#briezh

[littlehistorian]

Map of the Duchy of Brittany. By Frederick de Wit.

[muzzyofidle]

[littlehistorian]

Joan of Flanders (1295-1374) was duchess of Brittany by her marriage to John of Montfort. Much of her life was taken up in defense of the rights of her husband to the duchy, and, later, her son's rights to the duchy, which was challenged by the House of Blois during the War of the Breton Succession.

Joan became known as a prototype of the martial woman in Brittany, and may have been an inspiration for Joan of Arc. Jean Froissart said she "had the courage of a man and the heart of a lion".

[littlehistorian]

Joan Holland (1350-1384) was the daughter of Thomas Holland and Joan of Kent, Countess of Kent. Through her mother, she was the great-granddaughter of King Edward I of England and Margaret of France. Her father became King Edward III's lieutenant in Brittany in 1354 during the minority of John IV, Duke of Brittany. Jane Holland was said to be "the most beautiful woman in England".

Shortly after her marriage to John IV, her adultery with Olivier de Clisson, a childhood friend and lifelong ally of the Duke of Brittany, is said to have been the main cause of the "fatal" falling out between the two men, and Clisson's departure to enter the service of the King of France, Charles V the Wise, alongside Bertrand du Guesclin. According to some sources, it was in the luggage of Joan, then Duchess of Brittany, that the French who had arrested her found a copy of the secret treaty of July 1372 between John IV and the King of England, Edward III, a treaty whose discovery is said to have contributed greatly to fueling the mistrust of King Charles V.

[littlehistorian]

Joan of Navarre (1370-1437) was one of the daughters of King Charles II of Navarre and Joan of France. She was successively Duchess of Brittany, then Queen of England.

In 1399, she became regent of the Duchy of Brittany during the minority of her eldest son John V.

[littlehistorian]

The advent of Duke Francis I (1414-1450), raised in France and whose motto was "No sovereign except God", led to a radical change in Brittany's foreign policy.

Breton captains participated in the final phase of the Hundred Years' War. Francis I had to face English reprisals from August 1443 when the Duke of Somerset, at the head of 10,000 men, seized La Guerche-de-Bretagne and pillaged it. On March 24, 1449, a captain of routiers, François de Surienne, known as "the Aragonese," in the service of England, took Fougères by surprise, and the Duke had to mobilize his army and artillery to retake the town.[2] At the head of six thousand men, under the orders of his uncle, future heir, Arthur de Richemont, constable who knighted him, he contributed the following year to expelling the English from Normandy.

[littlehistorian]

Isabella of Scotland (1426-1499) became Duchess of Brittany by marriage to Francis I of Brittany.

She was the second daughter of James I of Scotland and Joan Beaufort. It was said she was more beautiful than her elder sister Margaret, who married the Dauphin of France.

[littlehistorian]

The relatively short reign of Peter II (1418-1457) did not leave his mark on history. His contemporaries described Peter II as "the Simple", well advised by his wife, but ill-suited to the ducal office, heavy in mind and body, subject to mood swings and timid. Upon his death, his sixty-year-old uncle Arthur de Richemont succeeded him under the name Arthur III.