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Updated: June 25, 2025
"Hawke continued watching the mouths of the Vilaine and Charente Rivers for a good while after, and without interruption henceforth, till the storms of Winter had plainly closed them for one season. Supplies of fresh provisions had come to him from England all Summer; but were stopped latterly by the wild weather.
He also learnt the best way to get intelligence was to go to La Roche-Bernard, a tolerably important city at the mouth of the Vilaine. Perhaps there he could embark; if not, crossing the salt marshes, he would repair to Guerande or Le Croisic, to wait for an opportunity to cross over to Belle-Isle.
The king was popular; he had a good heart, and courteous and gentle manners; he was faithful to his friends, and affable to all; and the people liked to see him passing along the streets. On taking in hand the government, he recalled to it the former advisers of his father, Charles V., Bureau de la Riviere, Le Mercier de Noviant, and Le Begue de Vilaine, all men of sense and reputation.
The French Navy did not again lift up its head during the three years of war that remained. Balked in their expectation that the foe's fear of the beach would give them refuge, harried and worried by the chase, harnessed to no fixed plan of action, Conflans's fleet broke apart and fled. Seven went north, and ran ashore at the mouth of the little river Vilaine which empties into Quiberon Bay.
This step has been blamed by the French, but needlessly, as Hawke would never have let her get away. The great French fleet was annihilated; for the fourteen ships not taken or destroyed were divided into two parts, and those in the Vilaine only succeeded in escaping, two at a time, between fifteen months and two years later.
All possibility of an invasion of England passed away with the destruction of the Brest fleet. The battle of November 20, 1759, was the Trafalgar of this war; and though a blockade was maintained over the fractions that were laid up in the Vilaine and at Rochefort, the English fleets were now free to act against the colonies of France, and later of Spain, on a grander scale than ever before.
"There the current of the Vilaine throws them upon another isle, the isle of Hoedic." "I agree with that." "Well, monsieur, from that isle to Belle-Isle the way is quite straight. The sea broken both above and below, passes like a canal like a mirror between the two isles; the chalands glide along upon it like ducks upon the Loire; that's how it is."
Questioning the messenger further, he learnt that the shot had been fired from the house of Vilaine, a sometime tutor to the Duke of Guise, and that the horse upon which the assassin had fled had been held for him by a groom in the Guise livery.
For all his council be takes with him only La Riviere, Le Mercier, Montaigu, and Le Begue de Vilaine. What say you to that, my brother?" "The king, our nephew, is young," answered the Duke of Berry: "if he trusts the new councillors he is taking, he will be deceived, and it will end ill, as you will see. As for the present, we must support him.
He rode across the main bridge over the Vilaine, and so into the upper and principal part of that important city of some thirty thousand souls, most of whom, he opined from the seething, clamant crowds that everywhere blocked his way, must on this day have taken to the streets. Clearly Philippe had not overstated the excitement prevailing there.
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