Part 14

The people about Ploërmel and Josselin speak French instead of Breton, the prevailing language of the Morbihan department. It is nearly seven miles between Ploërmel and Josselin. Equally distant from each, at Mi-voie, in the centre of a star formed by avenues of firs and cypresses, is an obelisk set up to commemorate the famous "Combat des Trente," which took place on this spot in 1351, and on which are inscribed the names of the thirty who fought on the French side. It was during that period of the War of Succession when hostilities were carried on by the two Jeannes, Marshal Beaumanoir, the Breton commander of the garrison of Josselin for Jeanne de Penthièvre, gave a challenge to Bembro’, as he is called, the English captain who held Ploërmel for Jeanne de Montfort and her infant son, in consequence of an alleged infraction by the latter of a truce, agreed upon between the Kings of France and England, in which it had been stipulated that the peasants and those not bearing arms should be unmolested. In spite of this compact, the English soldiers devastated the country and committed every kind of excess. Jean de Beaumanoir repaired to Ploërmel to remonstrate, and it was agreed to settle the dispute by a fight between thirty warriors from each camp. The prophecies of Merlin were consulted, and found to promise victory to the English. The appointed place of meeting was by a large oak, the "Chêne de Mi-Voie," on a lande or large plain, half way from each town. The battle began with great fury, at first to the disadvantage of the Bretons, when Bembro’ was killed, which threw dismay among the English; but a German, who succeeded in the command, rallied their courage, and the melée became thicker than ever. Beaumanoir was wounded, and his loss of blood and his long fast produced a burning thirst, and he asked for water. "Bois ton sang, Beaumanoir, ta soif se passera," was the reply of Geoffroy du Bois; and Beaumanoir, forgetting his thirst and his wound, continued the fight. The English kept their ranks close, till Guillaume de Montauban broke them by a stratagem and threw them into confusion. He mounted his horse and pretended to fly, then suddenly turned upon the English with such force that he threw seven down and broke their ranks:—

“Grande fut la bataille et longuement dura: Et le chapple (carnage) horrible est deçà et delà; La chaleur fut moult grande, chacun si tressua (sua); De sœur et de sang la terre rosoya (rougit). A ce bon samedi Beaumanoir si jeuna; Grand soif eut le baron, à boire demanda; Messire Geoffrey du Bois tantôt répondu a: ’Bois ton sang, Beaumanoir, la soif te passera; Ce jour aurons honneur, chacun si gagnera Vaillante renommée, ja blâme ne sera.’— Beaumanoir le vaillant adonc s’évertua, Tel deuil eut et telle ire que la soif lui passa; Et d’un côté et d’autre le chapple commença: Morts furent ou blessés, guères n’en échappa.”—BRIZEUX.

Sir Robert Knollys, Sir Hugh Calverly Croquart, and others were made prisoners, and thus ended the Battle of the Thirty; gained, however, in a most disloyal manner, Montauban getting the aid of a horse, when all the other combatants fought on foot.

The Breton knights returned to Josselin, their helmets decorated with branches of the broom—

“In every basnet a bright broom flower;”

the place where the battle was fought running, according to the French poem,

“Le long d’une génetaie qui était verte et belle.”

