzanne that sat on the desk where I was working. Studying their faces, I knew I had to find the quotation that I remembered. 

I did find it, about three quarters of the way through the slim volume, as Woolf was describing the struggle of women writers. Although they were confronted by “discouragement and criticism,” Woolf wrote, “that was unimportant compared with the other difficulty which faced them . . . when they came to set their thoughts on paper—that is that they had no tradition behind them, or one so short and partial that it was of little help.” And then the sentence: “For we think back through our mothers if we are women.”

Anne of France’s text seems at first to challenge Woolf’s claim, for in composing a series of lessons for her daughter, Anne did have a tradition of women behind her, and a rather long one. As she wrote, she could “think back” to Christine de Pizan’s The Treasure of the City of Ladies, written a hundred years earlier, a book that Anne had owned and read, a book that, in fact, she had inherited from her mother, Charlotte of Savoy, queen of France. 

And, although Anne addressed her lessons to her daughter, she clearly came to see herself contributing to the tradition she inherited, since her book was passed on to other daughters of other mothers: her lessons were published “at the request” of Suzanne, doubtless with her mother’s approval.

The opening page of the
first printed edition
of Anne of France's
Enseignements

This first edition, printed between 1517 and 1521, was followed by a second printing in 1534. A third edition was published the next year, this time dedicated to Marguerite of Angoulême, a daughter of another powerful mother, Louise of Savoy, and herself the mother of Jeanne d’Albret, who would become queen regnant of Navarre.

But, despite the status of Anne of France and her daughter Suzanne, and despite the fact that the book went through three editions within thirty years of its composition, her work disappeared. The tradition she had inherited was also lost—Christine de Pizan’s Treasure of the City of Ladies, composed in 1405 and widely circulated in manuscript, was printed in Paris in 1497, 1503, and 1536, but, in the words of Sarah Lawson, who published the first translation of Christine’s work in English, “by the seventeenth century hardly anyone had heard of her.”

We almost surely would not be able to “think back” to Anne’s text today if it weren’t for the work of one man, a nineteenth-century scholar named A. M. Chazaud. Chazaud never tells us how or why or when he became interested in Anne’s lessons for her daughter—it’s not even clear that he knew of the existence of her work before he traveled from France to the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. 

As archivist of the department of Allier, formed from the old province of Bourbonnais, he may have gone to the Hermitage to work with a manuscript of the chronicles of Louis I, first duke of Bourbon; Chazaud returned to France to publish an edition of that fifteenth-century text in 1876. Whether or not he knew about Anne’s work before he arrived in St. Petersburg, while there he transcribed not only the chronicles of the duke of Bourbon but her text; he added an introduction, appended a discussion of her language, compiled a glossary, and published Les Enseignements d’Anne de France . . . à sa fille Susanne de Bourbon in 1878. 

While he does not tell us how he came to edit Anne’s text, Chazaud does explain how the book that Anne had given her daughter came to be in Russia, for the manuscript he found there was, in fact, Suzanne’s own copy of the book: Ce livre est à moy, Susanne de Bourbon, et l’ey eu de la meson de Bourbon was written on the first folio (“This book is mine, Susanne of Bourbon, and it comes from [literally 'I have had it from'] the house of Bourbon”).

The story of the manuscript’s journey from France to St. Petersburg is fascinating, and starting from the information Chazaud supplies, we can fill in a few more details of the manuscript’s odyssey. After the death of Suzanne’s husband in 1527, the Bourbon library became the property of King Francis I and was transferred from the library of Moulins to Fontainebleu. 

Later, the manuscript was a gift to Diane de Poitiers, who had been educated by Anne of France, and it became part of the library at her chateau of Anet. Diane de Poitiers (1499-1566) was not only raised by Anne of France, but her marriage was also arranged by Anne; after the death of her husband in 1521, Diane became the mistress of Henry II of France, son of Francis I, who probably presented her with the manuscript. There is no indication when she received the gift or when the manuscript left her library at Anet. 

Two brief notes in the manuscript indicate that on “the last day of the month and year of 1632” a certain Monsieur Baillet de Sainte-Barbe from the town of Dreux gave the book to an unnamed but very happy recipient who lived on Chantre street in Paris; once in Paris, the manuscript passed to the library of Pierre Séguier, chancellor of France under kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV. 

From the library of the chancellor, the book passed to his grandson, Henri-Charles du Cambout de Coislin, bishop of Metz, and from him to the library of the abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. In 1791, in the midst of the French Revolution, some fifty of the Saint-Germain manuscripts were acquired by a Russian diplomat, Peter Dubrovsky, who was in Paris purchasing books for Catherine II, empress of Russia, and, ultimately, for his own growing collection. Anne’s manuscript was among Dubrovsky’s acquisitions; in 1805, it was transferred to the Imperial Public Library. 

And there it remained, at least for a time. The few scholars who have written about Anne’s text have assumed that the manuscript is still there, preserved for us, waiting for us to pick it up and touch the very pages that Suzanne turned as she read her mother’s words. But the manuscript is there no longer—it was sold at some point during the 1930s, and its current location, if it still exists, is unknown.**

And so, in the end, Anne of France’s book seems to illustrate rather than to challenge Woolf’s view that the “tradition” women have inherited is a fragmented and disrupted one. Like so many medieval texts, the survival of her work seems entirely a matter of chance—passed from hand to hand, the manuscript copy of her lessons also passed through more than four centuries of disaster, war, and revolution, only to be sold and then to disappear. 

