The future King Louis XII was born on on 27 June 1462 to Charles, Duke of Orléans and Marie of Cleves.
Louis of Orléans was the 2nd cousin of King Louis XI, known as Louis the Cunning, who (along with his daughter, Anne of Beaujue) had been the main instrument of putting the Tudors on the throne of England. The newborn Louis wasn’t a likely heir to the crown, since Louis XI had a son, who would become Charles VIII at the age of 13. However, the king did not trust his Bourbon cousins, and to weld the line back to his own children he forced young Louis to become betrothed to Princess Joan of Valois as toddler. The young Louis, already Duke of Orleans, would later resent this bitterly, since Joan was mildly deformed and presumed infertile.
Perhaps this resentment against King Louis XI was the main motivator for Louis of Orléans to become “one of the great feudal lords who opposed the French monarchy in the conflict known as the Mad War.” Or perhaps it was his resentment against his cousin, Anne of Beaujue, who was given the regency of her underage brother King Charles VIII instead of allowing Louis to claim it.
Whatever the reason Louis joined the Mad War, he and the other rebels-without-a-cause lost, and Louis of Orléans himself was captured during the Battle of Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier in 1488. However, Anne of Beaujue kindly pardoned her brother-in-law in the king’s name, and Louis was eventually allowed to fight by the side of King Charles VIII in the Italian War of 1494–1498.
Shortly after he gain his majority in 1491, Charles VIII rejected his fiancée, Margaret of Austria – who had been raised with him in the French court on the expectation of their marriage — in order to forcibly kidnapped and wed the already betrothed Anne of Brittany, but in spite of forcing the young girl to suffer through multiple births, there was no male heir to inherit when Charles died suddenly on 4 April 1498. Louis of Orléans was subsequently crowned King Louis XII on 7 April 1498.
The now widowed Anne of Brittany thought it safe to return home, since the new king was already married to Joan of Valois and therefore couldn’t force Anne to wed him to retain the duchy. Anne, alas, underestimated the new king’s determination and mendacity. She also underestimated the papal willingness to turn gold into annulments. After a hefty gift to the Holy See, Pope Alexander VI nullified the King Louis XII’s marriage to Joan of France less than six months after the death of King Charles VIII. Although bitterly unwilling, Anne of Brittany was again bullied into marrying the King of France.
Once more an unhappy queen, Anne of Brittany would suffer the consummation of her union with Louis XII and almost non-stop pregnancies. But of the nine pregnancies recorded during her marriage to Louis, only two – her daughters Claude of France and Renée of France – survived. Although the queen tried desperately to keep them safe from the French royal marriages that had oppressed her and her duchy, Louis XII had the ultimate authority over his daughters. Thus, Claude of France was wed to the male heir, her cousin, the future King Francis I of France.
Other than getting a successful annulment and forcing Anne of Brittany to marry him, the reign of Louis XII was mostly marked by “military and diplomatic failures”. He was, however, one hell of a tax collector, and his increased tax revenues kept the crown solvent in spite of successive useless wars in Italy.
When the unhappy Anne of Brittany died on 9 January 1514, Louis XII was free to make another match. This time he turned to the Tudors that his cousins had helped put on the throne, and asked King Henry VIII for the hand of his sister, Mary. Not only was she reportedly the most beautiful royal in Europe, she was young enough to perhaps give Louis XII a son. Louis wed Mary Tudor on 9 October 1514, and was by all accounts delighted with his bride. Mary was less thrilled, but she bore up well under her obligations.
Louis, although strongly smitten with his bride, was not able to sire a son before he died a few months later, on 1 January 1515. His heir, the new King Francis, did not emulate Louis by divorcing his first wife and trying to wed Mary Tudor. Not that Mary would have had him – she was already determined to marry Charles Brandon. Which she did, much to Henry VIII’s initial rage.
King Louis XII was laid to rest beside his reluctant second wife, Anne of Brittany, in the Basilica of St Denis. Their tomb, carved in Carrar marble, decorated by statues of the twelve Apostles and “the four cardinal virtues, Prudence, Might, Justice and Temperance,” none of which Louis appears to have adhered to in his life.
