courteous, brave; he met dangers like a Roland or an Amadis; when a
wild boar, escaping from its cage, sought to frolic in his princely
court, it was Francis who, while others fled, faced the beast and slew
it splendidly.
At the age of twelve (1506) he was betrothed to Claude of France,
the seven-year-old daughter of Louis XII. She had been promised to the
boy who was to become the Emperor Charles V; the engagement had been
broken to avoid yoking France to Spain; this was one item in a hundred
irritations that urged Hapsburg and Valois into conflict from youth to
death. At fourteen Francis was bidden leave his mother and join
Louis at Chinon. At twenty he married Claude. She was stout and
dull, lame and fertile and good; she gave him children in 1515,
1516, 1518, 1520, 1522, 1523, and died in 1524.
Meanwhile he became king (January 1, 1515). Everybody was happy,
above all his mother, to whom he gave the duchies of Angouleme and
Anjou, the counties of Maine and Beaufort, the barony of Amboise.
But he was generous to others too- to nobles, artists, poets, pages,
mistresses. His pleasant voice, his cordiality and good temper, his
vivacity and charm, his living synthesis of chivalry and the
Renaissance, endeared him to his country, even to his court. France
rejoiced, and placed high hopes in him, as England in those years in
Henry VIII, and the Empire in Charles V; the world seemed young again,
so freshened with royal youth. And Francis, even more than Leo X,
was resolved to enjoy his throne.
What was he really, this Arthur plus Lancelot? Physically he would
have been magnificent, had not his nose been more so; irreverent
contemporaries called him le roi grand nez . He was six feet tall,
broad-shouldered, agile, strong; he could run, jump, wrestle, fence
with the best; he could wield a two-handed sword or a heavy lance. His
thin beard and mustache did not disguise his youth; he was
twenty-one when crowned. His narrow eyes suggested alertness and
humor, but not subtlety or depth. If his nose betokened virility it
conformed to his reputation. Brantome, whose Dames Galantes cannot
be taken as history, wrote therein that "King Francis loved greatly
and too much; for being young and free, he embraced now one, now
another, with indifference... from which he took the grande verole
that shortened his days." `06221 The King's mother was reported to