Josselin is celebrated for its château, where died, 1407, Olivier du Clisson, the contemporary and brother of arms of Du Guesclin, whom he succeeded in the dignity of Constable of France, which no one for some time would accept, not thinking themselves worthy of replacing him. Both differed widely in position and character. Du Guesclin, though of a noble family, had not the advantage of fortune like Clisson, who had immense wealth and landed possessions, which made him a kind of sovereign in the duchy. He willed away a million of money. Clisson was a statesman, Du Guesclin’s sole glory was in arms. Clisson was cruel, intriguing, and insatiable for riches; Du Guesclin was humane, loyal, and disinterested. Both were equal in bravery and physical force: the lance of Du Guesclin and the axe of Clisson(20) carried all before them. Clisson joined with Du Guesclin in freeing the country from the "Great Companies," and his most celebrated action was the defeat of the Flemings at Rosbecq. Few subjects have been so powerful, or have filled so important a part, as Olivier du Clisson. He was true to his sovereign after his reconciliation, and to his children after him. John IV. had scarce closed his eyes when the daughter of Clisson, wife of Jean de Penthièvre, came to her father and said, "It depends only on you that my husband receives the inheritance of Brittany." "How?" asked the Constable. "By your ridding yourself of the children of De Montfort." "Ah! cruel and perverse woman," exclaimed Clisson; "if you live long, you will destroy the honour and property of your children;" and he accompanied his words with such violent menaces, that, seized with affright, she fled from his presence, and falling down, broke her thigh. The prophecy of Clisson was fulfilled, as we shall later relate. The ancient château in which he died was destroyed by Henry IV.; the present building was raised by Alain IX., Vicomte de Rohan, through Alain VIII., who married Beatrix, eldest daughter of the Constable, by which Josselin descended to the Rohans,(21) a house yielding to none in antiquity and illustration, being descended from the ancient sovereigns of Brittany, and allied with all the crowned heads of Europe,—"Princes of Bretagne" they were styled. But the Rohan family became unpopular in the duchy, when John II. attached himself to Louis XI. and France, for the bribe of 8000 livres to himself and 4000 to his wife.

At the battle of St. Aubin du Cormier, which sealed the fate of Brittany, the Vicomte du Rohan betrayed his brother-in-law Duke Francis and the national cause, and fought on the side of France. He afterwards marched at the head of the French troops, and besieged Guingamp, where its brave defenders declared, "As long as there is a duchess in Brittany, we will not give up her towns." But they took Pontrieux and Concarneau, and in 1491 the Vicomte du Rohan was appointed by Charles VIII. Lieutenant-General in Lower Brittany. He was called by his countrymen the "Felon Prince;" and so detested was he and his race, that it passed into a proverb to say of a mean, treacherous, dishonest person, "Il mange à l’auge comme Rohan,"—"He eats at the manger (that is, the table of the King of France) like Rohan." "Un peu de jactance," therefore, justly observes Daru, in the proud motto of the Rohans:—(22)

“Roi ne puis, Prince ne daigne, Rohan je suis.”

The château of Josselin stands by a river, on which side it presents piles of towers and fortifications covered with slate, a severe specimen of military architecture; while on the other side, the cour d’honneur, we see one of the handsomest châteaux of the Renaissance yet remaining in Brittany. This façade is richly ornamented with sculptures of varied and fanciful design. Immense gurgoyles, in the form of serpents, stretching from the roof to the base, pierced balustrades or galleries of lace-like delicacy, in which are introduced, according to the fashion of the period, the initial letters of the Vicomte Alain, A and V interlaced. The old Rohan motto, "À plus," and the escutcheon of gules, nine mascles or lozenges, occur in every part of this gorgeous front, and also on the finely-carved chimneypiece of the reception room (salle d’honneur). The whole of the château is in course of restoration by the Prince de Léon.

In the church of Josselin is the tomb of the Constable Clisson, with that of Marguerite de Rohan his wife; both statues were mutilated in the Revolution, but are now restored: they are of white marble on a black slab. Clisson is in armour, Marguerite has her hair plaited and confined in a network of pearls; she wears a long robe, with a surcoat above, furred with ermine. The motto, "Pour ce qu’il me plest (plait)," is in an oratory which belonged to Clisson, expressing his haughty and overbearing will. This same motto appears on his seal, affixed to a letter preserved in the archives of the empire, and he is recorded to have had it inscribed upon his Constable’s sword, which, like Du Guesclin, he always wore unsheathed, to show he was ready at all times to fight the enemies of the crown.

