her own immediate circle, a serious difficulty: the young
king, Charles, was charmed by the Duke of Orleans's brilliant qualities,
especially by the skill and bravery that Louis displayed at tournaments.
One day, interrupting the Bishop of Montauban, George of Amboise, who was
reading the breviary to him, "Send word to the Duke of Orleans," said the
king, "to go on with his enterprise, and that I would fain be with him."
Another day he said to Count Dunois, "Do take me away, uncle: I'm longing
to be out of this company." Dunois and George of Amboise, both of them
partisans of the Duke of Orleans, carefully encouraged the king in
sentiments so favorable to the fair regent's rival. Incidents of another
sort occurred to still further embarrass the position for Anne de
Beaujeu. The eldest daughter of Francis II., Duke of Brittany, herself
also named Anne, would inherit his duchy, and on this ground she was
ardently wooed by many competitors. She was born in 1477; and at four
years of age, in 1481, she had been promised in marriage to Edward,
Prince of Wales, son of Edward IV., King of England. But two years
afterwards, in 1483, this young prince was murdered, or, according to
other accounts, imprisoned by his uncle Richard III., who seized the
crown; and the Breton promise vanished with him. The number of claimants
to the hand of Anne of Brittany increased rapidly; and the policy of the
duke her father consisted, it was said, in making for himself five or six
sons-in-law by means of one daughter. Towards the end of 1484, the Duke
of Orleans, having embroiled himself with Anne de Beaujeu, sought refuge
in Brittany; and many historians have said that he not only at that time
aspired to the hand of Anne of Brittany, but that he paid her assiduous
court and obtained from her marks of tender interest. Count Darn, in his
_Histoire de Bretagne_ (t. iii. p. 82), has put the falsehood of this
assertion beyond a doubt; the Breton princess was then only seven and the
Duke of Orleans had been eight years married to Joan of France, younger
daughter of Louis XI. But in succeeding years and amidst the continual
alternations of war and negotiation between the King of France and the
Duke of Brittany, Anne de Beaujeu and the Duke of Orleans, competition
and strife between the various claimants to the hand of Anne of Brittany
became very active; Alan, Sire d'Albret, called the Great because of his
reputation for being the richest lord