lative functions which Richelieu had so long kept in abeyance. One of them quoted verses, expressing defiance of absolute power. A president spoke of Richelieu and Mazarin by name as "ministers of the ancient tyranny." Anne sat by her son's side, and smiled a dignified approval. Nor did she smile less sweetly when the Chancellor Seguier, the same person who had ransacked her closet at the Val de Grace, declared that

which, indeed, increased for a time the fierceness of the struggle, but which soon ended, as all such hollow alliances have ended in the same country, by ruining the cause which it was professedly designed to serve.

The queen obeyed firmly the principles on which she had thus begun to act. The pettish Duke of Beaufort, threatening to become dangerous, was sent to the dungeons of Vincennes: other examples of severity com

be too great; nor when Omer Talon, the procureur-général, prefaced the motion of the day by an elaborate speech, in which he compared the dead king and the living to David and Solomon, but prudently abstained from seeking a parallel to Bathsheba. Actuated by motives and feelings so conflicting, by wishes and opinions symptomatic of the struggle which was about to commence, the parliament passed by acclamation an edict, conferring the regency of the kingdom on Queen Anne, without any of the limitations imposed by the late king's testament. (Sismondi, xxiv. 13-17.; Saint Aulaire, chap. 2. tom. i. p. 114.; Aubery, Histoire de Mazarin, i. 143-150.; Montglat, Mémoires de Petitot, 2de Série, xlix. 409.; La Châtre, Ibid. li. 208.; Omer Talon, Ibid. lx. 243.)

When the queen-regent returned to the Louvre she was absolute mistress of the kingdom. In less than two hours afterwards, in presence of her attendants, she ordered the Prince of Condé to wait upon Mazarin, and to offer him the presidency of the council with the same authority which he would have possessed if the will had been allowed to stand. The cardinal, whose horses had stood in harness for weeks, in apparent preparation for flight, ordered them to be unharnessed, and accepted the government of France. Out of this reinstatement of Richelieu's pupil, and out of the intrigues which had preceded the step, grew up in due time the civil war of the Fronde. The reappointment of Mazarin was understood as an open declaration that the despotic policy of Richelieu was to be maintained, alike against the nobles and against the commons; and unquestionably the queen had so resolved. She looked about for an instrument to do the work; and, in the bitter words of Retz, she "chose Mazarin for want of a better." (Retz, Mémoires, xliv. 186.; Saint Aulaire, chap. 2. tom. i. p. 111-118.) This avowal of policy instantly set the parliament in opposition to the court, and thus founded that part of the factions of the Fronde which was really sound and honourable. On the other hand, the "Importans," and those other nobles who would have been delighted to serve the queen in any task she might be pleased to set them, were affronted that others than they had been selected as the honoured tools of absolutism. Hence arose that alliance of a strong section of the aristocracy with the popular party,

belonged. All who had of old suffered on the queen's account now shared alike in her disfavour. It is worthy of remark that Madame de Chevreuse was treated even more harshly than the rest. La Rochefoucauld, observing the queen's evident embarrassment on hearing of her intended return, cautioned the duchess earnestly against attempting to meddle in public affairs. But the wrong-headed woman insisted upon acting the politician; on which her mistress, after treating her for a time with seeming friendliness, hinted that she left politics to the cardinal, and must refer her old friend to him. The wily Neapolitan gradually tempted the lady onwards, till she had made disclosures and advanced demands which were ruinous alike to her and her "important" friends. Then she was openly disgraced, banished from France, and never allowed to return. (Saint Aulaire, chap. 2. tom. i. p. 135., chap. 8. tom. ii. p. 13.)

It would here be out of place to linger over the vacillations of purpose, the intrigues, the imprisonments, the plots for assassination, which occupied at home the first years of Anne's regency; or over those victories of the young Duke of Enghien (afterwards the Great Condé) which shed lustre upon France in foreign countries. As little is it possible to dwell on the interesting history of that civil war which, breaking out in 1648, lasted for four years. The modern historian of the Fronde (Saint Aulaire, Preface and Introduction) has shown how the struggle was in principle analogous to that of the first French revolution, although the result was so very dissimilar. Both to that revolution and to the later one of 1830, the insurrection of the Frondeurs presents singular points of likeness, not only in principle and design, but even in particular incidents. But our task for the present must be merely that of describing the position which the queen-regent occupied, relatively to the contest and to those who were the parties.

