(1521–1524.)
CONSTABLE BOURBON.
"Il me fault mesler de beaucoup de chouses que me doibvent bien donner crainte": thus Margaret wrote to Briçonnet in 1521. Already, indeed, she must have felt the dreadful approach of nearer troubles than wars with the Emperor or uneasy peace with England. In that year the King took from his school-fellow, Constable Bourbon, the right to lead the vanguard, and gave it to his brother-in-law d'Alençon, a man without genius or experience of warfare. In the next summer Louisa of Savoy began a lawsuit against this Constable Bourbon, her cousin, in which she laid claim to the Bourbon estates. Charles de Montpensier, a Bourbon Cadet, had married Suzanne, the hunchbacked daughter of Pierre Duke of Bourbon and Anne of Beaujeu. Naturally he took possession of the vast inheritance which came with his wife from her father and her mother. But the Crown declared that the estates of Anne of Beaujeu lapsed at her death to the King; that she had, in fact, a mere life-interest in them. And Louisa, a niece of Pierre, claimed his
