It is said that, at the very moment of execution, Semblancay, waiting on the scaffold for at least a commutation of the penalty, said, “Had I served God as I have served the king, He would not have made me wait so long.”  Nearly two centuries later, in 1683, a more celebrated minister than Semblancay, Colbert, in fact, as he was dying tranquilly in his bed, after having for twenty years served Louis XIV., and in that service made the fortune of his family as well as his own, said also, “Had I done for God what I have done for yonder man, I had been twice saved; and now I know not what will become of me.”  A striking similarity in language and sentiment, in spite of such different ends, between two great councillors of kings, both devoted during their lives to the affairs of the world, and both passing, at their last hour, this severe judgment, as Christians, upon the masters of the world and upon themselves.

About the same time the government of Francis I. was involved, through his mother’s evil passions, not in an act more morally shameful, but in an event more politically serious, than the execution of Semblancay.  There remained in France one puissant prince, the last of the feudal semi-sovereigns, and the head of that only one of the provincial dynasties sprung from the dynasty of the Capetians which still held its own against the kingly house.  There were no more Dukes of Burgundy, Dukes of Anjou, Counts of Provence, and Dukes of Brittany; by good fortune or by dexterous management the French kingship had absorbed all those kindred and rival states.  Charles II., Duke of Bourbon, alone was invested with such power and independence as could lead to rivalry.  He was in possession of Bourbonness, of Auvergne, of Le Forez, of La Marche, of Beaujolais, and a large number of domains and castles in different parts of France.  Throughout all these possessions he levied taxes and troops, convoked the local estates, appointed the officers of justice, and regulated almost the whole social organism.  He was born on the 10th of February, 1490, four years before Francis I.; he was the head of the younger branch of the Bourbons-Montpensier; and he had married, in 1515, his cousin, Suzanne of Bourbon, only daughter of Peter II., head of the elder branch, and Anne of France, the able and for a long while puissant daughter of Louis XI.  Louis XII. had taken great interest in this marriage, and it had been stipulated in the contract “that the pair should make a mutual and general settlement of all their possessions in favor of the survivor.”  Thus the young duke, Charles, had united all the possessions of the house of Bourbon; and he held at Moulins a brilliant princely court, of which he was himself the most brilliant ornament.  Having been trained from his boyhood in all chivalrous qualities, he was an accomplished knight before becoming a tried warrior; and he no sooner appeared upon the field of battle than he won renown not only as a valiant prince, but as an eminent soldier.