The contrast between the two Annes who fill so large a place in the closing years of the fifteenth century is as complete as it is striking. Both were so placed by the accident of birth and fortune as to have much power, for good or for ill, in the destiny of France. But while Anne de Bretagne showed herself merely a woman, ruled by personal motives, jealous of power in small things and blind to or unconscious of the far-reaching results that might spring from the exercise of that power, Anne de Beaujeu had the broad mind, the far-seeing and calculating intellect of the statesman. Her intellect, indeed, was essentially masculine: "Madame de Beaujeu," says a contemporary historian, "would have been worthy to wear the crown, by her prudence and by her courage, if nature had not excluded her from the sex in whom the right to rule was vested." Anne de Bretagne was self-willed and obstinate, seeking the gratification of mere caprice; Anne de Beaujeu was inflexible and tenacious of purpose, but that purpose had in view the consolidation of an empire, not the gratification of some whim or of some petty spite. One is tempted to compare the daughter of Louis XI. with that other great woman whose firm hand guided France through a perilous crisis in the second quarter of the thirteenth century. Blanche de Castille, too, had to rule and consolidate a kingdom menaced by feudal anarchy during the minority of the sovereign. But she had constitutional right to support her regency; Anne de Beaujeu had no such right, and the difficulties with which she had to contend, though sooner ended, were more serious in themselves, perhaps, than those domestic intrigues and rebellions which Blanche could face without having to guard her frontiers from powerful and hostile neighbors. By her political achievements Madame la Grande merits comparison with the mother of Saint Louis. And yet it is in the very success of her tortuous, unscrupulous, dishonest policy that we find witness against the character of Anne. Political trickery, political duplicity, however beneficent in its results, leaves us with a strong aversion to the trickster; even as we have an unconquerable distrust of and contempt for the spy, howbeit he has risked life and honor for love of country, even so we grudge our praise to those who, like Louis XI and his daughter, seek and attain great ends by despicable means, sacrificing truth, honor, sentiment, to win for the nation the provinces of a Marie de Bourgogne, who does not know how to govern them, or the bride of a Maximilian, who does not know how to keep hold of her.