Anne of Brittany - The Formidable Heiress of a Vanishing Duchy

A Guest Blog Post by Keira Morgan

**Anne of Brittany was reigning Duchess of Brittany from 1488 until her death, and Queen of France from 1491 to 1498 and from 1499 to her death.**

Anne of Brittany, the last duchess of a fully independent Brittany, was no ordinary girl. From childhood, she was brought up as the presumptive heir to her father’s duchy. When Anne was about two, she was joined by a sister, a disappointment to her father and mother, a princess of Navarre, who hoped for a son. As the years passed, their hopes faded. So, after Anne’s mother died in 1486, her father presented Anne to his vassals as his heir.

Anne’s gouvernante, Countess Françoise de Dinan-Laval, chosen from Brittany’s highest nobility, oversaw all aspects of her education supported by a large staff. It seems Anne benefited from her excellent education for her father brought her into the councils of his duchy from an early age. The sources indicate that she was precocious, pious, opinionated, unspeakably stubborn, and charming.

This is the image I formed of Anne as I delved into the life of the woman who became Duchess of Brittany in September 1488 when not yet twelve years old. She inherited an impossible situation.

Brittany, A Thorn in France’s Side

For centuries, the duchy of Brittany had caused the French to suffer as if perpetually irritated by a splinter in the tip of its most sensitive finger. From the late tenth century, when Brittany first established its independence from the Frankish kingdom at its back, it struggled to prevent encroachment from its neighbor. That it succeeded until the late fifteenth century was due to the enmity between its two major threats, England and France. The French-English wars, so beneficial for Brittany, continued intermittently until the mid-1400s.

After the Duke of Normandy conquered England in 1066, his descendants fought to hold or reclaim their continental lands for the next few hundred years. Breton alliances swayed back and forth between the English and the Capetians/Valois depending on which side was winning. After the decline of the Plantagenets in the late 12th century, the King of France allied with and supported the reigning Breton House of Dreux (1213–1341). It was a time of favorable climate conditions, no widespread epidemics, and few conflicts. The Breton economy prospered, and the dukes developed their expanding household into formal government administrative structures staffed with officials.

Then, in 1341, Duke Jean III died intestate, plunging the duchy into a 25-year war of succession. Coupled with the disastrous Black Death that swept it starting in 1348 killing one third to one half the population, Brittany sank into chaos. Anne’s ancestor, Duke Jean IV de Montfort of Brittany, supported by the English, finally defeated the Dreux/Penthièvre family in 1364. Still, it was only with the succession of Duke Jean V (the Wise) in 1399, who reigned until 1443, that Brittany fully recovered. In what is known as its golden period, Brittany made the most of the kings of France’s weakness in their wars against the English.

During the 15th century, the dukes of Brittany benefitted from the previously established government structures, which controlled and managed the duchy effectively. As a result, Brittany was one of the wealthiest regions in Western Europe.

After the death of King Henry V, the Hundred Years’ War dribbled to a stalemate in 1453. Then France experienced an economic and political resurgence, and the French began to recover their territory. King Charles VII slowly curtailed the power of his high nobility, centralized his government, and established the first standing army in Europe. The French high nobility, so powerful during the fourteen and fifteenth centuries, resented their loss of wealth and power to the king.

Meanwhile in England, King Henry VI, grandson of the mad King Charles VI of France, (crowned king of England and France at nine months old), had become increasingly unstable. In 1455, Duke Richard of York led a rebellion against him, and plunged England into the chaos of civil war from which it would not emerge for thirty years.

This unfortunate turn of events, from the Breton perspective, coincided with decline in the Montfort line. Although the Montfort ruled until 1491, the family failed to produce sufficient male heirs and was oversupplied with daughters. Since Brittany was wealthy, the girls made excellent marriages and affinity lines spread among the highest nobility in Brittany and France. The few sons, heirs to the wealthy and strategically located dukedom, married daughters of the kings of France, England, and Navarre.