There hangs in the church a picture of the finding of the image Notre Dame-du-Roncier, of which we relate the legend:—

Long before Josselin was a town, a poor labourer had remarked, on the spot where now stands the church of Notre Dame, a bramble bush, which the frost and snow of the roughest winters never deprived of its leaves, but it always remained fresh and green. Surprised at this strange phenomenon, he dug the soil under the bramble, and discovered a wooden statue of the Virgin. A marvellous light played round the head of the image. The man carried it home; but next morning, to his surprise, he found the statue under the same bush whence he had taken it. The miracle was repeated several times, and soon attracted crowds of devotees. A chapel was built to deposit the sacred image, houses followed next, and a little town gradually formed, which the Comte de Porhoët surrounded with walls, and Josselin, his son, endowed with his name, 1030. Such was the rise of Josselin. A celebrated pilgrimage still exists to Josselin on Whit Tuesday, resorted to by crowds of "aboyeuses" or barkers, people possessed with this kind of epilepsy, said to be hereditary in several families, and which is accounted for from the circumstance of a party of washerwomen having refused a glass of water to the Vierge du Ronçier, who went to them disguised in the garb of a beggar. The merciless creatures set their dogs upon the pretended mendicant, and thus brought down upon themselves and their posterity this fearful malediction. The disease is supposed to return periodically about Whitsuntide, and only to leave the afflicted when they are carried forcibly to the sanctuary of Notre Dame to press with their foaming lips the fragments still remaining of the ancient miraculous statue which was burnt upon the public Place in the time of the French Revolution.

We left Ploërmel at four o’clock in the morning for Montfort-sur-Mer, passing through Plélan; while the horses baited at a little auberge we got some hot coffee, and found a good fire in the kitchen. The landlady, shut in her "lit clos," did not disturb herself, but occasionally put out her head to give directions for our breakfast. On the left of the road is the forest of Paimpont, which formerly extended from Montfort to Rostrenan, a kind of neutral desert land, called Brocéliande, and famous, under that name, in the history of King Arthur. It was the theatre of the fairies’ most wondrous enchantments. Here was the fountain of Youth and also that of Barenton, where they came every day to draw water in an emerald basin. Here, too, the enchanted Merlin has lain sleeping for centuries, enthralled by his pupil the fairy Viviana, who has cast a spell upon her master she knows not how to break.

Montfort, where we joined the railway, is celebrated for the legend of the duck and its ducklings, and was the residence of the De Montfort family until Guy Comte de Laval and Sire de Montfort married Françoise de Dinan, widow of the unfortunate Gilles de Bretagne, when the Montforts left their paternal demesne for the châteaux of Laval, Vitré, and Châteaubriant.

The railway took us to Rennes, an uninteresting modern French town, the old town was burnt down in 1720, and straight streets have risen up, with no traces of its having been once the ancient capital of Brittany. Indeed, so French is it altogether, that the saying runs—"Bon Breton de Vannes, bon Français de Rennes." It was here that Constance, heiress of the duchy, held her court, with Geoffrey Plantagenet, who, with their unfortunate son Arthur, were the only Plantagenets, dukes of Brittany. On the murder of Arthur, his sister Alice carried the ducal crown to her husband, Pierre de Dreux (called Mauclerc, from his animosity to the clergy), and from them descended the dukes of Brittany down to Queen Anne, whose double marriage conveyed the duchy to France and the Valois.

When Henry IV. made his solemn entry into Rennes, the Governor presented him with the three silver-gilt keys of the city, of rich workmanship; upon which the King observed, "Elles étaient belles, mais qu’il aimait mieux les clefs des cœurs des habitants."

The following year we made a tour along the banks of the Loire, and at Angers embarked on board the steamer for Nantes. The scenery down the Loire is rich, and the hills covered with vineyards, islands planted with willows, and sunny villages, or occasionally a gloomy fortress comes to view. Ingrandes is the frontier town, half in Anjou and half in Brittany, between the modern departments of Loire Inférieure and Maine-et-Loire. Lower down is St. Florent (Maine-et-Loire), with its recollections of the wonderful passage of the Loire by the Vendean army, so graphically related by Madame de la Rochejacquelin, and near the island of Meilleraie, where their brave General Bonchamps expired, after the fatal engagement of Chollet; his last act being the saving the lives of four thousand prisoners shut up in the church, and about to be executed by the exasperated Vendeans. "Grâce aux prisonniers" were his dying words. Opposite St. Florent is Varades, where the Vendeans landed after crossing the Loire. Only a feeble post opposed them. Had the republicans lost less time, and sent a force after their victory at Chollet, much calamity would have been spared to Brittany, and the Royalists themselves would have been saved the terrible defeats of Le Mans and Savenay.

