Château des ducs de Bretagne

Location: 47°12′57″N 1°33′0″W

Medieval states often did not have a capital in the modern sense. Rulers moved around a lot and lived in various places throughout their territories, but they usually had one main residence in an important city. In that sense, Nantes was the capital of the Duchy of Brittany. There were other castles elsewhere in Brittany, and other large and important cities which also served as "capitals", such as Rennes and Vannes. But as the usual residence of the dukes, Nantes naturally needed a large castle. The modern name of the castle, the "Château des ducs de Bretagne" reflects this necessity. It also reflects the sentiment that Nantes is still a part of Brittany, even though it was separated into a different province after the Revolution.

Remnants of the Maison des
Engins in Place du Bouffay.

Nantes' original castle was located in Le Bouffay, the ancient and medieval core of the city. That's where all narrow streets and tall wooden houses are located. When Nantes was recaptured from the Vikings in the 10th century, the first castle was built there, within the Roman walls. Parts of that castle remained intact up to the 18th century, but nothing remains of it now. There are some remnants of buildings that were attached to it in the modern Place du Bouffay, like the chimney from the Maison des Engins (Nantes' first city hall), and the Église Sainte-Croix, which was originally the castle's chapel. The sculpture on top of the church was part of the Tour du Bouffay, a medieval tower that has also been destroyed.

As I mentioned in previous posts, Brittany was independent, but almost always under either English or French influence. In the early 13th century, relatives of the king of France married into the ruling dynasty in Brittany. The French dukes built new walls, partly to improve the defences of the city, but partly also as a display of French influence. They also built a new castle.

The Vieux Donjon.

 The new castle was built along the southeast corner of the new walls (which in that part of the city simply followed the line of the Roman wall). The first structure built there no longer exists. The earliest remaining part of the castle, the "Vieux Donjon," was built in the mid-14th century, during the War of the Breton Succession and the Hundred Years' War between France and England. At first it seems like just another part of the castle, but looking at it more closely, it is obviously different from the rest. And looking directly to the north, you can see that it lines up exactly with the remains of the medieval and Roman walls on the Cours St-Pierre.

I assume the castle was connected to the system of medieval walls, but I'm now sure how. Some of the castle's walls have a distinctive pattern of stones, reminiscent of the Roman wall (but entirely in large grey stones, no small stones or red bricks). The remnant of Porte Sauvetout has the same pattern, but the other remnants of the medieval walls don't look like that. In any case, today the castle is a completely separate structure, and wherever it was connected to the walls, that connection no longer exists.

My son and I at the castle in 2011 (my wife is a much better
photographer than me and has a much better camera)

When I first arrived in Nantes and I lived in the residence for foreign researchers, I could see the cathedral and the castle in the distance. They were the only medieval remnants I knew about at the time, and it took me a few weeks to go visit them, because I didn't want to ruin the mystique. Actually the first time I went to the castle, my family and I were just wandering around the old city and happened to end up there by accident. It's not very big, for a French castle, but it was the biggest castle I had ever seen. (Of course, the only other castles I had seen were Casa Loma in Toronto and the Magic Kingdom in Disney World.)

The south wall and the modern artificial moat, on a rare
snowy day in 2012 (apparently this was the first time it had
snowed in Nantes in 16 years). Originally, the castle was
located on the banks of the Loire river, which has since been
diverted to the south.

It also looks like it's built into a ditch, at a lower level than the rest of the old town. The castle at Ancenis also looks like that, because the rest of the town has been built up on several layers of road since then. That has happened in Nantes too, but the courtyard of the castle is actually at the same level as the rest of the city. The foundations, however, are lower down because they used to be underwater. Before the north branches of the Loire were covered over in the 19th and 20th centuries, the castle used to sit right on the banks of the river, which was handy for defense and for controlling trade. The river also served as the castle's moat. There is still a

One of the towers (facing the old course of the Loire),
with its arrow/crossbow holes still visible.

shallow, artificial moat there, but the rest of it has been turned into a park, full of ducks and turtles. I assume that at least some of the walls surrounding the park (the ones not connected to the castle itself), were part of the medieval wall system, but I'm not entirely sure about that either.

The castle, along with the château de Pirmil on the south side of the Loire, and the various other castles stretching to the north and the east along the border with France, protected Nantes during the War of the Breton Succession and

The Conciergerie, one of the buildings constructed after
Brittany was annexed to France.

the Hundred Years' War. After France's victory in the Hundred Years' War in the 15th century, Brittany remained an independent duchy for another hundred years. The dukes of Brittany expanded the castle, constructing most of the buildings that still exist today, like the "Grand gouvernement" and the "Grand logis" and its tower, the large white buildings that are the most impressive part of the interior.

The Harnachement, another one of the later buildings.
I notice I have no pictures of the Grand Logis...
unfortunately it was too big for my camera.