And yet, despite the odds, her text did survive—one copy of the first printed edition, one of the second, two of the third, and, luckily, a careful edition of the manuscript itself, made before its disappearance. Chazaud’s 1878 edition, which itself survives in only a handful of copies, was reprinted in 1978, ensuring that Anne’s lessons could be passed on to a generation of scholars intent on recovering women’s history and enabling them, in Woolf’s words, to begin rewriting the “short and partial” tradition they inherited. 

From Anne of France to Suzanne of Bourbon to Diane de Poitiers to Catherine the Great to us. 

*This post has been adapted from material in The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan) and from Anne of France: Lessons for My Daughter (Boydell & Brewer).

** For the specific date the manuscript came into the possession of the Imperial Public Library, I am indebted to A. P. Romanov, Chief of Foreign Acquisitions, National Library of Russia, personal letter, 22 July 2002.  According to Romanov, the manuscript (then catalogued as MS. Fr. Q.v.III.2) remained at the Imperial Public Library from its receipt until 1849, when a group of illuminated manuscripts was transferred to the Hermitage Museum as part of a display. The manuscripts remained there until 1861 when, Romanov writes, “all illuminated manuscripts were returned from the Hermitage to the Public Library.” Then, according to Romanov, the manuscript was sold “through the ‘Antiquary,’” which was either “an antique store or an auction”; the library knows “nothing about its location.” 

One further query produced a confirmation from Marie-Elisabeth Boutroue, Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes (Centre Nationale de la Recherche), Section de l’Humanism (Paris), who indicates that nothing further is known of the manuscript, but who holds out the hope that “with luck” it may perhaps be found someday (Email, 17 January 2003). 

Mary of Austria: "The Heart To Do Anything"

Mary of Austria, queen and of Hungary and Bohemia, regent of Hungary, and governor of the Netherlands (crowned queen of Hungary and Bohemia, 22 July 1515)

Born in 1505, Mary of Austria was the third daughter born to Juana of Castile and Philip of Austria--and thus a niece of the formidable Margaret of Austria, whom we have met before, on multiple occasions. Mary would find in her aunt a role model, but she would also experience the very real personal costs of following the model her aunt had set.*

Mary of Austria, c. 1519

When she was just six months old, on 17 March 1506, the infant Mary's grandfather, the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian concluded an agreement for her marriage to an as-yet unborn heir to the throne of Hungary and Bohemia. In September, after the death of Philip of Austria, Mary and her siblings (including Isabel of Austria) were transferred to the care of her aunt. 

The marriage alliance was confirmed in 1507 after the birth of Louis of Hungary, and in 1514, when she was eight years old, Mary left Margaret of Austria's court at Mechelen and traveled to Maximilian's court in Vienna in preparation for the conclusion of his proposed alliance. 

To that end, in the summer of 1515, Mary of Austria was betrothed to Louis. Maximilian, who had proposed a double alliance, originally planned that one of his grandsons (that is, one of Mary of Austria's siblings)--either Charles or Ferdinand--would marry Louis' sister, Anne of Bohemia, but instead he decided to marry the twelve-year-old princess himself. 

After the formal betrothal ceremonies, the two "little queens" remained together in Vienna. In 1516 Maximilian changed his mind about Anne and secured a papal dispensation that would allow his grandson Ferdinand to marry her instead. On 24 July 1516 the fourteen-year-old Anne knelt next to Maximilian, renounced her title as "empress," and was married by proxy to Maximilan's grandson. Following this ceremony, the "little queens," now sisters-in-law, were sent to Innsbruck.

Mary of Austria's marriage to Louis of Hungary and Bohemia was celebrated on 11 December 1520, and the following May, not yet sixteen years old, she left for Hungary along with her sister-in-law Anne. By 1524, the strong wife of a weak man, the new queen had negotiated considerable influence and authority for herself, and by 1525, in a "spectacular coup," she gained even more when she assumed control of one powerful political faction and put down the threat, for the moment, of another. A friend wrote to the humanist scholar Erasmus expressing the hope and regret of many: "If she could only be changed into a king, our affairs would be in better shape." 

 The Venetian ambassador at the Hungary court recorded a description of Mary: 

The most serene queen is about twenty-two years old, of diminutive stature, long and narrow face, rather comely, very spare, with a slight color, black eyes, her under lip rather thick, lively, never quiet either at home or abroad. Rides admirably, and manages a horse with as much address as the best horseman. She is a good shot with the crossbow, is intellectual, and has the heart to do anything.

But her active and intellectual nature seemed to endanger her "natural" role as a woman, however: "It is generally supposed that by reason of her natural volatility and from too much exercise and motion she will have no posterity." And despite a "heart" which promised she could "do anything," Mary could not unite the country, and when the Turks invaded, Louis of Hungary was killed. 

Mary of Austria, queen of Hungary
and Bohemia, 1520

On 30 August 1526, the day after her husband's death, Mary wrote to her brother Ferdinand, notifying him of the Hungarian defeat and sending him a warning: "I fear the Turk will not stop at my lord brother's borders." Shortly thereafter, an urgent message was sent to the archduke, asking that he come immediately to Hungary's aid--until he could arrive, troops were sought to support Mary "so that the kingdom does not fall away from us entirely and Your Serene Highness can the better come into Hungary with her help."

But Ferdinand was concerned with what was going on in Bohemia, where he had been elected king, and instead of coming himself he named Mary as his regent of Hungary. Throughout 1526 she worked to secure her brother Ferdinand's election to the crown of Hungary.

