Rennes

Map courtesy of Wikipedia 		It was my joyful privilege to set something of a record by laboring fourteen months and thirteen days, nearly the first half of my first mission, in Rennes, the beautiful capital city of La Bretagne (Brittany), the westernmost region of France. I still assert that I could move back there and feel perfectly at home within thirty seconds.
Map courtesy of Wikipedia
Brittany was not always part of France. In 1491, indeed, the Kingdom of France under Charles VIII was at war (they called it “la guerre folle”–the crazy war) with the very independent Duchy of Brittany. Charles ended that war by laying siege to Rennes and capturing it, complete with Duchess Anne de Bretagne. Then Charles and Anne married, despite the fact that she had married (at Rennes, by proxy) Maximilian I of Austria, only the year before. The Pope annulled the earlier union, Anne became Queen of France, and Brittany has been a restless piece of France, ever since.

Bretons still do not consider themselves French. The French do, but call them “les têtes en bois,” (wooden-heads) with reference to their legendary stubbornness. Cultural-preservation outfits preserve doggedly the Breton language (Celtic, like Irish, Gaelic, and Welsh), literature, history, and music. Bretons insist that Scots and Irishmen don’t know how to play the bagpipes properly.
Near the center of town, in the Parc du Thabor, they depict the coat of arms of the Duchy of Bretagne in flowers. The animals are ermine; the five symbols in the pink bar under the crown are ermine tails. They like white weasels, in Brittany.
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