A great battle was fought August 10, 1512, between the French and English fleets. The _Regent_ with the English Admiral on board attacked the famous _Cordelière_, commanded by the Breton Hervé Portzmoguet. The two ships were grappled together, the battle raged fiercely and the dead lay in heaps on the decks. Then Portzmoguet, seeing that all hope was lost, set fire to both vessels, and, clad in complete armour, threw himself from the mast into the sea. The ships went down together with more than two thousand men, the French fleet drew off to Brest, the English to the high seas.[346]
There was strife between the King and Pope, and the Queen’s views were strongly opposed to those of Louis. The Pope laid France under an interdict from which he excepted Bretagne. In vain the King assured her that women had no voice in Church matters; she had but to point to Bretagne as her answer, and to remind him that at fourteen years old she had successfully opposed Innocent III. when he illegally appointed two of his nephews to benefices in her duchy. Also that her influence had prevented Louis from occupying Rome, when, after the battle of Ravenna, the road to the Eternal City lay open to his victorious troops. She ultimately induced him to subscribe to the Lateran Council, whereby the Roman gained the victory over the Gallican party in the Church.[347]
Anne was not yet thirty-eight, but her brilliant, eventful life was drawing to a close. For a year or two her health had been failing and on the 2nd of January, 1514, she was taken ill at Blois and died a week afterwards. Knowing that she would not recover, one of her last orders was that her heart should be sent to Nantes and laid in the tomb of her father and mother in the land and among the people she had so faithfully loved.
The King shut himself up alone for days wearing the black mourning he had chosen, contrary to the custom for Kings of France. From the shock of the Queen’s death he never recovered. He only survived for two months the preposterous marriage he was induced to make in the following year with the young sister of Henry VIII. for the purpose of stopping the English war. Claude, wife of François I., died ten years after her mother leaving several children, one of whom was Henri II., whose three sons were the last kings of the house of Valois.