Oudon, Champtoceaux, Ancenis

Oudon and the Loire, from the top of Oudon Castle.

As I mentioned in the previous post, the medieval walls of Nantes were built in the early 13th century, at a time when the French king was expanding his control over all the territory that is now part of modern France.

The kings ruled the area around Paris, the parts they had conquered from the English in the 13th century (Normandy, Anjou, and some other places), and some of the south (which had previously also been independent, and is still very different today). The kings of England also ruled the parts of France they had inherited in the 12th century that had not yet been conquered by the French (Aquitaine, south of Brittany along the Atlantic coast).

Although Brittany was independent, a cousin of the king of France had married the duchess of Brittany. The new French duke built the new walls of Nantes, and of many other Breton cities. The construction of new walls was one way to impose French authority over Brittany, but it also helped protect Brittany from being attacked by the English.

Statue of Joan of Arc in the
Basilique St-Nicolas in Nantes.

For the rest of the 13th century Brittany remained under French influence. However, the history of Nantes and Brittany gets much more complicated in the 14th century. England always claimed the parts of France that had already been conquered by the French, and through various marriages between the English and French royal families, the English now also claimed all of the rest of France too. This led to the Hundred Years' War in the 14th and 15th centuries, and England did in fact conquer a big part of France for awhile (until, among other reasons, they were defeated by Joan of Arc).

The French dukes of Brittany played both sides against each other to avoid being conquered by either one. Now the walls of Nantes and of the other cities of Brittany were also used to protect the independence of Brittany from both the English and the French.

Meanwhile, there was also a civil war in Brittany, over who was the rightful heir to the duchy (the "War of the Breton Succession"). I was trying to avoid turning this blog into a boring list of names and dates, but they're important here: the duke, John III, died without children in 1341. Brittany was then claimed by his half-brother, John of Montfort, on the one hand, and John III's niece Joanna of Penthièvre. Penthièvre was basically the north coast of Brittany, and its rulers had always been relatives of the dukes of Brittany. Joanna was married to a nephew of the king of France, so the French monarchy supported the Penthièvre faction. The English, naturally, supported the Montfort side. In the end, the Montforts won, but the war lasted until 1364, and the Penthièvre family never fully gave up their claim to Brittany.

Throughout the rest of the Hundred Years' War, Brittany passed between French and English influence. The war finally ended in 1453, when England was expelled from France. Brittany remained independent, at least for a few more decades.

Oudon

Ruins of Oudon castle.

Location: 47° 20′ 44″ N, 1° 17′ 21″ W  

There are lots of sites in Brittany that were affected by the Hundred Years' War and the War of the Breton Succession, but Oudon and Champtoceaux are related to one funny event in particular. Oudon was one of the last Breton castles on the Loire, on the border between Brittany and French-ruled Anjou. It's still on the border, as Oudon is in the modern département of Loire-Atlantique (along with Nantes) and Champtoceaux is in Maine-et-Loire (the historical Anjou). A new castle was built in Oudon in the 14th century during the Hundred Years' War.

There is not much left of the castle, except for the tower. The tower is actually what got me interested in the local history of the area. The train to Paris passes by Oudon, so one day I took the train there instead (about 20 minutes away on the regional train). There is a museum inside the tower, which deals with Oudon's history as a fishing town and its location on the border with Anjou/France. You can climb all the way to the top, where there is a nice view of the Loire valley (the panorama at the top of this page), and of Champtoceaux across the river.

As I wrote about earlier, Oudon is also the site of a Neolithic standing stone.

Champtoceaux

Statue of Duke John VI,
in Nantes Cathedral.

Directly across the river from Oudon there was a much larger castle, then known as Chateauceaux ("Castle Ceaux"). It was built on top of a cliff overlooking the Loire, a good position to see any army that might be marching into Anjou from Brittany. In 1420, the dispute over the succession between the Montfort and Penthièvre families flared up again. The Penthièvre family disregarded the treaty that ended the civil war 60 years earlier. They kidnapped the Duke of Brittany, John VI (the grandson of John of Montfort), and imprisoned him at Chateauceaux. They claimed that John was dead, and that they should therefore inherit the Duchy of Brittany. The Montfort family didn't believe it, and eventually figured out that John VI was in Chateauceaux. John was released, but did not forgive or forget what had happened, and took his revenge on the Penthièvre family by destroying Chateauceaux.