Passing Ancenis, which rises in an amphitheatre on the vine-clothed hills, and, with its suspension-bridge, is one of the most picturesque points in the river, we reached Oudon, with its tall octagonal tower; on the left, in the department of Maine-et-Loire, nearly opposite, stands the ruined castle of Champtoceaux, where Duke John V. was kept a prisoner by the implacable enemies of his house, the Penthièvre family.

Marguerite de Clisson, widow of Jean de Bretagne, Comte de Penthièvre, lived in retirement in her stately fortress of Champtoceaux, with her three sons, Oliver, Count of Blois, and his brothers. Marguerite inherited the pride, hatred, and cruelty, of her father, without his chivalrous loyalty and magnanimity. The kingdom was filled with troubles, and she thought it a favourable moment for reviving the pretensions of her family. John V. held his court at Nantes. She sent Oliver there to assure the Duke that his mother and brother were ready to do him homage; and he swore, on his own part, "de le servir envers et contre tous ceux qui peuvent vivre et mourir." John, delighted, made the young man share his bed, and treated him with the greatest distinction. Oliver expressed his regret that the age and infirmities of his mother prevented her going to court, and timidly insinuated the honour she would feel at a visit from the Duke. The Duke consented, and, sending off his plate to Champtoceaux, started with his brother-in-law, Count Oliver, and his attendants. Having passed the little river which separates Anjou from Brittany, they saw a man throwing the planks of the bridge into the water, and thus preventing the Duke’s suite from following. At the same time, Charles de Penthièvre, Margaret’s second son, issued suddenly from a wood with an escort of lances and surrounded the Duke. There was no kind of indignity they did not make him suffer. He was tied upon his horse like a criminal, and conducted first to Clisson, Oliver leading him with a halter round his neck. The Penthièvres, who would not let the place be guessed where they held their captive, conducted him at night, sometimes on foot, from fortress to fortress, from dungeon to dungeon; at the same time circulating the report that they had drowned him in the Loire. As a last insult, they took him to Champtoceaux, where Marguerite visited him in prison to exult over his misfortunes. Meantime the Breton barons, indignant at the treason of which their Sovereign was the victim, raised an army for his deliverance, and civil war broke out with redoubled fury. His heroic wife, Jeanne de France, showed an untiring energy to save him. Undaunted by the threats of the Penthièvres,—who sent word to her, if she did not desist from hostilities they would cut her husband in pieces, nor by the messages from the Duke himself assuring her that her zeal would cost him his life,—she induced her brother, the Dauphin, to order the Penthièvres not to attempt the life of their prisoner; she besieged, one after the other, all their castles, and at last compelled Marguerite to capitulate to save her own life. Finding herself and family in a perilous position, Marguerite agreed that the Duke should be released (he was at Clisson), and that she and her sons should retire where they wished, on their promise to appear at the summons of the Breton nobles. Immediately on his liberation, Duke John ordered the destruction of Champtoceaux. A parliament assembled at Vannes in 1424, condemned Marguerite and her sons to capital punishment, and declared all the Penthièvre possessions to be forfeited to the State. But the culprits had all escaped the kingdom, except the youngest son, William, a child only ten years of age, who had been given as a hostage for the appearance of his mother and brothers, and was condemned to languish for twenty-seven years in prison, where he lost his eyesight—a victim to crimes in which he had not been an accomplice. John had made a vow, during his detention, to give, if he regained his liberty, to the church of Notre Dame at Nantes, his weight in gold; and most conscientiously did he perform his promise, for we read, "He placed himself in his war armour in the balance, and caused the opposite scale to be filled with gold till it had attained the weight of the first; that is to say, three hundred and eighty marks, seven ounces"—which sum was delivered over to the church. Vows of this nature are not unfrequently recorded. When Don Carlos, the ill-fated son of Philip II., lay ill, he vowed to give to the Virgin, on his recovery, four times his weight in gold plate, and seven times his weight in silver. The vow was fulfilled; but the Prince was placed in the scale in a damask robe and fur coat, and weighed only seventy-six pounds—so much was he reduced by his long illness.

