The Duke left his daughters under the guardianship of the Maréchal de Rieux and the Comte de Comminges, who were also to consult Dunois, son of the famous Bastard of Orléans, and Madame de Laval was to remain their governess.[282] She must have been fond of them and good to them in spite of her reprehensible partisanship of her unsuitable brother, for Anne always showed her much affection.
The princesses were taken immediately from Coiron, where the Duke died, to Guérande, which was considered safer. The Breton nobles had sworn allegiance to Anne in her father’s lifetime, among others her natural brother, François Baron d’Avaugour, son of Antoinette de Maignelais. He and Anne were very fond of each other.
An embassy was sent to the King of France and the States hastily summoned. Anne sat at the head of the Council, and her ministers soon discovered that she was no weak, timid girl of whom they could dispose at their pleasure, but a high-spirited princess who knew very well that she was their sovereign.
When Rieux brought forward again the project of marrying her to the detested Albret as the best way out of the present difficulties, she immediately, with an eloquence and decision that astonished them, rejected the proposal. An historian remarks, “And the high heart that she had! girl as she was!”[283]
She said that Albret had not even fulfilled the conditions which alone had induced her to consent to such an engagement, in giving assistance to her father, who had never desired nor approved of the marriage, but had been tormented into consenting when in weak health by Madame de Laval, that she had always protested against it, and that Albret knew he was repugnant to her, and that she never meant to carry it out. That she was the Duchesse de Bretagne and the greatest heiress in Christendom, that the idea of trying to force her to marry against her will was contrary to all propriety, and that sooner than make such a marriage as this she would retire into a convent and take the veil.
She hated Albret all the more, because as she grew older and increased in beauty, he had conceived a violent passion for her, but her courage and firmness put a stop to the tyrannical meddling of her ministers and filled them with respect and admiration.