On 14 February 1527 she asked him to allow her to resign from her regency, but he preferred her to remain. She continued until the summer of 1527 when Ferdinand finally arrived in Hungary. On 29 October he was crowned king. 

Relieved of the responsibility of her position, what followed were years "of aimless wandering, of financial worries, ill health, and loneliness." In 1528 she rejected her aunt's proposal for a marriage to James V of Scotland, writing to the regent and to her brother Ferdinand that, having loved her husband, she did not wish another marriage; in 1530 she rejected another proposed husband, Frederick of Bavaria. 

In 1528 she also rejected Ferdinand's request that she resume her regency in Hungary: "such affairs need a person wiser and older than I am," she wrote. Drawn into Ferdinand's affairs in 1529, she still demurred, noting that she did not wish to act "like those women who interfere in many things which are not demanded of them."

But in 1530, after her aunt Margaret of Austria's death, Mary received yet another letter from her brother: "I advise you that it has pleased God to take to himself madam, our aunt, the first day of this month, God rest her soul." He concluded on a rather ominous note of warning: "And I think this might perchance cause your affairs to take a different course." 

Ferdinand's letter was quickly followed by a letter dated 3 January 1531 from her brother Charles, now the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V; the emperor requested that she assume the regency of the Netherlands. As her biographer Jane de Iongh states Mary's dilemma, on the one hand she could remain a queen "without a country, without a crown, without money," but with some measure of independence. On the other she could assume the regency of the Netherlands which offered action, responsibilities, and power--but no independence. 

In her response of 29 January, Mary agreed to take over the regency for Charles. In October she was invested with the power to uphold the law, to receive petitions, to supervise legislation and finances, to command the army, and to head the various governors of the provinces: "In short, she received the right to perform everything that could serve to maintain the sovereign's authority and the welfare of the country."

She was also to help the emperor in arranging the marriages of her nieces, for Charles, like his Habsburg grandfather, decided to follow the course of "happy Austria" in using marriage to effect in arranging political alliances. His sister Isabel's two daughters, Dorotea and Christina, had been at Margaret of Austria's court when the old regent died, and Mary, in turn, became their guardian. In 1532 an envoy from the duke of Milan arrived to arrange a marriage with Dorotea, but Charles tried again to form an alliance with James V of Scotland. Since his sister Mary had refused the king, Charles hoped James could be persuaded to accept his niece instead, but the king refused, preferring an alliance with France. 

The duke of Milan, meanwhile, changed his mind about Dorotea and proposed a marriage with the younger Christina, then eleven years old. Charles agreed not only to a marriage by proxy but to an immediate consummation once Christina could travel to Milan. At this, Mary of Austria responded, for once, as her biographer notes, abandoning "the humble attitude of modest pupil" which she had adopted with her brother and speaking with "a conviction and a confidence in her own judgment that cannot have escaped Charles despite the careful terms in which her letter was couched": 

I reply to Your Majesty . . . only to unburden my conscience . . . and to warn you of the difficulties I think I discern. . . . I am of the opinion that it contravenes the law of God and all reason to have her marry so young, before she is twelve years old. . . . I hold it not only contrary to God's command, but I am moreover convinced that you may endanger her life, should she become pregnant before she is altogether a woman. It has often happened that in such cases neither the mother nor the child has survived the birth.

Monseigneur, I am aware that I have said more about this matter, and that I express myself more clumsily, than is desirable. I beg you to forgive me, for my conscience and the love I bear the child compel me to it.

Charles refused to consider his sister's objections to the marriage, but Mary managed to delay. She put off the marriage by proxy first by telling the Milanese envoy that Christina was ill, and then by leaving for "serious affairs" in another part of the Netherlands. The ceremony was finally celebrated on 28 September 1532, but Mary postponed the girl's departure. In early 1533, after Christina's twelfth birthday, the regent could delay no longer, and she was forced to send her niece to Milan on 11 March. The regent immediately fell ill and requested that she be relieved of her position, but Charles refused. 

A more sober Mary of Austria,
minus a jaunty hat!

A little more than a year later, Dorotea was married to Elector Palatine Frederick and left her aunt, but Mary was not to remain alone for long. Within a few months, Christina, a widow at the age of fourteen, returned to her aunt. Henry VIII immediately sought her hand in marriage, but once again Mary objected to the proposed alliance.

This time her delaying tactics were more effective; although her brother urged her to negotiate with the English king, by 1539 Henry had been excommunicated, ending any chance that Christina of Denmark would become Henry VIII's fourth wife.

Until 1555 Mary of Austria served her brother Charles as regent, determined "to centralize the government of the provinces," and she succeeded in achieving among them a greater internal unity and for them some measure of independence from France and the empire. 

Throughout her tenure she also struggled "with the military threats and financial burdens laid on the Netherlands by the European politics of Charles V." In 1535 she and her sister Eleanor, who had been married to Francis I of France, attempted another "ladies' peace" of the sort negotiated by their aunt and Francis's mother, Louise of Savoy, in 1529. To end the on-going war between their brother and Eleanor's husband, they met at Cambrai, but unlike their predecessors, they could find no solutions. 

Like her aunt, Mary of Austria sought peace for the Netherlands, but, in de Iongh's words, as "representative of the Emperor, who paid scarcely any attention to her problems," as "regent versus her subjects, who refused to keep the treasury filled and instead threatened revolt," and as "a woman versus her generals, who did not wish to take notice of her commands," she struggled, forced into war in 1537 against the French and from 1538 to 1540 facing a revolt in Ghent. On 14 October 1540, after he subdued the rebellion, Charles renewed Mary's appointment as his regent. 

