as a model of virtuous conduct, conjugal
fidelity, and charity. Having complete control over her own
immense wealth, she used it largely for beneficent purposes; to her
encouragement much of the progress of art and literature in France was
due. Hers was an example that many of the later queens endeavored to
follow, but it cannot be said that they ever exerted a like influence
or exhibited an equal power of initiation and self-assertion.

The first royal woman to become a power in politics in the period that
we are considering was Louise of Savoy, mother of Francis I., a type
of the voluptuous and licentious female of the sixteenth century. Her
pernicious activity first manifested itself when, having conceived
a violent passion for Charles of Bourbon, she set her heart upon
marrying him, and commenced intrigues and plots which were all the
more dangerous because of her almost absolute control over her son,
the King.

At this time there were three distinct sets or social castes at the
court of France: the pious and virtuous band about the good Queen
Claude; the lettered and elegant belles in the coterie of Marguerite
d'Angouleme, sister of Francis I.; and the wanton and libertine young
maids who formed a galaxy of youth and beauty about Louise of Savoy,
and were by her used to fascinate her son and thus distract him from
affairs of state.

Louise used all means to bring before the king beautiful women through
whom she planned to preserve her influence over him. One of these
frail beauties, Francoise de Foix, completely won the heart of the
monarch; her ascendency over him continued for a long period, in spite
of the machinations of Louise, who, when Francis escaped her control,
sought to bring disrepute and discredit upon the fair mistress.

The mother, however, remained the powerful factor in politics. With an
abnormal desire to hoard money, an unbridled temper, and a violent and
domineering disposition, she became the most powerful and dangerous,
as well as the most feared, woman of all France. During her regency
the state coffers were pillaged, and plundering was carried on on all
sides. One of her acts at this time was to cause the recall of Charles
of Bourbon, then Governor of Milan; this measure was taken as much
for the purpose of obtaining revenge for his scornful rejection of her
offer of marriage as for the hope of eventually bringing him to her
side.

Upon the return of Charles, she immediately began plot