marriage, did their best to combat this obstinacy on the part of their princess, and they proposed to her other marriages.  Anne answered, “I will marry none but a king or a king’s son.”  Whilst the question was thus being disputed at the little court of Rennes, the army of Charles VIII. was pressing the city more closely every day.  Parleys took place between the leaders of the two hosts; and the Duke of Orleans made his way into Rennes, had an interview with the Duchess Anne, and succeeded in shaking her in her refusal of any French marriage.  “Many maintain,” says Count Philip de Segur [Histoire de Charles VIII, t. i. p. 217], “that Charles VIII. himself entered alone and without escort into the town he was besieging, had a conversation with the young duchess, and left to her the decision of their common fate, declaring to her that she was free and he her captive; that all roads would be open to her to go to England or to Germany; and that, for himself, he would go to Touraine to await the decision whereon depended, together with the happiness of his own future, that of all the kingdom.”  Whatever may be the truth about these chivalrous traditions, there was concluded on the 15th of September, 1491, a treaty whereby the two parties submitted themselves for an examination of all questions that concerned them to twenty-four commissioners, taken half and half from the two hosts; and, in order to give the preconcerted resolution an appearance of mutual liberty, authority was given to the young Duchess Anne to go, if she pleased, and join Maximilian in Germany.  Charles VIII., accompanied by a hundred men-at-arms and fifty archers of his guard, again entered Rennes; and three days afterwards the King of France and the Duchess of Brittany were secretly affianced in the chapel of Notre-Dame.  The Duke of Orleans, the Duchess of Bourbon, the Prince of Orange, Count Dunois, and some Breton lords, were the sole witnesses of the ceremony.  Next day Charles VIII. left Rennes and repaired to the castle of Langeais in Touraine.  There the Duchess Anne joined him a fortnight afterwards.  The young Princess Marguerite of Austria, who had for eight years been under guardianship and education at Amboise as the future wife of the King of France, was removed from France and taken back into Flanders to her father, Archduke Maximilian, with all the external honors that could alleviate such an insult.  On the 13th of December, 1491, the contract of marriage between Charles VIII. and Anne of Brittany was drawn up in the great hall of the castle of Langeais, in two drafts, one in French and the other in Breton.  The Bishop of Alby celebrated the nuptial ceremony.  By that deed, “if my Lady Anne were to die before King Charles, and his children, issue of their marriage, she ceded and transferred irrevocably to him and his successors, kings of France, all her rights to the duchy of Brittany.  King Charles ceded in like manner to my Lady Anne his rights to the possession