In 1543, war with France began again, with further recurrences in 1551, 1552, and 1553. Mary was also forced to mediate between her brothers when Ferdinand objected to Charles's intention to resign as emperor and place the government of the Netherlands in the hands of his son Philip II. When she learned of her brother's intentions, Mary let him know that she, too, would resign her role, sending him a thoughtful analysis of her reasons for her decision and, more generally, of the difficulties faced by women in power: 

I . . . have sufficient experience (beside the fact that the books, Holy Scripture as well as others, are full of it) to know that it is impossible for a woman in peacetime, and even more in time of war, to do her duty as regent towards God, her sovereign, and her own sense of honor. For in peacetime it is unavoidable, in addition to all the meetings and cares of daily affairs which any government brings with it, that whoever guides the government of these provinces must mix with as many people as possible, in order to win the sympathy of both nobility and middle classes. . . . For a woman, especially if she is a widow, it is not feasible to mix thus freely with people. Of necessity I myself have had to do more in this respect than I really wanted. Moreover, a woman is never so much respected and feared as a man, whatever her position.

If one is conducting the government of these countries in time of war, and one cannot in person enter the battle, one is faced with an insoluble problem. One receives all the blows and is blamed for all mistakes made by others, and is reproached if one does not carry out what everyone thinks he can demand. All the complainants can be heard throughout the entire country. But the accused stands alone and cannot answer for herself everywhere at once. And if things then do not go as expected, it is not difficult to make the people believe that the woman who heads the government is to blame for everything, and for this reason she is hated and held in contempt by the people.

But the emperor and his son both urged her to continue as regent despite her determined and well-considered decision. Once more she wrote about her role as a woman in power. "I regard my release . . . as an unalterable fact," she began, continuing: 

My conscience is troubled by carrying on this function without satisfying all its demands. The more experience I have of it, the more I have realized that I am unable to accomplish my task properly

I am of the opinion that whoever acts as regent for a ruler must have more understanding of affairs than the person who governs on his own account and is therefore only responsible to God. If he does whatever lies within his power, he has done his duty. But a regent has to account not only to God, but also to his sovereign and his sovereign's subjects.

And even if I possessed all the aptitudes necessary to govern well, and I am far from doing so, experience has taught me that a woman is not suited to the purpose, neither in peacetime nor in time of war. . . . I have often done more than was fitting for my position and vocation as a woman, out of eagerness to serve you and accomplish my task as well as possible. Your Majesty also knows what insurmountable difficulties we would have met with if you had not been in the country yourself during the last war. Difficulties which I could not have removed, because as a woman I was compelled to leave the conduct of war to others.

Beyond the difficulties and uncertainties, Mary also appealed to her age. She loved her nephew Philip, she wrote, but would hate to start over by trying to serve a new "master"; "it is difficult for someone like me, who has served you till the end, to have to think in my old age of learning my ABC all over again." She continued, "It is suitable that a woman of fifty who has served for at least twenty-four years," should be "content" with having served "one God and one master." She couldn't face the prospect of "a young generation" to whose "ways I cannot and would not wish to accommodate myself."

Continuing, she appealed to her brother for permission "to arrange my life as a private person." Her sister Eleanor, the queen of France, had again been widowed, and Mary wanted to retire with her to Spain, near her brother, where she would be able to "withdraw from all affairs of government"--if she stayed in the Netherlands, she feared she would be once more "drawn into" politics "more than I wish."

She expressed fear about leaving the Low Countries, however; although she was the daughter of Juana of Castile, who had just died at Tordesillas, Mary had never lived in Spain. If her Eleanor were to die, she wrote, "I would be all alone in a country where I know nobody, where the way of life is different from what I am used to, and where I might feel a stranger." Nevertheless, "the advantages are greater than the drawbacks," and in the event that she could not adjust to the country "and its ways," she would still "have the time . . . to be able to go back to the Netherlands."

Charles V finally agreed to his sister's resignation of the post she had held so long. She announced her decision on 24 September 1555, dismissing her household on 1 October. On 25 October, authority was transferred to her nephew Philip. Her departure for Spain finally took place a nearly a year later; with Charles and her sister Eleanor, she sailed from Ghent on 15 September 1556. 

Her happy retirement did not last long. Her sister Eleanor died early in 1558. Mary was "so much affected," wrote one observer, "that it is a heart-rending sight." In her grief she travelled to her brother Charles, apparently to ask his advice about how she should arrange her life after her sister's death. Charles had one answer: he wanted her to return to the Netherlands to resume her role as regent. He promised her a home and a sizable income, but she refused. From the Netherlands, her nephew Philip sent a memorandum to an advisor urging him to convince his aunt to return: "Explain to her how great the necessity is. Remind her of the love and devotion she has always shown. . . . Explain to her what a support her presence will mean. . . ." 

And the bottom line: "Finally offer her a large income and great authority and give her hope that there will be peace and that this will last a long time, as the rulers are all exhausted." Her brother added his urging to his son's request and, when he became ill in August, she finally relented. She would assume the regency once more.

But Charles died on 21 September. His death affected Mary profoundly. She died within a few weeks, on 18 October 1555. 

*This post has been adapted from The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan).

