Between Nantes and Vannes, the childhood of Anne de Bretagne was undoubtedly happy within a loving family and a court which was then one of the most cultured in Europe. But born in January 1477, she probably very quickly became aware, as tensions grew with the powerful French neighbor, of the extreme fragility of this golden bubble in which she lived. Very quickly, too, she must become familiar with death. She lost her mother at nine, her father at eleven, her only sister at thirteen. At barely twelve years old, on February 15, 1489, she became the duchess of a principality ravaged by French troops, abandoned by its English, Austrian and Spanish allies.
Besieged in Rennes in the fall of 1491, she has no choice, to put an end to the war, but to unite with the man she probably hates the most in the world, the one who destroyed her family and his country – the King of France, Charles VIII. She is 14, he is 21. Marriage makes her a powerless queen and duchess who witnesses, dismayed, the rapid Frenchification of Breton institutions.
A duchy to rebuild
Charles VIII died suddenly on April 8, 1498. The memorialists describe a collapsed Anne. However, she quickly overcomes her grief… Pregnant five times, none of her children survived, and according to the contract of 1491, her duchy is rightfully hers. From April 9, she restored the chancellery, and the following weeks, she appointed a close lieutenant-general of Brittany, summoned the States to Rennes and decided to issue a gold coin in her effigy.
Anne is now 21 years old. Returning to Brittany in October 1498, she exercised absolute authority, as if the past seven years had been nothing but a nightmare to be forgotten as quickly as possible. Unfortunately for her, the 1491 contract forced her to marry Charles’ successor. It was Louis d’Orléans, now Louis XII. A man with whom we can get along… Louis fought on the Breton side during the war of 1487-1488. And above all, Anne is no longer the terrified little girl who in 1491 had to give up everything just to survive. She has become a woman who has been strengthened by trials. So, if Louis XII wants his hand, he will have to pay the price. In fact, he is more than conciliatory. The treaty signed on January 7, 1499 guarantees the independence of the duchy by excluding in the future any possibility of common government between the two countries. Anne triumphs. Duchess of Brittany, she has practically become one again in the manner of her ancestors.
Preparing for the future
And since, obviously, Louis is very much in love with the one he nicknames “his Brette”, why not push his advantage? By the Treaty of Lyon of August 10, 1501, the couple’s daughter, Claude, was promised in marriage to the future Charles V, with Milanese and Neapolitan as a dowry, but also Burgundy and Brittany… Anne sees only a way to distance his duchy a little further from the kingdom of France, and it matters little to him that the price to pay is a weakening of it.
In the shadows, however, forces are at work that are working to thwart his plans. Louise de Savoie works so that her son François d’Angoulême, the presumptive heir to the crown, marries Claude. Anne street in the stretchers. This French marriage would be the annihilation of everything she dreamed and built. When she realizes that Louis XII has nevertheless joined this furious option, she deserts the castle of Blois and embarks on her famous Tro Breizh in the summer of 1505. This will only make the king angry with her.
The engagement of Claude and François d’Angoulême is celebrated in May 1506. However, nothing is yet lost, the contract of 1499 providing that the duchy returns to the second child. It’s also a girl, Renée. Since she could not marry Claude to Charles Quint, Anne will devote her last strength to ensuring that her younger daughter marries the future emperor. without achieving its ends. Sick, exhausted by repeated pregnancies – 14 in twenty years! – she died at the Château de Blois on January 9, 1514, at the age of 37.
To know more
Joël Cornette, “Anne of Brittany”, Gallimard, 2021.
Claire L’Hoër, “Anne of Brittany. Duchess and Queen of France”, Fayard, 2020.
Georges Minois, “Anne of Brittany”, Fayard, 1999.
Our selection of articles to understand the Anne de Bretagne file
Anne betrayed by her family
The desperate energy that Anne displayed in the years before her death in order to preserve the independence of Brittany shows that she probably had a presentiment of what would happen after her death. However, at his death, the duchy seemed safe from French covetousness. The contract of 1499 applies, and its clauses are clear: it is Renée, the youngest daughter, who must inherit Brittany. Claude, future queen of France, has absolutely no right over it.
But the last word belongs to the court. And the court considers that reason of state must prevail over respect for the law. Since the contract in question thwarts French interests, since it only wants to conceive of Brittany as independent of the kingdom, we might as well proceed as if it had quite simply never existed! The despoiled heiress, Renée, is a three-year-old girl. She is not likely to challenge the injustice she suffers.
For even greater security, Anne’s will, the content of which must have offended the king and his relatives, is very opportunely “misplaced”. Everyone can now act as if Claude were the new Duchess of Brittany. Her mother barely buried, she was married in May 1514 to François d’Angoulême. She hastened, upon his accession to the throne of France the following year, to donate her duchy to him. If Anne never betrayed Brittany, her eldest daughter undoubtedly betrayed the memory of her mother.
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