Still, on either side the alliance was an
honourable one. Louise belonged to a sovereign house, while the Count
of Angouleme was a prince of the blood royal of France by virtue of his
descent from King Charles V., his grandfather having been that monarch's
second son, the notorious Duke Louis of Orleans, (2) who was murdered in
Paris in 1417 at the instigation of John the Bold of Burgundy.
1 The value of the Paris livre at this date was twenty
sols, so that the amount would be equivalent to about L1400.
2 This was the prince described by Brantome as a "great
debaucher of the ladies of the Court, and invariably of the
greatest among them."--_Vies des Dames galantes_ (Disc. i.).
Louise, who, although barely nubile, impatiently longed to become a
mother, gave birth to her first child after four years of wedded
life. "My daughter Margaret," she writes in the journal recording the
principal events of her career, "was born in the year 1492, the eleventh
day of April, at two o'clock in the morning; that is to say, the tenth
day, fourteen hours and ten minutes, counting after the manner of
the astronomers.
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