Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel. Times of Feast, Times of Famine: A History of Climate Since the Year
1000, trans. Barbara Bray. Garden City: Doubleday, 1971.
CLISSON
. The village and castle of Clisson (Loire-Atlan-tique) became the seat of a family
important in 14th-century Brittany. Lords of Clisson appear in monastic documents as
early as the 11th century, but their precise genealogy before the 14th century remains
uncertain.
The Clisson family rose to wealth and prominence through a succession of brilliant
marriages. Around 1200, Guillaume I was ranked as a baron. His grandson Olivier I
acquired the important castle of Blain from his mother and rebelled against the duke of
Brittany until the latter forced him into retirement in 1262. His successor, Olivier II (d.
ca. 1295), acquired lands in lower Normandy through marriage, and ca. 1300 his son
Guillaume married Isabelle de Craon, linking the Clisson to her important Angevin
family.
The two sons of this marriage, Olivier III and Amaury, were active on opposite sides
in the Breton war of succession that began in 1341 and lost their lives as a consequence.
Olivier III in 1330 married Jeanne de Belleville, heiress to important lordships in
northern Poitou, just south of the Clisson family lands. After Olivier’s execution for
treason in 1343, the French crown confiscated their lands. Jeanne fled to England, where
her surviving son, Olivier IV (1336–1407), was raised as a partisan of the English-backed
claimant to Brittany, fighting on his side in the victorious Battle of Auray (1364) that
won him the ducal title as Jean IV.
By this time, Olivier IV had inherited lands given to his mother by the English and had
reacquired the vast family holdings previously confiscated by the French. He married
Béatrix de Laval, a cousin of Duke Jean, further increasing his wealth and prestige. In the
later 1360s, however, Olivier IV grew increasingly hostile to the English and became a
strong supporter and military adviser of Charles V of France. By 1370, his estrangement
from Jean IV had become a bitter feud that would last for twentyfive years. His sound
tactical sense, his expertise with fortifications, and his almost legendary ferocity in battle
made him the most prestigious military commander of his day, and after the death of
Charles V he became constable of France and a leading councilor of Charles VI.
In his twelve years as constable, Clisson headed a political faction known as the
Marmousets, who opposed the dukes of Berry and Burgundy at the French court. In 1392,
he was the intended victim of a bungled assassination attempt that the king blamed on the
duke of Brittany. On the ensuing punitive expedition against Jean IV, Charles VI became
psychotic, and the royal dukes quickly seized power and ousted Clisson from the office
of constable.
Returning to Brittany, Clisson waged bitter war against the duke until 1395, in alliance
with his sons-in-law, Alain VIII de Rohan and Jean de Blois, count of Penthièvre, who
had married his daughters Beatrix and Marguerite, respec-tively. After peace was made,
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