Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/502

488 Lautrec was appointed its governor, Louisa, partly through avarice, and partly from the inveterate dislike she had conceived to Lautrec, who had been rather too free in his remarks on the numerous adventures to which her disposition had given rise, seized the three hundred thousand crowns, which had been raised for the pay of the Milanese troops, and appropriated them to her own use. Lautrec performed prodigies of valour, but the Swiss mercenaries, who formed the greater part of his army, enraged at not receiving their pay, left him and retired to their own country, and Lautrec was obliged to return to France. The king was so enraged at the loss of the Milanese, that at first he refused to see him, but having at length obtained an audience, he justified himself by imputing the disasters of the campaign to the want of the promised money. Francis, who was ignorant of his mother's conduct, flew into a violent passion with Semblancy, superintendant of the finances, peremptorily insisting on knowing what was become of the money, which he had ordered to be sent to Italy? the minister, a man of integrity and virtue, who had grown grey in the service of his country, confessed he had been obliged to pay it to the Duchess of Angoulesme, who had taken the consequences upon herself; but that infamous woman, sacrificing every principle of honour to avarice and revenge, had the presumption to deny the fact, and though Semblancy, in his own defence, produced her receipt, she still persisted in the denial, maintaining that receipt was given for another sum of the same amount. Though Semblancy was justified in the eyes of his sovereign, and continued to enjoy his place a little longer, yet the vindictive Louisa soon suborned one of the clerks to accuse him of peculation, he was committed to the tile,