He destroyed the castle so thoroughly that almost nothing of it remains today. In what must be a medieval joke, the name of Chateauceaux was changed to reflect its new status: it was no longer a chateau, a castle, but an empty field, so from then on it has been called Champtoceaux ("champ" meaning "field").

Oudon, seen from the ruins of Champtoceaux.

The day I was in Oudon and Champtoceaux, there was also a group of medieval re-enactors who made the same trek up the cliff to the ruins of the castle. In hindsight I wish I had talked to them! Unfortunately I took the difficult way up to the castle, which is on top of a 70-metre cliff. Presumably you could follow the road up to the town, which would take longer but would be less steep. I followed the path through the forest and up the cliff, so I was too exhausted to have a conversation with the re-enactors.

Old gate of Champtoceaux, dating from the 9th century.
The modern town is entirely outside this gate.

I walked around Champtoceaux too, which is now entirely outside the walls of the ruined castle. It's a nice place, centred around a big church, like Oudon and most other little French towns. The church is meant to look like a 13th or 14th century Gothic building, but like most of the churches in Nantes, it was built in the 19th century. The day I was there, there was also a wedding at the church. At one point the large wedding party and the medieval re-enactors ran into each other in the centre of town, and it looked like it might have been the most exciting thing that had happened in Champtoceaux recently.

Ruins of the chapel that used to be inside the castle.

Ruins of the "Devil's Tower", where John VI was imprisoned.

Champtoceaux's church. This
particular style is called
"Angevin Gothic"
(or Angevin neo-Gothic, in this case.)

Ancenis

Ancenis castle. The road is actually several metres above
the ground level of the castle.

Location: 47° 21′ 52″ N, 1° 10′ 36″ W 

Further up the Loire from Oudon and Champtoceaux is Ancenis, which I have also already mentioned as the site of a Neolithic dolmen. It also has a large castle, which in the Middle Ages was the very last defense in the south of Brittany. Whenever a king of France invaded Brittany, he often had to start off by besieging Ancenis. The castle in its current form dates from the 15th century.

Inside the castle in May 2012.

While I was living in Nantes there were several medieval sites that were partially or completely destroyed, to make way for new houses and
apartments. The same thing was happening in
Ancenis, where the buildings inside the courtyard of the castle were destroyed to make room for apartments and offices. A friendly resident of Ancenis noticed me taking pictures, and showed me around the construction site where everything had been destroyed. He was pretty upset by that and said it was the worst thing that had happened in Ancenis during his lifetime. Just like in Nantes, people were upset, but they couldn't do anything about it.

Guérande

Location:  47° 19′ 41″ N, 2° 25′ 46″ W

Another town that was fortified with new walls in the 13th century is Guérande. It wasn't one of the border towns in the southeast, it's west of Nantes, near the Atlantic coast. Guérande was, and still is, a very important area for the production of salt, which was a major source of income for the medieval Dukes of Brittany. (These days, the best thing about Guérande salt is that it is used to make a special kind of salted caramel candy.) It's also notable because the medieval walls still exist in their entirety, and they look exactly what Nantes' walls probably looked like. There is no castle there though, just the walls. In the summer you can walk all around the top of them, but I picked the wrong week to visit, I think it was actually the week before they opened.

Angers

Location: 47° 28′ 12″ N, 0° 33′ 35″ O

Angers Castle

Angers was the capital of Anjou, now the département of Maine-et-Loire. For anyone looking for medieval monuments, Maine-et-Loire is actually much more exciting than Loire-Atlantique, where Nantes is located. I only went to Maine-et-Loire a few times, but I could probably write a whole separate blog about the castles and churches and other monuments in that part of France. But what is really important for the history of Nantes is that Angers was the closest centre of royal power. Anjou was an independent county, and

This isn't even the original size of the castle. The tops of
the towers were all destroyed in the 16th century.

was then inherited by the kings of England - in fact, the English territories in France are often called the "Angevin Empire", after Anjou. It was one of the earliest territories to be incorporated into the royal domain of France, which is partially what led to the Hundred Years' War. The castle in Angers dates back to the 10th century, but in the 13th century the kings of France expanded it, making it one of the biggest in the country. Nantes has a castle, but that's nothing in comparison to Angers. I wanted to mention this castle to show why the cities of

The castle's entrance.

Brittany were being fortified at the same time in the 13th century: the French kings were able to built this gigantic castle almost right on Brittany's borders.









Next, back to Nantes, and the history of its own castle.