She had married her eldest daughter to Francis, Duke de Guise, and in 1557, at the close of the disasters of the army commanded by the duke in Italy, 'she saved,' says Brantôme, 'more than ten thousand souls, poor Frenchmen, soldiers and others, who would have died of hunger and want if it had not been for her; they passed through Ferrara and she succoured them all, as many as ever there were, supplying their wants and giving them money: so much so, that I have heard from one of her _maîtres d'hôtel_ that their passage through the place cost her more than ten thousand crowns; and when the _intendants_ of her palace remonstrated at the excessive expense, she said nothing more to them than--"What would you have me do? They are poor Frenchmen of my nation, and if God had given me a beard on my chin, and I had been a man, they would have been my subjects; and indeed they would be my subjects now if that cursed Salic law did not press so hardly upon me."' {204} Some years later, after 1559, the duchess became a widow, and she then returned to France, and lived in her own castle of Montargis; in 1562, in the midst of the civil war, she sheltered in it a considerable number of Calvinists, some of them men of rank; her grandson Henry, Duke de Guise, besieged the castle, and summoned her to deliver up her guests. 'Take good care of what you are doing,' was Renée's answer to the duke's envoy; 'know that, except the king himself, no one has any right to dictate to me, and if you execute your threats, I will be the first to enter the breach, and I will try if you are bold enough to kill a king's daughter, whose death both heaven and earth will be compelled to avenge on you and your descendants, down to the children in their cradles.'