Marguerite d'Angoulême, Queen of Navarre: Princess, Politician, Poet

Marguerite d'Angoulême, queen of Navarre (born 11 April 1492)

The daughter of Louise of Savoy, a woman we have met before, Marguerite d'Angoulême was married (her second marriage) to Henry II, king of Navarre, thus gaining the title by which she is most well-known. She is the mother of Jeanne d'Albret, queen of Navarre, whom we met in January. And, along with Louise of Savoy, Marguerite is one of the women who negotiated the "Ladies Peace" with Margaret of Austria in 1529.

Marguerite in a portrait from c. 1530

The sister of a king (Francis I), the wife of a king, and the mother of a queen, Marguerite d'Angoulême, most often referred to now as Marguerite de Navarre, is notable for  more than these royal connections. Extraordinarily well educated, Marguerite was an important patron of artists and writers, as well as a supporter of religious reform. 

In addition, she is remembered as a writer. Among her more important religious works is The Mirror of the Sinful Soul (Miroir de l’âme pécheress, 1531), later translated into English by Elizabeth Tudor as A Godly Meditation of the Soul. Marguerite also wrote Prayer to Our Lord Jesus Christ (Oraison à notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ) and the two-volume Pearls from the Pearl of Princesses (Les Marguerites de la Marguerite des princesses), published in 1547. In addition to these poems and prayers, she wrote four religious plays.

But she wrote secular work as well, including plays like the Comedy of Four Women (Comédie des quatre femmes) and Too Much, Much, Little, Less (Trop, Prou, Peu, Moins). 

Undoubtedly her most well-known work is the unfinished Heptameron (L’Heptaméron), a frame-tale narrative modeled on Boccaccio's Decameron. Isolated by a flood that confines them in a monastery, Marguerite's characters, a group ten aristocrats, five men and five women, tell stories, debate, and react to one another's "artistic" efforts. Their topics include love and marriage, faithfulness and infidelity, and the conflict between faith and religion.

For an excellent biographical essay, click here. If you're in the mood for a scholarly biography, I recommend Patricia Cholakian and Rouben Cholakian's Marguerite de Navarre (1492-1549): Mother of the Renaissance. There is a Penguin paperback edition of The Heptameron, and for a wider selection of her work, there is Rouben Cholakian and Mary Skemp's Marguerite de Navarre: Selected Writings, a Bilingual Edition.

Margaret of Austria: A Formidable Politician and Peacemaker

Margaret of Austria (born 10 January 1480)

Margaret of Austria,
about 1490

In an age of politically powerful women, Margaret of Austria is among the most adept, experienced, and influential--though she remains surprisingly little known.* An accomplished ruler--she was regent of the Netherlands for some twenty years--she also nurtured and shaped a generation of younger women whom she trained at her court and for whom she herself was to provide a model of female sovereignty. 

Named after her step-grandmother, Margaret of York, duchess of Burgundy, the younger Margaret was born on 10 January 1480. When her mother, Mary of Burgundy, died on 27 March 1482, at the age of just twenty-seven, her daughter was just two years old. Three days before her death, Mary had signed a will naming her children as her heirs and appointing her husband, Maximilian of Austria, as "guardian, governor, and regent" of Burgundy and of her two children: her son and heir, Philip, and her daughter, Margaret.

But when the Estates General of Flanders met the following month, instead of recognizing Maximilian as guardian and regent, they pursued a course of reconciliation with France. In an effort to settle his on-going conflict with Burgundy, the French king, Louis XI, offered the Estates a treaty of peace which included a proposed marriage between Margaret of Austria and his son and heir, Charles. Despite the vigorous opposition of both Maximilian and Margaret of York, the Estates agreed to the offer, and by the time Margaret of Austria was three years old, she had been sent off to the French court. On 2 June 1483, at Amboise, she was betrothed to the dauphin Charles, then aged thirteen; they were "married" the following day. 

After Louis XI died on 31 August 1483, his son Charles became king of France and, as his "wife," Margaret of Austria, just three years old, became la petite reine, "the little queen." Throughout her childhood and adolescence, her education and training were supervised by Anne of France, then governing France as regent on behalf of her brother, Charles.

But by 1491, French political interests had changed, the alliance with Burgundy was put aside, and la petite reine was replaced. The eleven-year-old Margaret discovered that her "husband" would marry another little princess, Anne of Brittany, on 6 December 1491. For more than eight years Margaret of Austria had been Charles's "wife," raised to be and treated as the queen of France; suddenly, at age eleven, she was no longer a French queen, but neither was she sent home. She could no longer remain in the royal residence of Amboise, but she was not returned to Burgundy either. Instead, she was sent to the castle of Melun where she remained a hostage in France for two years. 

When Charles VIII decided to pursue his conquests in Italy, he needed peace with Maximilian. By the terms of the treaty of Senlis, signed in May 1493, Margaret of Austria was returned to her father. Margaret of York awaited her and greeted her upon her arrival in the Flemish city of Cambrai. The two returned to the dowager duchess's court at Mechelen, where the younger Margaret would remain for the next four years. 

While his daughter had been in France, Maximilian had regained control of all of his Austrian possessions and of late his wife's duchy of Burgundy and possessions in the Netherlands; as his daughter Margaret returned from France, he had been elected Holy Roman Emperor following his own father's death. In 1494, when Charles VIII invaded Italy, the new emperor allied himself with the pope, Spain, Venice, and Milan in the "Holy League" against the French. In that year, to strengthen his Spanish alliance, Maximilian arranged for the marriage of his son (Margaret's brother), Philip of Burgundy, to Juana of Castile, while his daughter Margaret of Austria, one-time "queen" of France, would marry the son and heir of Ferdinand and Isabella. 

