The wealth, power and the prestige of the French monarchy increased greatly during the course of the twelfth century. In 1204 King Philip Augustus demonstrated that he ruled as well as reigned when he dispossessed England’s King John of most of his French lands. This political earthquake drew Brittany firmly into a French political orbit. Philip consolidated his hold by persuading the pope to abolish the archbishopric of Dol, so ending the independence of the Breton church. The outbreak of the long Anglo-French struggle known as the Hundred Years War in 1337 allowed Brittany to recover some of its independence. As Brittany dominated the sea-lanes between England and its possessions in Gascony, both the English and French kings had an interest in securing influence there. This was a situation the Bretons could benefit from. Brittany was drawn into the conflict in 1341 when Duke Jean III died without legitimate heirs. Philip VI of France proposed his nephew Charles of Blois as duke, a move that would have tied Brittany even more closely to France. However, Charles had a credible rival inJean de Montfort, the half-brother ofjean III. Civil war was inevitable. Simply because he was not French, Jean enjoyed the support of most Bretons and, not surprisingly, Edward III of England. The important trade links between Brittany and England reinforced the
English alliance. Despite the support of the greatest warrior king of the day, Jean had still not established himself when he died from an infected wound in 1345. The English kept his cause alive on behalf of his young son Jean IV, but it was only after Charles of Blois had been killed in battle at Auray (near Vannes) that the French finally gave up and recognised him as duke in 1365.
Jean IV quickly asserted his independence not only from France but from his English benefactors too. The ongoing Anglo-French conflict made it easy for Jean and his successors to play one party off against the other. The dukes maintained a splendid court, became patrons of scholarship, founded orders of chivalry and were inaugurated to office with regal coronation ceremonies, all in an attempt to demonstrate their equality with the kings of France. Although the culture and language of the elite were now thoroughly French, writers at the ducal court deliberately revived memories of the kingdom of Brittany and emphasised the antiquity and separate identity of the Breton people at a time when both the French and English were developing a recognisably modern sense of national identity. However, the concentration of power in the duke’s hands made Brittany vulnerable to a simple dynastic takeover should the opportunity arise.
The end of the Hundred Years War in 1453 decisively altered the balance against Brittany. The notoriously machiavellian King Louis XI (r. 1461-83) understood only too well how ‘over mighty’ subjects, such as the dukes of Burgundy and Brittany, had exploited the Hundred Years War to their own advantage: cutting them down to size became a major objective of his reign. When it became clear that Duke Francois II would have no male heirs, he began to prepare the ground for a French takeover of Brittany. The leading nobles were subverted with gifts and favours and Louis encouraged the development of factions at the ducal court. Louis’s efforts bore fruit for his successor Charles VIII when, in 1487, a discontented Breton noble, the Marshal Rieux, encouraged a French invasion. Despite receiving help from England, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, Francois was crushingly defeated by the French at Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier in July 1488 and was forced to accept humiliating peace terms. All foreign troops were to be sent home, several strategic towns and castles were to be handed over to France and the duke was not to marry his daughters off without the French king’s permission. By September, Francois was dead and the duchy was left in the hands of his astonishingly precocious daughter Anne, aged only 11. The fate of Brittany now hung on Anne’s marriage. Anne and her advisers sought a match that would keep Brittany out of French hands, and it seemed that they had succeeded in December 1490 when she underwent a proxy marriage to Maximilian, the son of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III (Maximilian was not actually present at the ceremony: afterwards his ambassador symbolically placed his leg in Anne’s bed to ‘consummate’ the marriage). However, a disappointed unsuccessful suitor then handed Nantes over to the French, who went on to lay siege to Rennes in the summer of 1491. With Breton resistance collapsing and the nobility hopelessly divided, Anne reluctantly took the only action that could have
Secured a lasting peace for Brittany - she married the young French king. Though formal annexation to France did not happen until 1532, the marriage ended Brittany’s independence.
Despite its loss of independence in 1491, Brittany remained legally distinct from the rest of France, retaining its thirteenth-century parlement and its legislative autonomy. Just as the heir to the English throne took the title ‘Prince of Wales’, so the dauphin became Duke of Brittany. Breton was still the majority language in fifteenth-century Brittany, but after the loss of independence it gradually began to lose ground to French, especially in the ports, which steadily grew in importance because of France’s naval and colonial rivalry with England. However, Breton continued to flourish, in part because the advent of the printing press made literature in Breton widely available for the first time. The Revolution was a turning point in the history of Brittany. Brittany’s strong local identity and institutions were seen to be at odds with the new ideology of the indivisible Republic. The Breton parlement was abolished and Brittany’s administration was brought into line with that of the rest of the French Republic. Five departe-replaced its medieval seneschalcies. In January 1794 instructions were issued to destroy the Breton language, which was now seen as incompatible with republican unity. Laws established French as the sole language of education. Brittany officially ceased to exist - it remained to be seen whether the Bretons would go the same way.
World History
