Siège de Saint-Malo en 1376

This illustration by Louis Le Breton, titled “Siege of Saint-Malo in 1376,” depicts the fortified town of Saint-Malo surrounded by a large fleet during the Hundred Years’ War. The composition shows the harbor, the walls, warships, and smaller vessels converging on the city, emphasizing both the strategic importance of the stronghold and the maritime dimension of the conflict in fourteenth-century Brittany. Created around 1860 and published in the work Histoire populaire de la France edited by Ch. Lahure, the image belongs to the tradition of major nineteenth-century historical illustration, which sought to give a dramatic visual form to the principal episodes of the French past.