CLISSON

. The village and castle of Clisson (Loire-Atlan-tique) became the seat of a family important in 14th-century Brittany. Lords of Clisson appear in monastic documents as early as the 11th century, but their precise genealogy before the 14th century remains uncertain.

The Clisson family rose to wealth and prominence through a succession of brilliant marriages. Around 1200, Guillaume I was ranked as a baron. His grandson Olivier I acquired the important castle of Blain from his mother and rebelled against the duke of Brittany until the latter forced him into retirement in 1262. His successor, Olivier II (d. ca. 1295), acquired lands in lower Normandy through marriage, and ca. 1300 his son Guillaume married Isabelle de Craon, linking the Clisson to her important Angevin family.

The two sons of this marriage, Olivier III and Amaury, were active on opposite sides in the Breton war of succession that began in 1341 and lost their lives as a consequence. Olivier III in 1330 married Jeanne de Belleville, heiress to important lordships in northern Poitou, just south of the Clisson family lands. After Olivier’s execution for treason in 1343, the French crown confiscated their lands. Jeanne fled to England, where her surviving son, Olivier IV (1336-1407), was raised as a partisan of the English-backed claimant to Brittany, fighting on his side in the victorious Battle of Auray (1364) that won him the ducal title as Jean IV.

By this time, Olivier IV had inherited lands given to his mother by the English and had reacquired the vast family holdings previously confiscated by the French. He married Beatrix de Laval, a cousin of Duke Jean, further increasing his wealth and prestige. In the later 1360s, however, Olivier IV grew increasingly hostile to the English and became a strong supporter and military adviser of Charles V of France. By 1370, his estrangement from Jean IV had become a bitter feud that would last for twentyfive years. His sound tactical sense, his expertise with fortifications, and his almost legendary ferocity in battle made him the most prestigious military commander of his day, and after the death of Charles V he became constable of France and a leading councilor of Charles VI.

In his twelve years as constable, Clisson headed a political faction known as the Marmousets, who opposed the dukes of Berry and Burgundy at the French court. In 1392, he was the intended victim of a bungled assassination attempt that the king blamed on the duke of Brittany. On the ensuing punitive expedition against Jean IV, Charles VI became psychotic, and the royal dukes quickly seized power and ousted Clisson from the office of constable.

Returning to Brittany, Clisson waged bitter war against the duke until 1395, in alliance with his sons-in-law, Alain VIII de Rohan and Jean de Blois, count of Penthievre, who had married his daughters Beatrix and Marguerite, respec-tively. After peace was made, he returned to ducal favor but continued to annoy Jean IV and Jean V with litigation until his death on April 23, 1407, his seventy-first birthday.

The last male member of the family, Olivier IV had amassed a great fortune, and some of Europe’s most important figures owed money to his estate. Through his older daughter, the Rohan family acquired two-thirds of this wealth and became the greatest noble family of Brittany. Olivier’s younger daughter, the countess of Penthievre, inherited her father’s propensity for feuding and litigation and brought ruin on her family by inducing her sons to kidnap Jean V in 1420.

John Bell Henneman, Jr.

[See also: AURAY; BRITTANY; CONSTABLE OF FRANCE: CRAON; HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR; JEAN IV; MARMOUSETS]

Bruel, Franfois-Louis. “Inventaire de meubles et de titres trouves au chateau de Josselin a la mort du connetable de Clisson (1407).” Bibliotheque de I’Ecole des Chartes 66 (1905): 193-245. Buteau, Michele. “La naissance de la fortune de Clisson.” Unpublished Memoire de Maitrise, Universite de Vincennes, 1970 (available at Vannes, Archives Departementales du Morbihan). Gicquel, Yvonig. Olivier de Clisson, connetable de France ou chefduparti breton? Paris: Picollec, 1981.

Henneman, John Bell. “Reassessing the Career of Olivier de Clisson, Constable of France.” In Law, Custom, and the Social Fabric in Medieval Europe: Essays in Honor of Bruce Lyon, ed.

Bernard Bachrach and David Nicholas. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, 1990, pp. 211-33. Lefranc, Abel. Olivier de Clisson, connetable de France. Paris: Retaux, 1898.