had allowed himself to proceed to concessions so plainly contrary to the greatest interests of France: he had yielded also to domestic influences.

The queen his wife, Anne of Brittany, detested Louise of Savoy, widow of Charles d'Orleans, Count of Angouleme, and mother of Francis d'Angouleme, heir presumptive to the throne, since Louis XII.
had no son.

Anne could not bear the idea that her daughter, Princess Claude, should marry the son of her personal enemy; and, being more Breton than French, say her contemporaries, she, in order to avoid this disagreeableness, had used with the king all her influence, which was great, in favor of the Austrian marriage, caring little, and, perhaps, even desiring, that Brittany should be again severed from France.

Louis, in the midst of the reverses of his diplomacy, had thus to suffer from the hatreds of his wife, the observations of his advisers, and the reproaches of his conscience as a king.

He fell so ill that he was supposed to be past recovery.