The wars of the Fronde originated in the claim set up by the parliament of Paris, to be recognised, in place of the disused statesgeneral, as the representatives of the nation, and in that character to grant or refuse supplies to the crown, and to exercise other constitutional rights. In this stage of the quarrel, the parties to the question were, the minister and a part of the nobility on one side, and the citizens of Paris on the other, headed by Gondi, the high-born but democratic coadjutor of their archbishop, and afterwards famous by the name of Cardinal de Retz. Very soon, however, this party, to whose members a jest uttered at one of the meetings of the parliament gave the name of the "Frondeurs" or "Slingers," was joined by the discontented "Importans," and afterwards by other disaffected nobles. The overbearing haughtiness of the Great Condé having provoked Mazarin to severities against him, his adherents next threw themselves into the popular scale; and a "new Fronde," composed of them, acted sometimes with the "old Fronde" and sometimes against it, but in systematic opposition to the court. The end of all this was humiliating. The bourgeoisie, finding their noble allies to be more tyrannical than their royal masters, gladly submitted to the crown, and the Fronde was ingloriously broken up. For the purpose now in view it is only to be remarked further, that the series of events just described brought the queen-regent into successive collisions with every great party in her kingdom, and with almost all the persons by whom those parties were headed.

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Throughout all the vicissitudes that occurred, her character was brought out in a light that suffered but little change. But she who was nominally the sovereign of Mazarin was a very different being from her who had been the slave of Richelieu. That which had formerly seemed patience in her was now seen to have been but indolence (Retz, xliv. 156.): that which had seemed the sadness of an ill-used woman was now transformed into the haughtiness of a despot. She passed her days in listless inactivity. She gave audiences in her bed-chamber before quitting it; she spent hours in making her toilette, and as many more in the morning and evening devotions of her oratory; she received her ministers and the court in the early part of the afternoon; and the evenings were spent in her private apartments, in gay and free conversation" (so her confidential attendant calls it) with a few personal favourites. Nothing but pressing and immediate dangers, such as those to which she was more than once exposed, sufficed to rouse her from this selfish repose. Mazarin conducted at his own pleasure the operations of the Thirty Years' War, which was drawing to a close on Anne's accession to the regency. But the feelings which she entertained towards the popular party were ready to break out when opportunity should occur; and in the meantime they were sedulously imparted to her infant son. When Condé gained the battle of Lens, he was still attached to the court, and obnoxious to the bourgeoisie of Paris. "Ah!" said the king, then ten years old, "how this news will vex the parliament!" (Saint Aulaire, chap. 4. tom. i. p. 215.) The spirit indicated by this exclamation was that

on which Anne systematically acted. It was always impossible, as Retz remarks, to make her understand what people meant when they spoke of "the public." She lived in a continual dream of the omnipotence and the sacredness of kingly power. From that selfsatisfied dream none of the startling events that happened was for a moment able to awake her. She could never believe it possible that subjects could successfully resist their sovereign. She was alike unmoved by the example and warnings of her sister-inlaw the queen of England - by the barricades of Paris in August, 1648-by her own compelled flight in the next winter, and the humiliating submissions she had to make to the despised parliament after her unsuccessful siege of the city - by the dangerous rebellion of the Prince of Condé, who drew off half the nobles of the kingdom - and by the bloody spectacle exhibited at the gates of Paris in July, 1652, when the armies of Turenne and Condé fought for a whole day in the presence of their king and his minister. Mazarin, indeed, was once provoked so far as to tell her that her coolness was the worthless courage of a raw soldier, who has not sense enough to know that he is in danger. Thus firm in her reliance upon the success of the cause of royalty, she was, in feeling at least, merciless towards its enemies. Again and again, wearied and indignant, she remonstrated against the lenity and the temporizing disposition of Mazarin. Indeed the policy of this minister was entirely dissimilar to that of his master. He stifled by bribery and intrigue insurrections which Richelieu would have crushed by armed force: he pacified by favours, at the expense of the nation, aristocratic rebels whom Richelieu would have doomed to the block. But with all the queen's imperiousness of temper, and all her fierceness of resentment towards those who opposed her will, circumstances continually forced her to practise her old acts of duplicity. Towards those, indeed, who claimed to be regarded as the representatives of the people, she invariably followed the same perilous and dishonourable line of tactics which, at the very time she entered on it, was about to bring the king of England to the scaffold, and which was afterwards to be imitated with a result equally fatal by one of her own descendants. After hours, or whole nights, spent in solitary tears and in reproaches to her advisers, she was wont to meet the envoys of the parliament with cold dignity, and to make with all solemnity promises which she was resolutely determined to break. With her adversaries among the nobles the cunning of Mazarin enabled her to be even more successful in her game of finesse. It was no great triumph to outwit the hasty and imprudent Condé; but she does deserve some credit for her success in manœuvring against Cardinal Retz, who indeed seems forced, in spite of himself, to admire her skill in diplomacy.

