Page:The Book of the Courtier.djvu/683

NOTES TO THE THIRD BOOK OF THE COURTIER aunt of Count Ludovico Pio of The Courtier (see note 46), and mother of the still more celebrated poetess Veronica Ganabara, (born 1485). Note 387, page 202. ANNE de Bretagne, (born 1476; died 1514), was the daughter and heiress of Duke Francis II of Brittany, which became perma- nently united to the crown of France through her marriages to Charles VIII (1492) and Louis XII (1499). Castiglione's praise of her seems to have been in the main justified. Although sometimes vindictive, she was generous, virtuous beyond the standard of her time, and carried cultivation to the verge of pedantry. She surrounded herself with artists, historians, minstrels and poets, and formed a collection of MSS. and other precious objects, largely the spoils of her husbands' Italian campaigns. BranthSme called her "the worthiest and most honourable queen that has been since Queen Blanche, mother of the king St. Louis, and so wise and virtuous." Note 388, page 202. Charles VIII, (born 1470; died 1498), was the son of Louis XI and Charlotte of Savoy. Having succeeded his father in 1483, and assumed royal power in 1491, he married Anne of Brittany and soon set about enforcing his pretensions to the crown of Naples, transmitted to him through his father and cousin from Ren6 of Provence, to whom the last Angevine ruler had devised the kingdom in 1435. As we have seen, the immediate cause of the invasion of Italy (1494) was a request from Duke Ludovico Sforza of Milan and Pope Alexander VI. Although the expedition was undertaken without adequate preparation and conducted with incredible foolhardiness, — continu- ous good fortune together ■with the mutual jealousies of Italian princes and the decadence of Italian military power enabled Charles to enter Milan, Flor- ence and Rome without hindrance, to seize Naples almost unopposed, and (when threatened by a powerful league formed against him) to retire north- wards, to defeat the Italians at Fornovo, and finally to reach France in safety, October 1495. His garrisons were driven from Naples in the following year, but his foray had the immediate result of expelling the Medici from Florence, and the far more important consequence of revealing to the rest of Europe the wealth and helplessness of Italy, — thus paving the way for the subsequent invasions with which the peninsula was scourged during the i6th Century. The remainder of Charles's life was given up to inglorious ease and pleasure. A son of the painter Mantegna thus describes him: "A very ill-favoured face, with great goggle eyes, an aquiline nose offensively large, and a head dis- figured by a few sparse hairs;" while Duke Ludovico Sforza said of him: "The man is young, and his conduct meagre, nor has he any form or method of council." His own ambassador, Commines, wrote: "He was little in stature and of small sense, very timid in speech, owing to the way in which he had been treated as a child, and as feeble in mind as he was in body, but the kindest and gentlest creature alive." Note 389, page 202. MARGARITA OF Austria, (born 1480; died 1530), was the daughter of the Emperor Maximilian I and Mary of Burgundy, and a native 395