Queens of the Renaissance by M. Beresford Ryley

Author:M. Beresford Ryley [Ryley, M. Beresford]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: anboco
Published: 2017-03-11T23:00:00+00:00

Qui se couche

En danger

Pour manger

Confitures.

Si tu dures

Trop malade

Couleur fade

Tu prendras.

Et perdras

L’Embonpoint.

Dieu te doint

Santé bonne

Ma Mignonne.”

It was characteristic of a strain of cheerful callousness in the poet to tell his friend that to continue ill would be to lose the pretty plumpness which made her so attractive.

In 1524, Francis started to reconquer Milan, and from that time a great change came into Margaret’s way of life. When he went, her husband went with him; also Bonnivet, Anne de Montmorency, and many others who were her friends. Margaret then moved to Paris to keep her mother company; also the poor queen Claude, who was in the last stages of consumption, and who died before Francis had gone far upon his journey. The disaster of Pavia came as an almost inconceivable blow to those in Paris. Francis was the prisoner of Charles V., and it was said the calamity had taken place, to a great extent, owing to the stupidity of Margaret’s husband, who, as leader of the vanguard, had failed to come to the king’s rescue. La Palice, Bayaret, and Bonnivet, among her friends also, were dead, and Marot and Montmorency were prisoners. In reference to Palice’s death some ridiculous verses were sung in the streets by the people—

“Hélas, La Palice est mort,

Il est mort devant Pavie.

Hélas, s’il n’etait pas mort

Il serait encore en vie.”

From the moment of Francis’s capture Margaret commenced a correspondence of almost impassioned tenderness with him and about him. The poet Dr. Bellay refers to Margaret, Louise, and Francis as one heart in three bodies, and they were known as The Trinity, Margaret, upon one occasion, referring to herself as the last corner in it. She wrote to Francis, after he had been taken to Madrid: “If I can be of service to you, even to the scattering of the ashes of my bones to the winds, nothing will be amiss, difficult, or painful, but consolation, repose, and honour.”

The next incident was to fling Margaret upon the colossal failure of her life. Charles V. would agree to no terms of peace in which Francis did not surrender Burgundy as well as all claims to Milan and Naples. Francis was willing to give up claim to the last two places, but to relinquish Burgundy, which meant giving up a slice of France, was out of the question.

Margaret had meanwhile become a widow. The Duc D’Alençon died shortly after the disaster of Pavia—it is said, in a great measure, from want of will to live. Everybody—including his wife—looked upon him with abhorrence, since he had been, in so me measure, responsible for the capture of the king. The knowledge helped to destroy vitality, though, in the end, Margaret nursed and coddled and forgave him, as she ought to have done—the ultimate necessity for every woman being to possess the power to forgive interminably.

But D’Alençon was scarcely cold before Louise de Savoie offered Charles V. Margaret’s hand, and proposed Charles’s sister, the widowed Queen of Portugal, as wife for Francis. Margaret,

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