Bertrand du Guesclin pendant le siège de Rennes, 1357

This engraving depicts Bertrand du Guesclin during the siege of Rennes in 1357, in the context of the Breton War of Succession, itself linked to the Hundred Years’ War. The scene emphasizes the violence of fighting at the foot of the fortifications, in a close-quarters clash characteristic of the medieval military imagination. Bertrand du Guesclin, the future Constable of France, appears here as one of the rising figures of Breton and French chivalry. Produced several centuries after the events, this illustration is not a contemporary witness but a historical reconstruction that contributes to the heroic memory of Du Guesclin and to nineteenth-century visual representations of the Middle Ages.