Jeanne, Duchesse d’Orléans, was greatly to be pitied. She loved Louis as Valentine Visconti had loved his still handsomer and more dissipated grandfather. But Valentine was a brilliant, attractive woman of the world, with whom the Duke, in spite of his frequent infidelities, had got on very well. Jeanne, besides being deformed, was a meek, ascetic person, whose life had been passed in slavish submission to her father, the terrible Louis XI., and despairing love for her husband; her tastes and ideas were those of the cloister.
Although his follies were the cause of many calamities to the duchy, François II. was very popular, he was good-looking and pleasant, encouraged art, literature, and commerce, and spent his money freely.
Charles V. | +----------------------------------------+ | | Charles VI. Louis Duc d’Orléans _m._ Valentine Visconti. | | Charles VII. +------------+------+----------+ | | | | Louis XI. | Philippe Comte Jean Comte | | de Vertus. d’Angoulême. Charles VIII. | | | | +--------------+ | | | Charles Duc d’Orléans _m._ 1. Isabelle de France; | | 2. Bonne d’Armagnac; | | 3. Marie de Clèves. | | | | +-------------------------+ | | | Louis XII., Duc d’Orléans _m._ 1. Jeanne de France; | | 2. Anne de Bretagne. | | | | +-----------------------------+ Charles Comte d’Angoulême | _m._ | Louise de Savoie. | | Claude _m._ François I. | | +-------------------+-------------------------+ | Henri II. _m._ Catherine dei Medici. | +-------------------+-------------------+ | | | François II. Charles IX. Henri III. End of the Valois Kings.
The greatest danger in which he involved the State arose from his constant enmity to France, whose fugitives he protected, and whose enemies he encouraged and assisted on all occasions; and from the credulous weakness which placed him always under the influence of some objectionable person. Antoinette de Maignelais died in 1475, but still more fatal was his infatuation for one Landais, a man of obscure birth and abominable character, whom he made his treasurer, and whose crimes and cruelties so exasperated the Bretons that they rose in rebellion, surrounded the palace with threats and cries, and demanded that he should be given up to them. The Comte de Foix tried to appease them, but returned in haste, exclaiming, “I would rather be Prince over a million wild boars than over such people as your Bretons; you will certainly have to give up your treasurer, or we shall all be murdered.”[281] Landais was accordingly tried, condemned, and executed, but the harm he had done and the disastrous state of affairs still remained.