The kings of France, however, had brought most of the rest of modern France under their direct control, and they were certainly not going to let Brittany remain independent forever. The duke, Francis II, had fought against France in the "Guerre folle", the "Crazy War", in the 1480s. He was defeated in 1488 and died later that year. His daughter, Anne, had married the Holy Roman Emperor, an enemy of France, but was forced to annul that marriage when she was taken prisoner by the French. Brittany was allowed to remain independent, but Anne then married the king of France, so the two nations were now united. Early in the 16th century, Brittany was officially annexed to France during the reign of Anne's daughter.

Anne, Duchess of Brittany and Queen
of France. This statue depicts her as a
typical Breton peasant, which she
definitely was not.

It's simple to say that the kings of France simply wanted Brittany because they had to fulfill their idea of what was supposed to be part of France.  But there was also another very good reason for having Brittany under royal control: it was full of port cities, and it was the closest part of the country to the Atlantic Ocean and the newly discovered North and South America.

Although I'm a medieval historian, but originally I wanted to study the history of the French colonies in Canada in the 17th century. To me, the castle in Nantes represents both of these interests. Those colonies would not have existed if France had not been able to send expeditions from the ports of Brittany. Jacques Cartier was from St-Malo in Brittany, and sailed for Canada in 1534, the same year that the duchy was officially annexed. Many of the settlers of New France were from Brittany, and today there is even a Quebec town named Nantes. 

The outline of one of the towers that
exploded in 1800. (The wood in the
background is just for flower boxes.)

Anyway, now that the castle was no longer necessary as a defense against France, it became the residence of the French governors of Brittany, as well as a secondary palace for the kings of France. Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, new buildings were built in the courtyard, and the existing ones were refurbished. The castle was still used for defense during the Wars of Religion during the Reformation in the 16th century, and King Henry IV may have signed the Edict of Nantes there in 1598, temporarily granting religious freedom to French Protestants (until it was revoked about 90 years later). The Edict of Nantes was basically the only thing I knew about Nantes before I lived there. No one really knows where it was signed though. Another traditional spot was a house to the west of the old city (in the modern Médiathèque quarter), which was destroyed by bombing during World War II.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the castle was also a prison, as were many other castles and abbeys throughout France. In 1789, it was captured by revolutionaries after they learned about the fall of the Bastille in Paris. The Revolution was brutal in Nantes. The guillotine was set up on the site of the former castle in Place du Bouffay, and there were supposedly a lot of "Republican marriages", where men and women who were condemned to death were tied together and thrown into the Loire to drown. The counter-Revolution, the Vendée War between the revolutionaries and the royalists, ravaged the countryside around Nantes. The royalists were defeated at Nantes in 1793, one of the most important events of the Revolution.

In 1800, during the reign of Napoleon, one of the towers of the castle was being used as an artillery depot. The tower exploded, destroying a large part of the castle and the city (including all the windows of the cathedral). The damage is still visible in the castle, as there is an obvious missing tower (otherwise, it would be symmetrical, as it would match the tower on the opposite side), and the parts that had exploded were rebuilt with simple bricks in a completely different style. The foundations of the exploded tower and of the parts of the wall that were destroyed are still visible in the ground, and there are now a garden inside of them.

The castle full of tourists in July, 2012.

Since the early 20th century the castle has been used as a museum. The current museum covers the entire history of Nantes. It starts at the bottom of the Grand gouvernement and Grand logis, and works its way up through history until you reach the top floors. The bottom two floors are the most interesting for me, dealing with the prehistoric, Roman, and medieval periods. Unfortunately (for me), the events that the city considers to be most important all happened after that. Nantes was a major port in the Atlantic slave trade, so a lot of the museum deals with that (and in 2012 a new museum opened in the western part of the city, dedicated specifically to slavery). There is also a lot of fascinating stuff about Nantes during World War II. It's all very interesting, and a fun way to spend a day, but it really takes almost the whole day to appreciate the entire museum. On one floor there is an interactive computer program that lets you explore Nantes as it may have looked in the 18th century. I may have spent hours wandering through that program alone.

You can always walk around the walls for free, but the museum usually costs money. It's free on Sundays, except during tourist season in July and August.

 

History museum

Here are some interesting things in the history museum:

Since I was unable to take a picture of the whole castle, here is a model of the entire thing:

And here is a model of medieval Nantes, within the expanded walls of the 13th century (in the background is a 16th-century tapestry):









Another thing the Loire was useful for was waste disposal. Here is a medieval toilet, opening right over the river:
















I didn't take many other pictures, since there are dozens of rooms and most of it is about Nantes' more recent history. But here is a pirate treasure from the 18th century. It's right out in the open, so I absent-mindedly tried to open the chest, until a security guard told me not to touch it:

Now that I am writing this, I wish I had taken far more pictures of all the interesting parts of the castle. I walked past it on the way to work and back every day, and I guess I started taking it for granted. I thought I could go back and take pictures whenever I wanted, but now I can't, and there are lots of things I wish I could illustrate better here.

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.