It is not a particularly interesting city from some points of view, but
it is a very "livable" one, and for a student like Foch it had many
advantages. The library is one of the best in provincial France and has
many valuable manuscripts. There is also an archaeological museum of
antiquities found in that vicinity, many of them relating to prehistoric
warfare. Some good scientific collections are also treasured there.

What is now known as the University of Rennes was styled merely the
"college" in the days of Foch's residence there. But it did
substantially the same work then as now, and among its faculty Foch
undoubtedly found many who could give him able aid in his perpetual study
of the past.

Rennes especially cherishes the memory of Bertrand du Guesclin, the great
constable of France under King Charles V and the victorious adversary of
Edward III. This brilliant warrior, who drove the English, with their
claims on French sovereignty, out of France, was a native of that
vicinity. And we may be sure that whatever special opportunity Rennes
afforded of studying documents relating to his campaigns was fully
improved by Captain Foch.

In that time, also, Foch had ample occasion to know the Bretons, who are,
in some respects, the least French of all French provincials--being much
more Celtic still than Gallic, although it is a matter of some fifteen
hundred years since their ancestors, driven out of Britain by the
Teutonic invasions, came over and settled "Little Britain," or Brittany.

The Bretons maintained their independence of France for a thousand years,
and only became united with it through the marriage of their last