Francoise de Foix

Francoise de Foix , countess of Chateaubriant, woman famous for her beauty, born towards 1495, died in 1537, was girl of Jean de Foix and Jeanne d' Aydie and sister of the Vicomte of Lautrec and the Maréchal of Foix. Married very-young person in 1505 or 1509 with Jean of Laval-Chateaubriant, lord of Chateaubriant.

Biography

One knows the seniority and the glare of the Maison of Foix; it is known that the crown of Navarre passed from this house to that of Albret, which transmitted it to the Maison Bourbon. Francoise de Foix was married very young with Jean of Laval-Chateaubriant, lord of Châteaubriant. Until the reign of François Ier, one had seen few fenmmes at the court; but this prince who liked ostentation and the galantery, claimed that a court without ladies

was one year without spring, and a spring without pinks.

II thus sought to attract there the most tempting women from there France. The beauty of Madam de Chateaubriant, buried up to that point in an old castle at the bottom of the Brittany, was however known at the court. The king urged her husband to bring it to it. It is claimed that the count differed to obey as much as it was possible for him; that it had made make two perfectly similar rings that, leaving, one with the countess, it had defended to him to leave its retirement, if the letter by which it mandait it were not accompanied by the other rings, and which to like the monarch, one had the address to conceal the ring with the suspicious husband, by the means of a servant to which he had entrusted his secrecy which the countess arrived at the court in spite of her husband.

At all events of this anecdote, it appears certain. that Madam de Chateaubriant came to the court, and that after a rather long resistance, it yielded to the passion which it had inspired to the king. François Ier having been made prisoner in front of Pavia, in 1525, Madam de Chateaubriant remained exposed with the hatred of the regent and the revenge on her husband. Become " the mye of the king " it accepted grinds gifts and her husband and his brothers were not in remainder. But the mother of the king, Louise of Savoy, took care and saw of an evil eye this connection, not by excess of morality but because she hated the Famille of Foix.

It is still claimed, because all is conjectural in the history of this woman, that, forced to take refuge in Chateaubriant, the count made it lock up in a tended room of black, and that at the end of six months it formed projects against his life.

Varillas, and Sauvai which copied it, says that it made him open the veins. It is there, undoubtedly, one of these tales of which the historians novelists filled their works. Chateaubriant was jealous, but its control during the favor of his wife proves that it had honor. According to Sauvai, he assassinated his wife at once that François had given up it to devote himself to new loves. However, she lived in 1556 more. She was allocated to the court after the delivery of François Ist.

When François Ier returned from his captivity to Spain, one introduced an young girl to him fair and pretty (Anne d' Heilly de Pisseleu) and let itself try. The fight of favorite lasted two years and Francoise finally had to yield the place.

Brantôme gives curious details on this rupture. The king having made request from Madam de Chateaubriant the jewels that it had given him, and on which one had engraved currencies in love composed by the Reine with Navarre, the countess had time to dissolve them, and, addressing herself then to the gentleman in charge of the orders of François Ier, she says to him:

Carry that to the king, and say to him that, since it rained to him to revoke me what it had given me so liberally, I return it to him and I return it to him in gold ingots. As for the currencies, I so well impressed them and colloquées in my thought, and hold to with it so expensive, which I could not suffer that nobody had which it, enjoyed it, and pleasure had some that myself.

the king, who wanted only the currencies, him renvoyâ ingots. The countess fought some time against the favorite news, and made use of her dying favor to advance and support her brothers, of which one was the famous Maréchal of Lautrec.

They made, in the countryside of Italy, several faults that Madam de Chateaubriant could make them forgive. She died the October 16th 1537. Her husband, who was suspected of having contributed to his death, made him nevertheless raise in the church of Mathurins de Chateaubriant a tomb decorated with his statue and an epitaph which one finds in the collection of poetries of Marot, whose count was protective dedicated. A legend claims that she would have been assassinated on the order of her jealous husband. In fact it seems that they lived side by side a long time.

Posterity

One believed to have to present in the form of the doubt the connection of Madam de Chateaubriant with François Ier, because several authors denied it. Varillas, Bayle, Moréri, Hévin discussed this point much of history, without clearing up it.

It left an image of woman in love and not involved what was not the case of its replacing in the bed of the king. One tells on it extremely romantic adventures. However some dispute even its connection with François Ier, and allot to Louise de Crèvecœur, wife of Bonnivet, all the history which one tells of it.

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