Two children were born of the marriage of Charles of Orleans, Count of Angoulême, a prince of the blood royal of France, and Louise, the daughter of Philip Duke of Savoy, and Margaret of Bourbon. The elder of the two was Margaret, the principal subject of this memoir, born on the 11th of April, 1492; the younger, born on the 12th of September, 1494, was the prince who succeeded Louis XII. on the throne of France, February, 1515, under the name of François I.

Married when she was little more than eleven years old, Louise of Savoy was left a widow before she had completed her eighteenth year. (But she refused an offer of marriage from King Henry VII of England.)

Thenceforth she devoted herself assiduously to the care of her children, who repaid her with the warm affection they always felt for their mother and for each other.

She was a woman of remarkable beauty and capacity, and her character and conduct were deserving, in many respects, of the eulogies which her daughter never wearied of lavishing upon them; but less partial writers have convicted her of criminal acts, which brought disasters upon her son and her country.

In the first year of his reign (1515), François I committed the regency of the kingdom to his mother, and set out on his expedition to Italy. He was absent but a few months; nevertheless, this first regency enabled Louise of Savoy to fill the most important offices with men entirely devoted to her interests, and even to her caprices and to gratify by any and every means the insatiable thirst for money with which she was cursed.

In the beginning of the year 1522, Lautrec, one of the king's favorites, who commanded his forces in Italy, lost in a few days all the advantages which François had gained by the victory of Marignano. He returned to Paris with only two attendants, and sought an audience of the king, who refused at first to receive him. Finally, at the intercession of the Constable of Bourbon, François allowed Lautrec to appear before him, and after loading him with reproaches, demanded what excuse he could offer for himself. Lautrec calmly replied, "The troops I commanded not having been paid, refused to follow me, and I was left alone."­"What!" said the king, " I sent you four hundred thousand crowns to Genoa, and Semblançay, the superintendent of finance, forwarded you three hundred thousand."­"Sire, I have received nothing." Semblançay being summoned to the presence, "Father," said the king, (who addressed him in that way on accouut of his great age), "come hither and tell us if you have not, in pursuance of my order, sent M. de Lautrec the sum of three hundred thousand crowns?"­"Sire," replied the superintendent, "I am prepared to prove that I delivered that sum to the duchess your mother, that she might employ it as you say."­ "Very well," said the king, and went into his mother's room to question her. Louise of Savoy threw the whole blame on Semblançay, who was immediately confronted with her. He persisted in his first statement, and the duchess was forced to confess that she had received the greater part of the sum in question, but she alleged that the money was due to her by the superintendent, and she did not see why her private income should be applied to the Italian expedition. François most bitterly upbraided his mother for thus embezzling the money of the state, but his wrath fell more heavily on the minister, whom he found to have been guilty of culpable complaisance towards her. The unfortunate Semblançay was arrested; commissioners were appointed to examine his accounts, and being condemned by their report, he was hung on the gibbet at Montfaucon on the 9th of August, 1527.

Louise of Savoy was deeply implicated in a still fouler transaction, which was attended with the most terrible consequences: this was the iniquitous lawsuit brought against the Constable of Bourbon, which was followed by his desertion and treason. According to all historians, the insensate love of the Duchess of Angoulême, then aged forty-four, for the constable, who was but thirty-two, was the sole cause of this suit; but her cupidity, and the secret jealousy with which François I regarded one of the handsomest, wealthiest, and bravest men in his kingdom, also contributed to that result. The object of the suit was to wrest from the constable the lordships bequeathed to him by Suzanne de Beaujeu, one of the richest heiresses in Europe, and to which Louise of Savoy laid claim as next of kin to the deceased. She did so at the instigation of the Chancellor Duprat, whose reasonings on the subject we are enabled to give in his own words, as follows:

"The marriage of M. Charles de Bourbon with Madame Suzanne was nothing else than a mere shift to stop the action at law which the said lord was ready to move against Madame de Bourbon and her daughter, on account of the estates of appanage and others entailed on the marriage of Jean de Bourbon and Maria of Berry. The mere apprehension of this contest made the said Madame de Bourbon condescend thereto, and to that end she dissolved the contract passed between M. d'Alençon and Madame Suzanne. Hence there is a likelihood that a similar apprehension of a suit to be promoted for the whole inheritance of the house by two stronger parties than was then the said Lord of Bourbon, who was neither old enough nor strong enough to prosecute it, as the king and his mother will be, may cause some overtures to be made on the one side or the other to compromise and allay this difference.

