Pontcallec conspiracy
This was at the beginning of the Régence (Regency), when France was controlled by Philippe II, Duke of Orléans during the childhood of Louis XV.
Led by a small faction of the nobility of Brittany, it maintained links with the ill-defined Cellamare conspiracy, to overthrow the Regent in favour of Philip V of Spain, who was the uncle of Louis XV.
Feeling unfairly taxed, the Estates of Brittany gathered in Saint-Brieuc and refused to extend new credits to the French state.
On 26 August 1718, a ruling prevented the Duke of Maine from taking advantage of the prerogatives granted by Louis XIV in his will, giving him a powerful incentive to overthrow the regency.
[3] In September, the Count of Noyan, one of its authors, met with the Marquis de Pontcallec (1670–1720), a member of a well-known family and owner of a powerful fortress near Vannes.
[2] When the War of the Quadruple Alliance between Spain and France broke out a Breton envoy was sent by Pontcallec's faction to the Spanish minister Giulio Alberoni.
The Duchess of Maine confessed the existence of a plot against the Regency, which was to have been overthrown by inciting risings in Paris and Brittany with Spanish assistance.
The Regent, Philip II, Duke of Orléans, along with the Abbé Guillaume Dubois and the financier John Law identified 23 key conspirators.
16 had escaped and were accused in absentia; 7 more were in custody (Pontcallec, Montlouis, Salarun, Talhouët, Du Couëdic, Coargan and Hire de Keranguen).
Despite this the conspiracy quickly acquired legendary status in Brittany and Pontcallec's death turned him into a folk hero.
Arthur de la Borderie in La Bretagne aux Temps Modernes 1471-1789 (1894) stated that the rebellion was a legitimate reaction to a centralising and potentially despotic monarchy, adding that the names of the victims are "enrolled in the most glorious place in our martyrology ... it was the last blood spilt for the law, constitution and freedom of Brittany.
"[2][7] In Jeanne Coroller-Danio's Histoire de Notre Bretagne (1922) the conspiracy is presented as an heroic act of resistance to French oppression.
In 1979 a plaque was placed at the site of the executions by Raffig Tullou's nationalist group Koun Breizh stating that "defenders of Breton liberty" were decapitated on the spot "by royal order".
It is also central to the 1975 film Que la fête commence (English title Let Joy Reign Supreme), directed by Bertrand Tavernier and starring Philippe Noiret as the Regent and Jean-Pierre Marielle as Pontcallec.