In 1651, before the war was quite extinguished, Louis XIV., then thirteen years old, was declared to have attained majority; but this ceremony made no change either in the principles of the government, or in the hands to which it was entrusted. Mazarin, driven from the kingdom in that very year by a short-lived coalition of all parties against him, returned at the head of an army in his own pay, when his enemies had begun to fall out among themselves. Thenceforth he ruled with unquestioned supremacy till the hour of his death. But, after the restoration of peace, a change took place in his relations towards Queen Anne, who, indeed, was now to experience from him, though in a more tolerable degree, the same ingratitude which Marie de' Medici had received from Richelieu. The kind of respectful admiration which Anne expected to be paid to her beauty had been long accorded alike by all who approached her. Retz, the universal admirer of the sex, had bowed among the rest; and between her and Mazarin there prevailed for some years the appearance of a sentimental friendship. But as the queen grew old, the cardinal grew independent of her. In the later years of his life he domineered openly over both the mother and the son. Against the former he had at length a specific cause of displeasure. The young king, constitutionally amorous, had formed an attachment for one of the Demoiselles Mancini, the cardinal's nieces; and Mazarin, clearly desirous to promote the unequal match, but habitually slow to run risks, cautiously tried, under a show of opposition, to gather Anne's real sentiments. "If," answered the proud Spanish woman, "the king should be base enough to marry your niece, I would unite with my second son, and raise the whole kingdom to dethrone him." The cardinal hastily took the hint, and removed his niece from court; but the bond of confidence between him and the queen was now for ever severed.

In 1660 Louis XIV. was married to Maria Teresa, daughter of his maternal uncle, Philip IV. of Spain. It is related that, on the oсcasion of the marriage, Anne, who had not seen her brother since both were children, and who had forgotten the stiffness of Spanish etiquette, rushed forward eagerly to embrace him, but was received with cold and ceremonious politeness. (Montglat, li. 103.) In the spring of the year following Mazarin died. Upon this, observes Anne's confidential friend, the king, the queen, and the queenmother all felt themselves able "to draw their breath with freedom." (Madame de Motteville, xl. 100.) Louis, now in his twenty-third year, took upon him the supreme control of his own affairs, and entered upon that series of vast designs which was to earn

for him the title of Great. The king's assumption of authority was not to his mother either a deprivation or a disappointment. She was afterwards, however, more than once in danger of serious misunderstanding with him, on account of those conjugal infidelities which he soon began to practise habitually. Louis usually treated her remonstrances with civil inattention; but her indignation at the openness of his intrigue with Mademoiselle de la Vallière gave rise to a serious quarrel between mother and son, which was not appeased till she consented to admit his mistress to her card-table. It is but fair to add that of this unworthy condescension Anne had the grace to confess herself heartily ashamed. (Madame de Motteville, xl. 213.) Excepting in regard to this delicate class of questions, Louis treated his mother with uniform respect and deference. Indeed, he seems to have felt as much affection for her as his nature allowed him to feel for any one.

In 1665 it became publicly known that Anne had long had a cancer; and in August of that year she was so ill as to receive the sacraments, and to exact from her son and his wife a parting promise of greater affection for the future. She recovered partially for a time, but the few remaining months of her life were spent in intense suffering. We possess two circumstantial accounts of her death-bed, which together would make up a singular narrative. The story of Madame de Motteville is told by an attached and admiring dependent, in whose eyes every thing appears through an ideal medium of veneration; the story of Mademoiselle de Montpensier, the hare-brained daughter of Gaston of Orléans, exhibits the aspect in which a death-bed is regarded by cold-hearted and frivolous bystanders. (Madame de Motteville, xl. 233. 306.; Mademoiselle de Montpensier, xliii. 85.90-97.) The king, seemingly incredulous as to his mother's danger, continued immersed in gaiety till it was no longer possible to doubt the nearness of her end. His neglected wife mourned sincerely at the bed-side of one who was at once her countrywoman, her nearest relative, and the only friend who could sympathise heartily with her griefs. The dying woman is described as having behaved with great resignation, and with much appearance of devotion. In the evening of the 19th of January, 1666, it was announced to Anne, by command of her son, that her last hour was at hand; upon which she desired to be left alone with her confessor. They who had been present, namely her two sons with their wives, and Mademoiselle de Montpensier, retired into her closet; where (as Mademoiselle reports), that they might not spend their time uselessly, they made arrangements for the court mourning, and for other proceedings to take place upon the queen's death. The queen then conversed privately with each of her childshowing in her last hour something of her old imperiousness, by insisting upon extreme unction at a time when the physicians wished to delay it. Her son was removed from the sick-room in a state of agitation which ended in a fainting fit; and after a night of great agony, Anne expired early in the morning of the 20th of January, 1666, having some months previously completed her sixty-fourth year. (Authorities: the histories and memoirs cited in the body of the article.) W. S. ANNE OF BOHEMIA. [RICHARD II. OF ENGLAND.]

