Château de Brest

From the Roman castellum to Vauban's citadel, the site has over 1700 years of history, holding right up to the present day its original role as a military fortress and a strategic location of the highest importance.

The Roadstead of Brest, well-protected by a narrow "goulet" but sufficiently large to allow ships to turn or move, forms a natural harbour.

The castle's captain Garnier de Clisson was killed in a counter-attack when he was trapped outside the walls by the closed portcullis, and so the defenders surrendered on the condition that their lives would be spared.

John of Montfort restored the buildings he had damaged in the siege and added to the defences, putting in place a garrison under Tanguy du Chastel, who built Brest's first enclosure.

On 7 September, the court of peers decided in favour of Charles de Blois's right to the duchy, and at the end of the year John of Montfort was imprisoned in the Louvre.

Thus the English set up a base in the castle thanks to the political disorders of August 1342, giving them control of the maritime route used by their trading ships and military convoys from 1342 to 1397.

William of Rohan, earl of Northampton, headed the base with the title of lieutenant-general of Brittany, and Edward rejoined them in Brest 2 months later to support the rights of Montfort.

John of Montfort rendered homage to Charles V of France and so Edward III no longer had any reason to continue his military presence at the castle.

In the spring the Breton lords seized the duchy's principal lands, denouncing their overlord, siding with the French king, rallying around the viscount of Rohan and charging constable Du Guesclin with hunting down the English.

The English disembarked reinforcements on 15 June and fought off an attack on the castle by French royal troops under the viscount of Rohan and including the lords of Laval, Léon, Clisson and Beaumanoir.

The attack was renewed the following year and, to prevent the castle being relieved by sea, a new wooden fort was built on boats placed in the middle of the goulet and at the entrance to the roadstead, raised on supporting stones on either bank.

The peace-treaty drawn up between France and England by Charles VI and Richard II meant that finally, on 28 March 1397, the Duke of Brittany was given back his lands.

The English were repulsed once more in 1453 by the garrison of Jean de Quelennec, vicomte du Faou and Admiral of Brittany, though Crozon was pillaged and burned in reprisal.

A French squadron under Graville and reinforced by the Malouins of Jean de Porcon, put an Anglo-Breton fleet to flight and re-supplied the besieged castle.

Anne of Brittany's marriage to Charles VIII on 6 December 1491, then to Louis XII of France on 17 January 1499, definitively put the castle under French royal control.

Jean d'Auton wrote in his chronicles of Louis XII that: She was so honourably received that this was a marvellous triumphal procession, following the sea-coast, as far as Notre-Dame-du-Folgoët, and is to be held a miraculous thing in that so great a multitude of men, women and little children came to see their lady and mistress by fields, roads and lanes.Arriving at Le Folgoët on 19 August, the end of her pilgrimage, Anne showed a desire to continue to Brest and contemplate the powerful castle that her father Francis II had embellished and modernised and the large nef Marie La Cordelière, one of the largest warships of the era.

The queen and her small court marked a path running along a ravine at the foot of which was a fountain and washhouses giving access to a postern which gave onto a forward work entitled "Fer à cheval".

The Tour du Midi (despite its great hall and oratory with Gothic windows), the lordly kitchens and the vast roads were not enough and so the queen did not remain long in Brest.

The populace is cruel, barbarous and bedevilled against the League, it is armed to the number of 15 or 20 thousand, and the town and castle of Brest are infinitely inconvenient, with monsieur de Chasteauneuf as their governor, making it the only place in lower Brittany held for the king.

Convinced that a siege of Brest was doomed to fail, the League troops decided the following spring to blockade the roadstead and starve the castle into surrender.

Uncertain of Elisabeth's intentions, Sourdéac refused to host an English garrison equal to that of the French and thereby to respect the terms of the treaty signed by the king as a collateral for loans from England.

Headed by Jean, duke of Aumont, marshal of France and aided by the English ships and troops, the royal army besieged the fort from mid-October.

Pierre Massiac de Sainte-Colombe's project for modernising the defences of the town, arsenal and their surroundings was initiated that year and taken over and transformed by Vauban in May 1683 to 1695.

- M. Jallier de SavaultThe project was made up of, at the end of the rue du château, an oval "place d'armes", planted in trees.

with some emotion, the public would see a monument to Louis XVI handing privileges to Brittany and the liberty of the seas, raised on the ruins of a building dedicated to this Caesar who enchained the whole world and submitted it to the Romans.

Brest fell into German hands on 19 June 1940 and the citadel was occupied by their troops, with the tours Paradis once again serving as a prison (this time for those condemned to deportation).

The last buildings were ceded to the French Navy in 1945 and restoration of the whole castle began, for it to house the Maritime Prefecture for the Second Region and the commander-in-chief for the Atlantic.

In 1589, the castle's governor embraced the Catholic League, but Guy de Rieux, captain of the royal army, made him hand Brest over, thus becoming the only Breton city to back Henry IV.

Prefect Chaucheprat had it transplanted from the square (then being redesigned) to the gardens of the home of the Préfecture Maritime from 1800 to 1944, the former hôtel Saint-Pierre on the south side of the rue de Siam in the town centre.

In 1940 Brest artistic and historical treasures were kept in safety in the château de Kerjean, and on the liberation the pedestal was dismantled and reerected in the castle and the statue moved to the musée du Louvre.