Antoinette's role
In contrast with her cousin, Antoinette de Maignelais was the star of some banquets, and her influence was also recognized by at least one ambassador. For this reason, I suggest, she has as good a claim to the title of first significant mistress of a French king as Agnes Sorel, and this is despite that fact that it is not clear whether she was ever the king’s mistress according to received modern definition of that word.
I will return to the point of whether or not she was the king’s mistress and why it does or does not matter.Antoinette enters history for the first time in a document of August 1449. Issued by Charles VII, en route to regain Normandy, the document specifies that the king removes “la terre de Maignelay” (the Maignelais land) from the Count of Clermont, Charles de Bourbon, to give it to Antoinette.[334] Numerous historians have cited the document as a sign of special favor and therefore as evidence that
Antoinette became the king’s mistress before Agnes died the following February. An equally plausible explanation, however, is that Charles VII wanted to show favor to the family of his beloved mistress, possibly even at Agnes’s request. The king continued to show Antoinette favor, marrying her, as we have seen, to his “premier” favorite Andre de Villequier in the autumn of 1450, roughly eight months after Agnes’s death.[335] Andre died prematurely in 1454,[336] and Antoinette remained involved in court life until the king’s death in 1461, at that point following a group of courtiers who, fearing the new king Louis XI, moved to the court of the Francois II, Duke of Brittany, whose mistress Antoinette became.[337]
Different then from Agnes, for whom Charles VII never arranged a marriage, Antoinette as royal mistress—if she was indeed the king’s mistress—had a civil status to protect her,[338] and much of the early favor shown her came to her as part of a married couple.
Andre had already begun to receive gifts from the king in January 1444, coinciding with Agnes’s rise, and the gifts continued in abundance throughout his short life.[339] The king explains his obvious generosity toward Andre in a letter, writing that the young man had had many opportunities to make a marriage that would have brought him great wealth, but he had conformed to royal desire in agreeing to marry the king’s “tres-chiere et bien amee Anthoinette de Magnelaiz, demoiselle.” To discharge his conscience, the king continues, he drowned Andre in gifts.[340] Some historians have interpreted this statement as an admission of adultery, assuming that the king needed to discharge his conscience of guilt over his affair with Andre’s wife. And yet, the reading is not self-evident. The king may indeed have felt guilty about preventing Andre from making a fabulous marriage. Therefore, to offset his lost wealth, the king awarded Antoinette and Andre the territory of La Guerche and made Andre vicomte as a marriage gift; at the same time to Antoinette specifically he ceded Issoudun, which had belonged to Agnes, for use during her lifetime of the chateau, town, seigneurie and the salt. He also granted the married couple generous sums of money. When Andre lay dying in 1454, the king guaranteed that Antoinette would retain La Guerche and offered her a pension.[341]As Andre’s wife and, later, his widow, Antoinette seems to have been enmeshed in political life in a way that had not been possible for Agnes.[342] In 1420 while still dauphin, Charles had been disinherited by his parents, Charles VI and Isabeau of Bavaria, in favor of Henry V of England. He therefore spent his early adulthood trying to secure his throne. Until l453 he was involved in wars against the English, and, over those same years, he was preoccupied with dealing with revolts by his own nobles, in the form of minor intrigues and full-fledged rebellions, like the Praguerie, in which his own son Louis took part.
This means that his court was less spectacular than his father’s had been; he rarely went to Paris but lived primarily in Tours and Bourges.[343] But by the time Antoinette began her rise, court life was making a comeback. By the mid-1450s Charles VII was no longer constantly at war, festivals were more magnificent, the favorites, for better or for worse, more in view.[344] In this newly vibrant environment, Antoinette, along with her husband, and then with other favorites and their wives, played a more visible role than Agnes ever had in surroundings more magnificent than any that Agnes had enjoyed during her tenure. Such a court provided the kind of setting in which a royal mistress can become involved in politics: where ambassadors begin to piece together the system of favorites and start to solicit information from those closest to the king.Antoinette, in this context, was recognized as a person ofinfluence. Chronicler Jean Chartier describes festivities to mark the Duke of Brittany’s homage to the king for his duchy, remarking that at that time “Monseigneur de Villequier” and “Madame,” his wife, held great authority at the royal court.[345] For a festival held on 5 June 1455 in honor of Antoinette and Madame de Chateaubrun, lady of the queen recently married to a favorite of the king Charles de Gaucourt, seigneuer de Chateaubrun,[346] the Duke of Savoy’s instructions to his ambassador say that he should approach “the king, the members of his Council, and Madame Villequier....”[347] This presages later ambassador instructions that place the Duchess of Etampes among the most important court figures to solicit. Chastellain, too, describes Antoinette, again with Madame de Chateaubrun, as the center of the ambassadors’ attention during a festival to celebrate the engagement of princess Madeleine to the young Hungarian king.[348]
Other documents that hint at a politically oriented role include one of 1453 which shows citizens of the city of Compiegne, devastated by the plague, sending an embassy to plead with Madame de Villequier and Etienne Chevalier that their taxes be lowered.[349] Vallet de Viriville suggests that Antoinette and Andre were part of the faction involved in the downfall of Jacques C≈ur, who was accused of poisoning Agnes, because she profited from the fall.[350] The Cronique Martiniane claims that shortly before the king’s death, Antoinette was alleged to have been supplying the dauphin with information about the royal court.[351] The accusation is generally believed to have been a set up by the dauphin, but the fact that it was considered plausible suggests Antoinette’s continued involvement in court politics.
That she exerted political influence at the royal court is all the more plausible because she is later described as a significant force at the court of Brittany. Bearing the duke four children, she is reproached by Breton chronicler Alain Bouchart for overshadowing the duchess; indeed, she was accused of preventing the duke from producing legitimate children with his wife. The relationship “between the duke and the aforementioned Antoinette,” he concludes, “had greatly damaging consequences for the male posterity of the line of Brittany, as many wise men said at the time and also as we have seen since.”[352]