ANNE BÖLEYN. [BOLEYΝ.] ANNE of BRETAGNE, queen consort of France, was born 26th Jan. 1477. She was the daughter of François II., duke of Bretagne and his wife Marguerite of Foix. Of two daughters by this marriage, Anne and Isabelle, the only legitimate children of the duke who survived him, Anne was the elder. In her fifth year (1481) she was engaged, by treaty, in marriage to Edward, prince of Wales, afterwards Edward V. of England; but the death of the young prince (1483) prevented the marriage taking place. As the Duke of Bretagne had no sons, he was anxious to secure the succession of the duchy to his daughters; and the prospect of this succession caused the hand of Anne, while yet a child, to be the subject of eager competition. The anxiety of the duke was increased by the knowledge that his nephew, the Prince of Orange, the Lord of Rieux, and other Breton nobles, whom a vain attempt to subvert Landois, the duke's favourite, had compelled to retire into France, had signed a treaty at Montargis (1484) recognising the right of succession of Charles VIII. of France to the duchy in case of the duke's death without heirs male. The right of Charles of France was founded on the purchase which his father Louis XI. had made of the claims of the house of Penthièvre to the succession of the duchy, claims which had been set aside for more than a century.

Alarmed at the treaty of Montargis, the duke caused the chief of the nobility and of the other orders of the state to recognise his daughters as his heiresses and to promise fidelity to them, and subsequently he obtained a full recognition of their title in the states of Bretagne at Rennes (1486); and in order still further to secure the succession, a league was formed by the Archduke Maximilian of Austria, afterwards king of the Romans, the King and Queen of Navarre, the Prince of Orange, the Lord of Rieux, and the other Breton lords, who, on the overthrow and death of Landois, in 1485, had been reconciled to the duke, the Lord of Albret, and several other French nobles, to prevent the King of France from taking possession of the duchy on the duke's death.

However united these various parties might

France and supporting the right of Anne, they were much divided as to the disposal of that princess in marriage. Several projects were formed: the Prince of Orange proposed Maximilian, king of the Romans; the Count of Comminges supported the suit of Alain, lord of Albret, who professed to have some claims to the succession of the duchy, by virtue of his marriage with a lady of the house of Penthièvre [ALBRET, ALAIN OF]; Rieux advocated the claims of the son of the Viscount of Rohan; and the Count of Dunois is affirmed to have planned a marriage between Anne and Louis, duke of Orléans and heir presumptive to the throne of France. As, however, Louis was married to the sister of the reigning king, and a new marriage could be formed only by obtaining a divorce or a nullification of his former marriage, of which there seemed little likelihood, it is questionable whether the Count of Dunois entertained any such design. Still less reason is there to believe, as has been asserted, that a mutual passion existed between Louis and Anne, seeing that the latter was a mere child. Before anything was decided with respect to Anne's marriage, the support afforded by the duke to the discontented party in France led to the invasion of Bretagne by the French; and the defeat of the Bretons and their confederates at St. Aubin de Cormier (28th July, 1488), when the Duke of Orléans and the Prince of Orange were made prisoners, obliged the Duke of Bretagne to submit. He signed a treaty at Coiron, one of the conditions of which was not to marry his daughters without the consent of the French king, and died soon after of mortification, 9th Sept. 1488.

Anne succeeded to the duchy under the care of the Lord of Rieux, whom the duke had appointed her guardian by his will. Her council consisted of the Lords of Rieux and Albret, the Counts of Dunois and Comminges and the Chancellor Montauban. The Countess of Laval, half sister of Albret, was her governess. The situation of the young duchess was very distressing. The French, notwithstanding the treaty of Coiron, continued their ravages, and took one town after another. The intrigues for marrying Anne were renewed and the Lord of Albret, with the fewest personal claims, (for he was about forty-five years of age, of disgusting appearance, and coarse manners,) seemed likely to be the successful suitor. Orange, the advocate of the King of the Romans, was in prison; Orléans, if he was really a competitor, was in prison also; Rohan had put the claims of his son out of the question by joining the French in ravaging his country; and the Lord of Rieux and the Countess of Laval strenuously supported Albret, whose claim was further strengthened by a written promise which the late duke had given him of his daughter's hand. To this match, however, Anne manifested a strong repugnance; and she was supported in it by Dunois and Montauban. The matter, however, proceeded so far, in spite of opposition, that Albret applied to Rome for the dispensation which his relationship to Anne rendered needful; when Anne made a formal protest, recorded in an instrument dated December 8. 1488, declared her positive intention not to marry Albret, and revoked the consent which she had given to the match during her father's lifetime, alleging that it was given only out of fear and reverence for her father. Rieux

