Nantes

Nantes stands on the Loire some fifty kilometres from the Atlantic, where the Erdre and the Sèvre join the river. Salt from the marshes of Guérande and wine from the Loire valley passed through its quays, and in the 15th century the dukes of Brittany made it their favourite residence. Duke John V began the cathedral of Saint-Pierre in 1434, and Francis II founded the first university in Brittany here in 1460 and rebuilt the ducal castle from 1466.

In 1341, as the War of Breton Succession opened, Jean de Montfort seized Nantes after the funeral of Duke John III. Anne, the last independent duchess, was born in the castle in 1477 and married Louis XII in its chapel in 1499, and the edict uniting Brittany with France was proclaimed at Nantes in 1532. In 1598 Henry IV issued the Edict of Nantes here, granting Protestants limited toleration until Louis XIV revoked it in 1685. In the 18th century Nantes became France's leading slave-trading port, its merchants sending ships that carried enslaved Africans to the Caribbean and returned with sugar. In 1793 Vendéen armies attacked the city, and afterwards the Revolutionary government's envoy drowned prisoners in the Loire.