Nantes is a cheerful, busy, handsome city, but wanting in the picturesque characteristics of the towns of Lower Brittany. Quimper, Vannes, Rennes, and Nantes, have all been successively capitals of the duchy, but Nantes was the usual residence of its dukes.

The cathedral contains its principal artistic monument, the tomb of Duke Francis II. and his second wife, Marguerite de Foix, called "sein de lys," from the beauty of her complexion. It was erected by their daughter, the Queen-Duchess Anne, and was executed by Michel Colomb, a sculptor of St. Pol de Léon, originally a herd-boy. This monument, considered a masterpiece of the Renaissance, is not copied from any Italian original, but is entirely the offspring of the artist’s own fancy. There is much simplicity in its design and execution. The tomb, about five feet high, is of white marble, diapered with ermine and the letter F. On a black slab repose the effigies of the Duke and Duchess, and at their feet are lying a lion and a greyhound, holding their several escutcheons. Four large allegorical figures are at each angle of the tomb, representing the cardinal virtues. Justice carries the book of the laws, and the sword by which she makes them respected. This figure is said to be the portrait of the Duchess Anne. Temperance, in a monastic dress, is characterised by a bit and a lantern. Prudence, double faced, holds a mirror and a compass, and has a serpent at her feet. This figure is in the costume of a peasant girl of St. Pol; the second face, that of an old man, is also in the dress of Lower Brittany. Strength or Fortitude, handsome, resolute, and calm, strangles a dragon with his grasp.

Upon the principal sides of the tomb are the twelve Apostles, and below, in niches, sixteen mourners (pleureuses) in monastic habits, the faces and hands white, the rest of the body black. The beautiful attitude of these figures is much admired. Some are kneeling, others are seated—all in the attitude and expression of prayer. This monument was originally in the church of the Carmelites, whence it was transferred to the cathedral.

Besides the remains of Duke Francis and his two wives, it formerly contained the heart of his daughter, the Queen-Duchess Anne, enshrined in a golden case in the form of a heart, surmounted by a crown, and surrounded by a cordelière; but the tomb was rifled during the Reign of Terror. It now holds the remains of the Constable Duke Arthur III.

Duke John IV. also died at Nantes, after his long eventful reign, having acquired a military glory which earned him the name of Conqueror, and equalled that of Du Guesclin and Clisson. Twice he lost and twice he regained his crown. He alienated Du Guesclin and his faithful subjects by his partiality to England. The Bretons rose, and he fled to Edward III.; but when Charles V. entered the duchy, with the intention of confiscating it to the crown of France, the Bretons all united to defend their nationality against the ambition of the French King, and recalled their Sovereign. So great was the enthusiasm on his arrival at St. Malo, that the nobles plunged into the water to approach his ship; and even the widow of his rival, Charles of Blois, went to welcome him. His cowardly attempt against the Constable Clisson again compromised his reputation, and was disgracefully avenged upon his son by the implacable daughter of Clisson.

The old ducal castle still rises on the left bank of the river. It was here Anne of Brittany was born, and here she married, 1499, her old admirer, the chivalrous Duke of Orleans, then King Louis XII., according to her stipulation, that the King, "viendra l’espouser en sa maison de Nantes." Left at the age of eleven, by the death of her father, a prey to claimants to her hand, which carried with it the powerful duchy of Brittany, Anne was a prize worth a king’s seeking, even at a time when there were so many other rich heiresses undisposed of—Mary of Burgundy, Elizabeth of York, Isabella of Castille, and Catherine de Foix. Anne is described as handsome, but slightly lame, generous, and gentle, but grave and proud in her demeanour. Louis XII. called her his "fière Bretonne," and allowed her the uncontrolled government of Brittany, "tout ainsi que si elle n’estoit point sa femme."

Though the wife of two Kings of France, Anne never forgot the interests of her duchy, whose nationality she always strove to maintain with the pertinacity of a true Breton, and showed herself, by her spirit and independence, to be the most worthy of all her race to wear the ducal crown. Jean Marot addresses her as "Royne incomparable, deux fois devinement sacrée, Anne Duchesse de Bretagne."