Site Home

The Breton peninsula was part of the major area of Celtic influence around 200 BC. After 49 BC, it became part of the Roman province conquered by Julius Caesar in the Gallic Wars and became part of the province of Lugdunensis of Gallia and when this was divided into three, was included in one of the Imperial provinces, Lugdunensis. After Roman authority weakened, the Huns overran Gaul but they withdrew after the battle of the Catalunian fields in 451. During this time, Britons from were settling the area from across the channel that gave it its modern name. The area was a part of ancient Armorica, and it received its modern name when it was settled (c. 500) by Britons whom the Anglo-Saxons had driven from Britain. Brittany was never entirely part of the Frankish Empire although it lost land in the reorganisation of the Breton March in 811.

Druids sacrifice

From about 844-940, it was a centre of Viking activity.
Breton history is a long struggle for independence-first from the Franks (5th-9th cent.), then from the dukes of Normandy and the counts of Anjou (10th-12th cent.), and finally from England and France.
Through their influence, part of Brittany or Less Britain was under the Celtic church and the rest remained Roman Catholic like the rest of Gaul (France). The term 'Great' Britain comes from the time during the early medieval period when the two countries had such close ties that Brittany was known as 'Less' Britain but the area is now part of France.
In 1196, Arthur I, an Angevin, was acknowledged as duke. King John of England, who presumably murdered him (1203), failed to obtain the duchy, which passed to Arthur's brother-in-law, Peter I (Peter Mauclerc). The extinction of his direct line led to the War of the Breton Succession (1341-65), a part of the Hundred Years War (1337-1453). With the end of the Breton war, the house of Montfort won the dukedom. The dukes of Montfort tried to secure Brittany's neutrality between France and Britain during the remainder of the Hundred Years War. The unsuccessful rebellion of Duke Francis II against the French crown led to the absorption of Brittany into France after the accession of his daughter, Anne of Brittany, in 1488 until the French annexed it in 1491. Brittany's provincial parliament met at Rennes, and its provincial assembly remained powerful until the French Revolution.. King Francis I formally incorporated the duchy into France in 1532.

Waiting shipwreck

The 16th and 17th century were generally peaceful in Brittany, but the region, never reconciled to centralized rule, became one of the early centres of revolt in 1789. However, its staunch Catholicism and conservatism soon transformed it into an anti-Revolutionary stronghold; the Chouans (anti-Revolutionary peasants) were never fully subdued, and in S Brittany and the neighbouring Vendée the Revolutionary government resorted to ruthless reprisals.
Breton nationalism grew in the 19th century and was fuelled by the anticlericalism of the Third Republic. The Breton autonomists, long successfully repressed by the French government, nevertheless resisted German bids for collaboration in World War II. During the 1970s, Breton nationalists once again protested the French repression of Breton culture. Groups such as the Breton Revolutionary army and the Movement of National Liberation by Socialism committed sporadic acts of violence, such as the exploding of a bomb in the palace of Versailles in June 1978.

Bibliography

The Chouans, by Honoré de Balzac - Brittany and the Angevins, by J. A. Everard (Cambridge University Press) - The Creation of Brittany, by Michael Jones (Hambledon and London Ltd) - Ecclesiastic and Civil History of Brittany, by Pierre Hyacinthe Morice

Brittany and its long historical struggle Site Home - What's New? -Feedback - About Jack- Travel/Art Links
	Brittany