"M. de Bourbon is now but thirty-two, and Madame, the king's mother, cannot be more than forty at most, which is not too disproportioned an age for so great a lady, handsome, rich, and so highly qualified. Should the said Lord of Bourbon agree to this marriage, why there she is at the point she desires, Duchess of Bourbonnais and Auvergne, and lady of that great heritage. If, on the contrary, he refuses, it will be necessary to bring this action, prosecute it vigorously, employ in it the authority of the king and my lady his mother, and spare nought to further it. This will make him bethink himself, however intractable he may be, and he will be very glad to return into favor by this means. If not, as he is a courageous prince, when he finds himself threatened with the loss of all his possessions, titles, and dignities, he will do something extraordinary, and will choose rather to abandon his country (as M. du Bellay says) than to live in it in a necessitous condition. He will withdraw out of the realm; and by so doing he will confiscate all. So that he cannot fail to do what is desired, be it how it may."

The Constable of Bourbon having rejected, and even it is said with disdain, the offer of marriage made to him, the suit was brought before the parliament, and was decided in favor of the Duchess of Angoulême. But the pleasure brought her by this triumph over her haughty adversary was not of long duration. A few months after he was despoiled of all his estates, Charles of Bourbon quitted France, and entered the service of Charles V. In the following year, 1524, he drove the French out of Italy, and on the 24th of February, 1525, he defeated them in the famous battle of Pavia, in which François I was taken prisoner, after receiving five wounds. The Duchess of Angoulême, as Regent of France, displayed great courage and ability under this heavy calamity. She soon received from her captive son the letter containing that memorable phrase: De toutes choses ne m'est demeuré que l'honneur, et la vie que est sauve ­"I have lost all but honor and life." This letter was a great joy to her. Margaret wrote respecting it to her brother, "Your letter has had such an effect on Madame, and of all those who love you, that it has been to us a Holy Ghost after the sorrow of the Passion . . . Madame has felt her strength so greatly redoubled, that all day and evening not a minute is lost for your affairs, so that you need not have any pain or care about your realm and your children."

After taking all necessary measures for the internal defence of the kingdom, the regent and her daughter took up their residence at Lyon, for the purpose of the more readily receiving news from Italy. There they learned that Charles V. had removed his prisoner to Madrid, and that he was becoming more and more exacting in the conditions for his release. François I wrote to his mother that he was very ill, and begged her to come to him; but, in spite of her love for her son, she felt that she could not comply with his request, for it would have been risking the fate of the monarchy to put the regent along with the King of France into the Emperor's hands. Sacrificing, therefore, her feelings as a mother to the requirements of the state, she sent her daughter Margaret instead of herself to Madrid.

After she had done her part to the utmost for her son's release, and in the negotiations for the treaty of peace which was concluded to Cambrai on the 5th of August, 1529, the Duchess of Angoulême took no further share in the government of the realm. She had repaired, as far as it was possible for her, the misfortunes earned by her conduct with regard to the constable. Her labors as regent, during her son's captivity, had completely ruined her health, which had begun to fail before that event. In September, 1531, she was at Fontainebleau with her daughter and all the other ladies of her court; the plague was raging in the neighborhood, and Louise, who had a great dread of death, was incessantly occupied with medicine and new receipts against disorders of all kinds. Her spirits were very low, and her countenance so changed as scarcely to be recognized by her daughter. "If you would like to know her pastime," Margaret writes to her brother, "it is that, after dinner, when she has given audience, instead of doing her customary works, she sends for all those who have any malady, whether in the legs, arms, or breasts, and with her own hands she dresses them, by way of trying an ointment she has, which is very singular." This horror at the thought of death was common to both mother and daughter. Brantôme says of the former, "She was in her time, as I have heard many say who have seen and known her, a very fine lady, but very worldly withal, and was the same in her declining age, and hated to hear discourse of death, even from preachers in their sermons: as if, said she, we did not know well enough that we must all die some time or other; and these preachers, when they have nothing else to say in their sermons, like ignorant persons fall to talking of death. The late Queen of Navarre, her daughter, liked no more than her mother these repetitions and preachings concerning death."

A few days after the date of the letter quoted in the last paragraph, Louise of Savoy quitted Fontainebleau for change of air, but was obliged to stop at Grès, a little village of the Gâtinais, where she died on the 22d of September, 1531.

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