The readiness with which Charles VIII. concluded {23} peace was due to the recent turn of affairs in Brittany, to which country his rivalry with Maximilian was now transferred. During the aggressive war waged by France in the Netherlands the King of the Romans had found a natural ally in the Duke of Brittany, who dreaded the expansive policy of the French King. The death of Francis II. (September, 1488) left the Breton throne to his young daughter Anne; and Ferdinand V. and Henry VII. united to protect her against her dangerous neighbour. But this protection was on the whole rather sympathetic than practical; and the insecurity of her position led the young Duchess to search the political horizon for some efficient defender. She turned to Maximilian as the sovereign most interested in resistance to France and most likely to afford her practical aid. It seemed as though the romantic episode of his first marriage was to be re-enacted in a new quarter. On March 20, 1490, Anne and Maximilian were betrothed, and towards the end of the year the marriage was formally celebrated by proxy.[27] Anne openly assumed the title of Queen of the Romans, and Maximilian's diplomacy was for the time triumphant. But the acquisition of Brittany was a matter of supreme importance to the French Crown; and Charles VIII. strained every nerve to secure the discomfiture of his rival. Brittany was overrun by French troops, Nantes surrendered after a feeble resistance, and Anne found herself closely besieged in Rennes, with little prospect of timely relief, and with a strong French faction within the walls. Maximilian's hands were tied down by the necessities {24} of the Hungarian war, and, confident in the validity of his union with Anne, and relying on the promised aid of Henry VII., he stirred not a muscle in her defence. At last Anne found herself forced to come to terms. Brittany was to remain in the hands of the French, and free passage was granted to her through French territory, on her way to join Maximilian. But her feeling as a Princess overcame her feeling as a woman. She was naturally reluctant to leave her ancestral dominions in hostile hands for the sake of a man whom she had never seen and who was her senior by seventeen years; and her offended pride at Maximilian's inexcusable absence at her time of need led her footsteps to Chateau Langeais rather than to the German frontier. The cunning Charles had all prepared, and was able to produce the double dispensation of Innocent VIII.[28] On December 6, 1491, the marriage of Charles VIII. and Anne of Brittany was duly solemnized at Langeais, and Brittany was finally incorporated with France. [Illustration: ANNE OF BRITTANY]