and Albret in fury retired to Nantes; and when the duchess, alarmed by a body of French who attempted to seize her, sought refuge there, they refused her admittance. They even attempted, with a party of the townsmen of Nantes, to get possession of her person, but were baffled by the spirit which she showed. Mounted on horseback behind the Count of Dunois, she prepared to resist the attempt; and they gave it up (1489). She found soon after a secure refuge in Rennes; and the opportune arrival of some auxiliary forces sent by the kings of England and Castile stopped the progress of the French, and led to a stipulation in the treaty of Frankfort, concluded between Charles VIII. and Maximilian, now the king of the Romans, by which the French were to evacuate the duchy, and the English and Castilian auxiliaries were to be sent home. Rieux was about the same time reconciled to the duchess.

The stipulation for the evacuation of the duchy of Bretagne was not fulfilled by the French king, nor did he give up his claims to the duchy; and in order to strengthen Anne against him, she was married by procuration, though only in her thirteenth year, to the King of the Romans. The exact date of the marriage is not known. The authors of "L'Art de vérifier les Dates " and Daru fix it in the year 1489; but this is an error. The marriage ceremony was accompanied by a singular act: the Count of Nassau, procurator of Maximilian, in the presence of witnesses, introduced his leg, bare to the knee, into the nuptial bed where the young duchess was. This act, which gave occasion to a number of jokes at Maximilian's expense, appears to have been designed to strengthen a marriage of questionable validity by a kind of consummation.

The King of France, Charles VIII., and his council were seriously alarmed at the intelligence of this transaction. Maximilian already possessed a considerable share of the territories of the dukes of Burgundy on the eastern and north-eastern frontiers of France; and the possession of Bretagne would render his position still more formidable. It was therefore important to annul this marriage if possible; and the King of France, though

previously betrothed to Margaret, daughter of Maximilian by a former marriage, proposed to marry Anne himself. He engaged the Prince of Orange and the Duke of Orléans (now released from prison), the Lord of Rieux, the Countess of Laval, and the Count of Dunois in his interest; acquired possession of Nantes by the treachery of Albret, who was enraged at the disappointment of his own hopes; and entering Bretagne in person at the head of his army, pressed the affair so vigorously, that the duchess, who had shown the greatest repugnance to the proposal, was forced, as she received no help from Maximilian, to give way at last. A treaty, in which, in order to conceal the real intent of the parties, the marriage was not mentioned, was signed at Rennes, 15th November, 1491; and Anne, leaving her own dominions, went to Langeais in Touraine, where she and Charles were married on the 6th December, 1491. Charles was at this time in his twenty-second year, and Anne had nearly completed her fifteenth. The pope's dispensation for the marriage was not signed till the 15th December, some days after its consummation, and was accompanied by absolution from the excommunication which the young couple had incurred by precipitating their nuptials. It is observable that this dispensation has no reference to Anne's previous marriage with Maximilian, the nullity of which seems to have been taken for granted, but to the consanguinity of the parties, and the previous betrothment of Charles to Margaret. After the marriage Charles led his bride to St. Denis, where she was crowned early in 1492, and attracted great admiration by her youth, her beauty, and her becoming deport

ment.

Maximilian, enraged at the double wrong done to him in taking from him his wife and rejecting his daughter, formed an alliance with Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and with Henry VII. of England: the latter procured from his parliament a subsidy for raising an army to invade France, but after some feeble demonstrations of hostility made peace with Charles; and Ferdinand and Maximilian followed his example. Before the end of the year 1492, Anne was delivered of a son, Charles Orlando, who lived little more than three years. She had two other sons and a daughter, but they all died in infancy; and on the 7th April, 1498, she lost her husband Charles VIII. She appeared at first overwhelmed with grief; but rousing herself from her despondency, hastened to Bretagne, resumed the exercise of her hereditary sovereignty, and gave in less than four months from the death of Charles VIII. her promise to marry his successor Louis XII. (agreeably to a stipulation in her former marriage articles), if he could obtain a sentence from the pope annulling