Duke Francis II, Brittany’s Last Montfort Duke

In 1458, the ducal throne was inherited by a nonentity. Count Francis d’Etampes et de Dreux, who became Duke Francis II de Montfort (23 June 1435—9 Sept. 1488), He was the only son of his elderly uncle’s youngest brother. This youngest brother, Richard, had been the eighth child and fifth son of Duke Jean V. He had married Marguerite d'Orléans, Countess de Vertus, daughter of the murdered Duke Louis d'Orléans, sister to the English prisoner Duke Charles d'Orléans, aligned to the Armagnac faction. The marriage had made King Charles VII and the French royal family his enemy. Richard died in 1438, long before his brother, Duke Arthur. He left Count Francis, his one son, and five daughters behind.

Duke Francis II did nothing to ease the situation. When King Charles VII died in 1461, and Louis XI inherited the throne, King Charles’s mistress fled to Brittany. Duke Francis lost no time in making Antoinette his mistress, an action that infuriated the new King Louis, who despised his father’s mistresses.

The Battle of Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier effectively precipitated the end of the independence of Brittany from France.

Historians hold varying opinions about the character of Duke Francis II of Brittany. To some, he was simple, to others he was simply a hedonist led by his favourites, and to still others his problem was a tragic early decline into senility. But no one claims he was a strong or brilliant leader. He managed to alienate his high-ranking vassals who hated his low-born treasurer and his reliance on his numerous non-Breton relatives.

The only consistent policy he pursued doggedly throughout his reign was to defend Brittany’s independence. This led him into numerous wars with France that ended with Brittany’s disastrous defeat to the French at the Battle of Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier on 28 July 1488. He signed the humiliating Treaty of Verger in August. He died a few weeks later, on 9 September, from injuries sustained in a fall from his horse. When the male line ended with him, many both within the duchy of Brittany and within France claimed the right to inherit it.

And so, to my Novel…

This is the situation that Anne faces when my novel opens. When I first started to learn about Anne of Brittany in university her story gripped me. Everything about it seem tragic. She fought so hard from such an early age to save her duchy’s independence. Even as she was dying, she was still plotting ways to achieve it. It was her mission and I admired that about her, especially because so many things went wrong for her. Yet she was tenacious. She was formidable, she let nothing stop her. But she was inflexible. Independence must be achieved her way. She could never adapt her ideas to anyone else’s point of view. Her motto was Non Mudere. ‘I do not change.’

I was fascinated by her and the world that she lived in, on that cusp between the medieval and the early Renaissance in France and to recreate it for others. I came to realize that I could not achieve my aim through an analytic or even descriptive academic approach although the research was an essential basis. Only fiction would allow me to create what I wanted to write. It led to my series about Anne of which I have now written three. There is one more to come. I did not write them in chronological order.

The Importance of Wives tells the story of Anne as she takes over from her father who has just died.

Duchess Anne of Brittany is not quite 12, yet her situation could not be more perilous. She is a girl, she has just inherited one of the richest duchies in Europe—and enemies surround her.

It is 1488, and men do not believe that women can rule. The French want to seize her duchy. Across the channel, the English hover, ready to attack. And Anne’s guardians want her power for themselves. They plot to marry her to their chosen candidate, and rule in her stead. It is the traditional fate of heiresses.

But Anne has ideas of her own. She is strong-minded and trained to rule. When she refuses to obey, she finds herself in a civil war, supported by only a few loyalists. Then France invades. Will a girl so young be able to defend her duchy against two adversaries?

Even her most trusted allies advise her to marry. Can a husband save her people from the invading French? Must she give up her duchy? Or will she find another way to guard her inheritance?

Based on the extraordinary life of young Anne, Duchess of Brittany, this is the dramatic story of a strong-willed girl beset by impossible choices.

In the first pages of The Importance of Wives, young Duchess Anne of Brittany complains about the French, who have returned to debate various clause of the treaty they signed only weeks past with her with the father she mourns so deeply. This is only the first of her troubles.

The French want to seize her duchy. Across the channel, the English hover, ready to interfere. And Anne’s guardians want her power for themselves. They plot to marry her to their chosen candidate, and rule in her stead. It is the traditional fate of heiresses. But Anne has ideas of her own. She is strong-minded and trained to rule. When she refuses to obey, she faces a civil war, supported by only a few loyalists but she does not back down. Not even when France invades. Will a girl so young be able to defend her duchy against two adversaries? Even her most trusted allies advise her to marry. Must she sacrifice her beliefs for her people? Can even a husband save her from the invading French? Must she give up her duchy? Or will she find another way to guard her inheritance?