The Archduke Maximilian married Anne, Duchess of Bretagne, by proxy; and he consummated the union by his ambassador attending with a train of lords and ladies, baring his leg to the knee, and putting it into the bed of the Duchess, thereby taking possession of her bed and body. The marriage, however, was annulled, and she afterwards in 1491 became the wife of Charles VIII. of France. It may be added that Henry II. of France was killed in a tournament in 1559, in honour of the nuptials of Philip II. to the Princess Elizabeth of France. It appears that the Duke of Alva, as proxy for Philip, had espoused Elizabeth on the 20th of June. The nuptials of the Duke of Savoy with Margaret were to follow. On the 27th, 28th, and 29th the lists were opened in the Rue St. Antoine. The King, the Dukes of Guise and Nemours, were the holders, and had shown their usual prowess and address. The tournament, writes Crowe,[130] was at an end, when Henry declared he must break another lance, and ordered Montgomery, one of the captains of the guard, to tilt with him. The latter declined, but the King forced him. Both lances were duly broken in the shock, but, as the horses and riders passed on in their headlong career, the King was struck by the broken end of the lance which Montgomery, against rules, retained in his hand. On reaching the end of the course the monarch fell; a splinter had penetrated his eye, and the King, on being conveyed to the palace, only lingered for eleven days, expiring on the 10th of July 1559. Marie Louise in her engagement to Charles II. of Spain looked upon herself as a victim of State policy, and appealed in vain to Louis XIV. She had seen the portrait of her future husband, whose character and imbecility were as well known at Fontainebleau as at Madrid. But her protestations were in vain. After a marriage by proxy at Fontainebleau, the Comte d’Harcourt was commissioned to conduct her to the frontier, where in the famous Isle of Pheasants, on the Bidassoa, the sad-hearted bride was delivered over to the tender mercies of the Duchess of di Terra Nueva and the Marquis de Astorgas. CHAPTER XIX COURT JESTERS AND FOOLS The fashion of keeping Court and household fools, writes Voltaire in his _Age de Louis XIV._, was for a time the _grande mode_ of all the Courts of Europe. Some sovereigns, however, discarded the practice, and when Charles Louis, Electoral Prince of the Rhine, was asked why he did not keep a Court fool, he replied: “Well, it is easily accounted for. When I am inclined to laugh, I send for a couple of professors from college, set them an argument, and laugh at their folly.”