Philip's marriage to Juana took place first; the ships that brought the Spanish princess to Flanders would, on their return voyage, take Margaret of Austria to Spain. But before she left Mechelen, a ceremonial marriage by proxy was celebrated. On 5 November 1496, Margaret of Austria was married to the Spanish infante, Prince Juan. She was sixteen years old.

When she arrived in Spain in March, she was greeted by Ferdinand and her new husband, Prince Juan. "If you could see her," the Spanish chronicler Peter Martyr wrote, "you would believe that you were contemplating Venus herself." Together they traveled to the city of Burgos, where Margaret of Austria met her new mother-in-law, Isabella of Castile. Her formal wedding with Juan took place on 3 April 1497. Just as Maximilian had arranged the marriage to secure his allies and to further his dynastic pursuit, Isabella and Ferdinand hoped, by this marriage, to expand their own power: Castile and Aragon were now doubly linked to the Holy Roman Empire.

Margaret of Austria as a widow

Margaret of Austria proved to be much healthier than her Spanish prince. By 9 October, just six months after his marriage, Prince Juan was dead, and Margaret of Austria was a widow. She was also pregnant for what turned out to be the first and only time in her life. Late in 1497 or early in 1498, she gave birth to a daughter, stillborn.

Margaret of Austria had been forced to remain in France after her first marriage was dissolved, a discarded "wife" but a valuable hostage. She remained in Spain after Prince Juan's death as well, perhaps as a treasured "daughter," perhaps as, yet again, a political hostage.

Whatever the circumstances of her life in Castile after Juan's death, Margaret spent her time profitably, both teaching and learning. She tutored her sister-in-law Catalina of Aragon, betrothed to Prince Arthur of England, in English, while she herself learned practical lessons in politics and government from her "mother," the queen of Castile.

Eventually, though, Margaret of Austria was returned to Burgundy. She arrived in the Netherlands in September 1499, spending much of the next two years once more with Margaret of York at Mechelen. Already her father was planning to use her again to further his political ambitions. Many candidates for her remarriage were proposed: with Lodovico Sforza, duke of Milan; with the king of Scotland; with Arthur, Prince of Wales (who was already been betrothed to her sister-in-law Catalina of Aragon); and with the king of Hungary, among others. 

While Maximilian deliberated, his son Philip of Burgundy decided the matter. With the death of Prince Juan of Castile, Philip's wife Juana had become the heir to the crowns of Castile and Aragon, and Philip was interested in having himself recognized as the future ruler of Spain. To this end, he wanted peace with France. He suggested yet another double marriage: his son and heir Charles would be married to Claude, infant daughter of the French king, while his sister Margaret would be married to Philibert of Savoy, the French king's nephew. The duchy of Savoy, bordering France and Milan, was strategically located. (Louise of Savoy, who had been one of Margaret's childhood companion during her days as "queen" of France, was Philibert's sister.)

On 26 September 1501, Margaret of Austria again left Flanders. She set off for a proxy marriage, accompanied once more by Margaret of York. The ceremony took place late on 28 November, the marriage with Philibert taking place shortly thereafter, on 4 December. 

After her arrival in Savoy, Margaret recognized that her husband, the duke, had no interest in government and no political influence. Having had the best of models in Margaret of York, Anne of France, and Isabella of Castile, Margaret of Austria for the first time became more than a wife and political pawn. 

As she began her political career, interested not only in domestic affairs but in foreign policy, Margaret of Austria had a distinct advantage over the rulers who were her "colleagues." Although young and as yet unpracticed, she was neither sheltered nor inexperienced: her marriages and her travel had brought her into contact with all the European powers. Her father was archduke of Austria and the Holy Roman emperor. Her brother was duke of Burgundy and was married to Juana, heir to the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon. She had spent eight years in France, and knew Louis XII, Anne of Brittany, and Anne of France. Louise of Savoy, by then the mother of the heir-presumptive to Louis' French throne, had been her childhood companion while Margaret was at the French court and now was her sister-in-law. And Margaret had spent three years in Spain with Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon.

Although Margaret's tenure in Savoy was to be brief, it was to be important for her future career. She would never again be a wife, but she would be a ruler. In Savoy, having identified and appointed trustworthy advisors and assistants, many of whom would serve her throughout her life, she began to apply the lessons of politics and government she had learned in France and Spain. But by September of 1504 Philibert was dead.

Margaret's first reaction to the loss of her husband was to try to throw herself out a window. Her attempt at suicide thwarted, she threw herself into passionate grieving instead, refusing to be separated from Philibert's body. Although she was eventually convinced to bury her husband, she had his heart embalmed so she could keep it with her. She withdrew from society and, six months later, began the construction of a mausoleum for Philibert's interment. 

Margaret remained in Savoy for two years after Philibert's death, conducting affairs for Philibert's brother and successor, still a minor, and struggling to obtain her dower income. For a time it looked as if she might once again be a marital pawn in her father's hands, a match arranged for her with the recently widowed Henvy VII of England, but this time Margaret's refusal was determined. But before Maximilian could try to persuade his daughter into a fourth marriage, fortune intervened. On 25 September, just a day after Maximilian wrote to Henry VII, Margaret's brother Philip of Burgundy died. His death meant that Margaret was once more on her way back to the Netherlands 

In 1506 Margaret of Austria was twenty-six years old; she had been married three times, repudiated once and widowed twice. Although Philip's wife Juana would survive her husband by nearly fifty years, she was not to act as guardian for the four children she had left behind in the Netherlands--Eleanor, Charles, Isabel, and Mary--nor was she to serve as regent for her son. Instead Maximilian looked to his daughter to act as regent for Charles, Philip's heir in Burgundy (and Juana's heir in Spain). Margaret left Savoy on 29 October 1506, and on 18 March 1507, her father signed a document naming Margaret of Austria as regent of the Netherlands. 

