By this time, a remarkable form of government, unique in all the world, was established in Brittany. In some respects it was modelled on the English Parliament, but in no way resembled that of the French legislative body.
The Estates met each year at Rennes, at Vannes, at Nantes, at Redon, at Vitré, or at Dinan, and at last, under Francis II., Parliament came to be a fixture at Rennes.
Even after the union of Brittany with France, the ancient rights, privileges, and liberties were assured to the old province until the Revolution. These sittings of the Estates at Rennes were sumptuous affairs, accompanied by a round of feasting and dancing at which appeared all the aristocracy who could.
Madame de Sévigné wrote to her daughter of one of the grand affairs as follows:
“The good cheer is excessive; the roasts are brought on entire, and the pyramids of fruit are so huge as to make it necessary to take down the doors for their entrance.... After dinner, MM. de Locmaria and Coëtlegon danced with two Breton girls, taking some amazing steps.... Play is continuous, balls endless, and thrice a week there are comedies.”
The relations between the nobility and peasantry in seventeenth-century Brittany were perhaps closer and more affectionate than in any other part of France. The noblemen frequently visited the peasants on their farms, and on Sunday the peasants danced in the courts of the castles and manor-houses.
“Virtually, under the old system, Brittany was peopled by rural nobility,” says Cambry, and indeed this must have been so, for within a small radius of Plougasnou were more than two hundred noblemen’s houses, “so poor,” says the chronicler, “that their inhabitants might well be classed with the labourers themselves.”
Brittany’s part in the Revolution was equivocal. The Republicans really had beaten the Royalists, but they had also aided the Girondins, and at Paris the Girondins were as much hated as the Royalists themselves. The Convention sent its representatives into the province, not to thank the Bretons for their help in the great struggle, but with the idea of still further arousing the passions of the people.
Among these representatives were Geurmer, Prieur de la Marne, Jean-Bon-St.-Andre, and the rascally and heartless Carrier, who drowned his hundreds at Nantes, and guillotined twenty-six Bretons in one day at Brest.
The Breton feeling and sympathy was in the main with the Republicans, though manifestly the majority had no sympathy with the rule of the Terrorists. It is curious to note, however, the change in the nomenclature of places in the endeavour to eliminate the religious and aristocratic prefixes and suffixes with which many of the Breton place-names were endowed.