The inhabitants even to-day—more than in any other of the ancient provinces of France—have preserved the ancient nomenclature of the land and its people, and everywhere one finds only Bretons whose home is Brittany.
Mercator, the map-maker, was more of a success than Mercator, the historical chronicler. He said of the Bretons, in 1595, that they were “for the most part avaricious and largely given to making distinctions between glasses and tumblers.” As a matter of record, this is not so true of the Bretons as it is of the Normans, or of the Germans, or of the Spaniards. Up to the time of Cæsar the name Armorica seems to have been applied to all the coast of Northwestern France of to-day, with a little strip running as far south as the mouth of the Garonne, but more particularly it afterward designated the peninsula of Brittany as we know it to-day.
The region was early put under the guardianship of a chieftain, who invariably, here as elsewhere in those days, took advantage of every opportunity to advance his frontiers.
This attempted aggrandizement was not so successful here as in other parts, and by the fifth century Armorica had shrunk to the region lying entirely between the Seine and the Loire. In the life of St. Germain of Auxerre one reads:
“Gens inter geminos notissima clauditur amnes
Armoricana prius veteri cognomine dicta est.”
Finally, at the close of the sixth century, Armorica merged itself in Brittany, but the “Concile de Tours” makes a remarkable distinction between the new settlers and those who had previously been known as Romans. This distinction was also clearly made by St. Samson, who wrote in the seventh century that Britannia was the name given to Armorica by the exiled Britons who had fled from the Saxons and the Angles and had there taken up their home.
Before the Roman conquest there were five tribes in the country, named by Cæsar as the Nannetes, the Veneti, the Osismii, the Curiosolitæ, and the Rhedones,—names which, with but slight evolution, exist even to-day. Things went on quietly under Roman control, but when Clovis became the master of a part of Gaul he was obliged to treat with the Armoricans. Finally the Britons from across the sea came “like a torrent,” and established themselves, changing the names of certain regions to Cornouaille, Léon, Bro-Waroch, etc. Conquered in 799 by a lieutenant of Charlemagne, the Bretons revolted again some little time after, and, at the death of the great emperor, successfully withstood the attacks of the formidable army which Louis the Amiable had sent against them. For a quarter of a century Brittany now suffered attack and pillage by the Normans, relieved only when Alain Barbe-Torte drove the invaders from his territory. Previous to the Norman inroad, the Bretons lived in petty tribes, of which each formed a “plou,” a prefix still often met with in Breton place-names. The chief of a plou was known as a machtiern.
Up to this time no foreign customs had been introduced, but, after the victories of Alain Barbe-Torte, tribal organization was succeeded by that of the fief.
By the tenth century feudalism was thoroughly established throughout most of the ancient provinces of France, and the land was covered with seigniories, great and small, the one more or less dependent upon the other. Dukes, counts, and seigneurs, each in his own territory, played the hereditary sovereign in little, and above them was the suzerain power of which they were vassals.
After the expulsion of the Normans, the ancient Breton kingdoms of Domnonée, Cornouaille, and Bro-Waroch disappeared, and the sovereign of all Brittany bore the title of duke.