She would serve as regent for nearly twenty years. Her first appointment extended from 1507 to 1515, her second from 1519 to 1530. As regent, she acted as guardian for Philip's children and arranged for their education. More importantly, she would manage the government of the Netherlands for the six-year-old Charles until he came of age: Margaret set up her court at Mechelen, where her step-grandmother Margaret of York, who had died in 1505, had established her own ducal establishment. One of Margaret's first decisions as regent was to travel with the young Charles throughout the provinces of the Low Countries. 

Although she had rejected Henry VII's offer of marriage, she negotiated new trade relations with him quite successfully. Less successfully, she was forced into the "Gelderland war," which she managed to settle in October of 1508 with the assistance of Louis XII, once her youthful companion and now the French king. The next month, in November, she traveled to Cambrai, where she represented both her father Maximilian and her former father-in-law, Ferdinand of Aragon, in a series of international negotiations.

Maximilian did not seem to have complete faith in his daughter, warning her that she could be duped--but, despite her father's hesitancy, Margaret proved herself an able negotiator; "Madam Margaret," one chronicler reported, "has seen and experienced more at her youthful age . . . than any lady on record, however long her life." Another noted, "This princess had a man's talent for managing business; in fact she was more capable than most men, for she added to her talents the fascination of her sex, brought up as she had been to hide her own feelings, conciliate her opponents, and persuade all parties that she was acting blindly in their interests." Still another, noting how well she dealt with one powerful representative, commented that she was "so successful in charming him that he could refuse her nothing." 

The treaty was concluded on 10 December 1508. Publicly, peace was declared between Maximilian and Louis XII, and Louis was invested with the duchy of Milan. But a secret treaty was also negotiated, one that united Maximilian, Louis XII, Ferdinand of Aragon, and Pope Julius II against Venice; the kings England and Hungary were also invited to join the League of Cambrai. While each of the men who were parties to the agreement had territorial and personal ambitions, Margaret had her own as well, for she aimed to secure peace in the Netherlands. 

Throughout the years of war that resulted, Margaret maintained peace in the Low Countries. Working with a council that included advisors who had accompanied her to Mechelen from Savoy, she assured the continued success of trade. She supervised the education of the children in her care. She also pursued her "womanly" responsibilities, spinning, weaving, and sewing, modelling herself, it seems, upon Isabella of Castile. She sent her father "good linen shirts"; "I have received by this bearer some beautiful shirts . . . which you have helped to make with your own hand," Maximilian wrote, "for with which I am delighted." She sent him recipes and remedies for his health, for which he was thankful, but also some political advice, carefully constructing her role as a woman and his "one and only daughter" rather than as his equal and an experienced politician in her own right. Maximilian was less pleased by her political "prescriptions" than her advice about his health. 

She also prepared for the future by arranging political marriages for her nieces. This "trade in princesses" began when a Portuguese match was suggested for Eleanor, Isabel, or Mary. Nothing was settled with Portugal, but a match was arranged for Isabel with Christian II, king of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, who had a rather frightening reputation as the "Nero of the North." A double alliance would be made with Bohemia and Hungary as well; Mary of Austria would marry Louis, the crown prince of Bohemia and Hungary, while Ferdinand of Austria would marry Louis' sister Anne. Eleanor was to be reserved for a match with France or England. 

By 1515, Charles of Ghent, son and heir of Philip of Austria and Juana of Castile, was fifteen years old. He was declared of age by Maximilian, who apparently did not consult with Margaret before he made his decision. In letter to the estates of Flanders the young man announced his "emancipation." He also received a letter from Maximilian who reminded the newly "emancipated" young man "to remember the way [your aunt and regent] laboured during your minority in the administration of your country" and advised him to "communicate your chief and most arduous business to her, and . . . take and use her good advice and council," noting that from her the young Charles could count on "more comfort, help, and support than from any other." He concluded his letter with a touching reminder to Charles: "you are her whole heart, hope, and heir." 

But Charles's new counselors were eager to raise the young man's suspicions against his aunt, and there is little doubt that during her tenure as regent she had angered many--like her male contemporaries, she had not hesitated to use her power and authority, sometimes arbitrarily. She had at times insulted members of the Estates, on one notable occasion angering the nobles of the powerful Order of the Golden Fleece: "Ah, Messeigneurs! if I were such a man as I am a woman, I would make you bring your statutes to me and make you sing out passages from them!" 

Her nephew wisely reconsidered, dismissing the suspicions that had been raised about Margaret's regency. When his grandfather Ferdinand of Aragon died on 23 January 1516, Charles became king of Aragon, Naples, and Sicily, and regent of Castile for his "mad" mother, Juana. Before he left for Spain to claim his inheritance and his titles, he needed to appoint a regent, and Maximilian advised him to turn to Margaret of Austria once more. In a letter to Charles Maximilian reminded his grandson that he, his daughter, and Charles were "one and the same thing corresponding to one and the same desire," and in February 1517 he travelled to the Netherlands to make sure that his daughter and his grandson were reconciled. It was agreed among them that Margaret of Austria would once more become regent of the Netherlands. 

