PICTURES OF THE OLDFRENCH COURT

AMBOISE.

Pictures of the
Old French Court

By
Catherine Bearne

Author of
“Lives and Times of the Early Valois Queens”

ILLUSTRATED BY EDWARD H. BEARNE FROM ANCIENT
PRINTS, ORIGINAL DRAWINGS, &c.

NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
1900

In a former book I endeavoured, from informationgathered out of the records of the first half ofthe fourteenth century, to give some idea of thecourt and social conditions of France at that time,and also of the first three Valois Queens, whose veryexistence appears unknown to the average Englishreader. This was no easy matter owing to thescarcity of details, which had to be carefully gleanedfrom amongst masses of histories and chronicles ofbattles, sieges, conspiracies, general councils, andother public events.

The present volume treats of the years betweenthe latter part of the fourteenth and beginning of thesixteenth centuries, about which so much more informationexists that I have found it necessary toabandon, for want of space, my intention of givinga short account of the courts of Marie d’Anjou andCharlotte de Savoie, wives of Charles VII. and LouisXI., who took very little part in public affairs; andto give a much shorter account of the reign of Annede Bretagne.

viiiVery little has been written about Isabeau deBavière, and much less still concerning Jeanne deBourbon, whereas a great deal is known of Annede Bretagne, the history of whose life has more thanonce been related. To an interesting biography ofher by Louisa Stuart Costello, and an invaluableone by Le Roux de Lincy I am much indebted. Ihave, as before, consulted many early chronicles,histories, and letters, French, English, German,Italian, and Spanish, besides the works of variousexcellent modern writers, whose names I quote.Accuracy being of the greatest importance in bookslike these, I give, in reply to the observation ofa critic, that the lines I quoted referring to thesiege of Cassel are incorrect, the original of DeNangis:—

“In dicto vero castro, in regis et totius Francorumexercitus derisum et subsannationem, in quodameminenti loco posuerant Flammingi quemdam gallumpermaximum de tela tincta, dicentes: ‘Quando gallusiste cantabit, rex Cassellum capiet vi armorum.’ Undeet gallice in gallo scriptum erat:

‘Quand ce coq chanté aura,
Le Roy Cassel conquestera.’”1

I quoted these lines from the “Grandes Chroniques.”2

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