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Port-Louis (Municipality, Morbihan, France)

by Arnaud Leroy

Presentation of Port-Louis
Municipal flag of Port-Louis

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Presentation of Port-Louis

The municipality of Port-Louis (3,000 inhabitants, Port-Louisiens) is located in southern Brittany. The city is built around a citadel and surrounded with city walls. It was the port of call of the first Compagnie des Indes but was later replaced by the newly built neighbouring city of Lorient.

Port-Louis is located on a peninsula limited by the river Blavet on west and the river of Etel on east. The peninsula is a granitic spur, with a sandy coast on the ocean and a muddy harbour. Access to the spur at high tide is dangerous because of the submerged rocks and the muddy banks. A local adage said:

Au hâvre du Blavet, bien fol est qui s'y met.
(You must be crazy to moor in the Blavet harbour.)

However, Port-Louis watches a narrow bottleneck to a wide harbour protected from strong winds by the island of Groix and the peninsula of Gèvres. Deep water channels link the harbour to the estuaries of the rivers Scorff and Blavet. Port-Louis is the only port between Brest and Nantes that can be reached whatever the weather and the draft of the ship, provided its captain has skills for navigation. Most of the rivers in the region are small, but the Blavet is a big river which allows communication with the interior of Brittany.
Therefore, the geography of Port-Louis explained why it was a strategic, fortified place.

Several remains of the Neolithic period have been found in the surroundings of Port-Louis, for instance the dolmen of Goërem, dated 2480 BC with radiocarbon.
In the Celtic times, the region of Port-Louis belonged to the tribe of Venetes. Some historians claimed that the battle won by Julius Caesar over the Venetes in 56 BC took part in the Blavet harbour. It is indeed probable that the granitic spur of Port-Louis had been fortified by the Venetes. The description of the fortification given by Caesar in his rendition of the conquest of Gaul matches the harbour of Blavet, but there are other places in southern Brittany which equally match Caesar's description.
Brittany was occupied by the Romans for five centuries after the submission of the Venetes. The region of Port-Louis was organized as a civitas, with Darioritum (Vannes) as its capital city, and divided into pagi. At that time, Port-Louis might have been the port called Vindana Portus by the Alexandrian Greek geographer Claudius Ptolemeus (100-170), or the city of Blabia or Blavia, mentioned in the Notices Dignitatis in the IIIrd century. The main Roman way in southern Brittany linking Portus Namnetum (Nantes) to Civitas Aquilonia (Quimper) had a secondary branch to Blavia. Until the XVIIth century, the