Page:A cyclopaedia of female biography.djvu/71

  able to resist the royal power, up to the great revolution. Anne's influence over the court of France continued a long time; her Spanish haughtiness, her love of ceremonial, and of power, were impressed on the mind of her son, Louis the Fourteenth. Some modern French writers have pretended to find reasons for believing this proud queen was secretly married to cardinal Mazarin, her favourite adviser and friend. But no sufficient testimony, to establish the fact of such a strange union,has been adduced. The queen died in 1666, aged sixty-five. She was a very handsome woman, and celebrated for the beauty of her hands and arms.

Anne of Austria appears to have been estimable for the goodness and kindness of her heart, rather than for extraordinary capacity; for the attractions of the woman rather than the virtues of the queen; a propensity to personal attachments, and an amiable and forgiving temper, were her distinguishing characteristics.

Her life had been marked with vicissitude, and clouded by disquiet. At one period, subjected by an imperious minister, whose yoke she had not the resolution to throw off, she became an object of compassion even to those who caballed and revolted against her; yet her affections were never alienated from France, in favour of which she interested herself, with spirit and zeal, in the war against her native country. The French, at length, relinquished their prejudices, and did her justice. The latter years of her lift were passed in tranquillity, in retirement, and in the exercise of benevolence.

Anne of Austria was interred at St Denis; her heart was carried to Le Vol de Grace, of which she had been the foundress; and the following epitaph was made on her:—

"Sister, wife, mother, daughter of kings! Never was any more worthy of these illustrious titles." 

ANNE OF BEAUJEU, daughter of Louis the Eleventh of France, born in 1462, was early distinguished for genius, sagacity, and penetration, added to an aspiring temper. Louis, in the jealous policy which characterized him, married her to Pierre de Bourbon, sire de Beaujeu, a prince of slender fortune, moderate capacity, and a quiet, unambitious nature. The friends of Anne observed on these nuptials, that it was the union of a living with a dead body. Pierre, either through indolence, or from a discovery of the superior endowments of his wife, left her uncontrolled mistress of his household, passing, himself, the greatest part of .his time in retirement, in the Beaujolais.

On the death-bed of Louis, his jealousy of his daughter, then only twenty-six, gave place to confidence in her talents: having constituted her husband lieutenant-general of the kingdom, he bequeathed the reins of empire, with the title of governess, to the lady of Beaujeu, during the minority of her brother, Charles the Eighth, a youth of fourteen. Anne fully justified, by her capacity, the choice of her father.

Two competitors disputed the will of the late monarch, and the pretensions of Anne; her husband's brothers, John, duke de Bourbon, and Louis, duke of Orleans, presumptive heir to the crown; but Anne conducted herself with such admirable firmness and prudence, that she obtained the nomination of the states-general in her favour. By acts of popular justice, she conciliated the confidence of the