Charles confirmed Margaret in her regency and on 8 September, accompanied by his sister Eleanor, he departed for Spain. On his arrival, one of his first duties was to visit his mother in Tordesillas--once there, he attempted to remove his youngest sister, Catalina, but witnessing his mother's grief, he left her there. On 24 July 1519, from Saragossa, he issued an edict giving Margaret the authority to act in the Netherlands in his name. 

While Charles was in Spain, the Emperor Maximilian's health began to fail. In August 1518 he called together the electors of Rome to secure the imperial title for his grandson. But on 12 January 1519, before he could complete his task, he died, and it was left to Margaret of Austria to ensure her nephew's election. Her campaign on behalf of her nephew was vigorous, even brutal--and ultimately successful. On 28 June 1519, the seven electors named Charles of Austria and Burgundy, King of Spain, Naples, and Sicily as Holy Roman Emperor.

On 1 July 1519, in Barcelona, Charles praised the "great, inestimable, and praiseworthy" service of the "very dear lady and aunt, Lady Margaret." For the last ten years of her life, until her death on 1 December 1530, Margaret of Austria would continue to serve her nephew as regent of the Netherlands. During her second tenure, under constant threats of war with the French and in spite of economic pressures, she extended Habsburg territories in the Low Countries: by 1524, Friesland had been brought under control and Gelders had been subdued; by 1528, she had annexed the bishop of Utrecht's lands. 

But if she is known at all, the achievement for which Margaret of Austria is most remembered is the so-called "Ladies' Peace" of 1529, which settled years of strife. On 24 February 1525, while he campaigned against the Emperor Charles in Italy, Francis I, who had succeeded Louis XII as king of France, was captured at the battle of Pavia. He was sent to Spain. During his imprisonment, his mother Louise of Savoy became regent of France. In August she wrote to her childhood companion and former sister-in-law, Margaret of Austria, for a truce so that she could negotiate for her son's release, a request to which Margaret agreed, though she earned an angry reaction from Charles, whom she had not consulted. Francis's release was finally negotiated by the treaty of Madrid; among its other provisions, the agreement aimed at securing the peace between Charles and the French king by a double marriage. Charles's sister, the recently widowed Eleanor, would marry Francis, whose first wife, Claude, had also just died. Eleanor's infant daughter Maria of Portugal would marry Francis's son and heir, the French dauphin, another Francis. The French king was released from captivity on 17 March 1526. 

But he had no intention of keeping to the terms of his treaty which, besides his marriage to Eleanor, had committed him to serious territorial loss and had sent his two sons to Spain as hostages. Once back in France, he renewed his war with Charles; on 22 May 1526 Francis allied himself with Venice, Milan, England, and the pope. The League of Cognac aimed at Charles, targeting his Italian possessions. War broke out once more. It dragged on for two more years, until May of 1528, when Margaret of Austria, in what would be one of her last acts as regent of the Netherlands, conceived of a plan to end it. 

In 1529, three women--Margaret of Austria, Louise of Savoy, and Louise's daughter Marguerite of Angoulême--planned to meet at the neutral city of Cambrai. Before she left, Margaret was warned not to go because the French king would take her hostage, as her nephew had taken him hostage. But Margaret rejected such an idea, saying "she had no mistrust or fear of any sort as regarded Madame Louise or the king, and that if any of her councillors or courtiers were afraid, they might go home."

The regent arrived in Cambrai on 5 July at three o'clock in the afternoon; Louise and her daughter arrived two hours later. The two older women, although they had been sisters-in-law, had not met since Margaret had begun her journey to Savoy for her wedding with Philibert. On a personal level, the terms of the agreement they reached arranged for the ransom of Louise's grandsons from their captivity in Spain, and Francis agreed to celebrate his marriage to Margaret's niece, the widowed queen of Portugal. Further, the agreement they reached confirmed most of the territorial advantages the treaty of Madrid had awarded to the empire. Margaret of Austria once again proved her skills as a negotiator--and her willingness to use whatever means necessary, including bribery, to get the terms she wanted. The "Ladies' Peace" was formally concluded on 5 August. But the two "ladies" had agreed that they would continue their negotiations, securing their peace still more firmly by arranging double marriages between Louise's grandchildren and Charles's children. They never completed their plans, however. 

Back in the Netherlands, Margaret grew increasingly ill. She knew she was dying, and she wrote to her nephew Charles on 30 November 1530: "I have no regrets whatever, save for the privation of your presence, and that I can neither see nor speak with you once more before my death. . . . I turn back to you the government of [your lands], in which I believe I have loyally acquitted myself. . . . I particularly commend to you peace . . . ."

She died the next day, 1 December 1530. She was buried in Savoy, next to her third husband Philibert. Although she did not have any children, she would prove to be a formative influence on long and successful line of political "daughters."  

Margaret's tomb at the Royal Monastery of Brou,
Bourg-en-Bresse

For a biography of Margaret of Austria, see Jane de Iongh, Margaret of Austria, Regent of the Netherlands, trans. M. D. Herter Norton (1953), a clear and readable narrative, if undocumented and somewhat romanticized (the book is out of print, but used copies are readily available). Eleanor E. Tremayne's 1908 The First Governess of the Netherlands, Margaret of Austria is an excellent and carefully documented work focusing principally on Margaret's later years as regent; reprint copies are available on Amazon. Both biographies are also available through the Internet Archive (click here).

*This post has been adapted from The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan).