Brittany

The earliest named inhabitants of Belgium were the Belgae. They were mostly Celtic tribes, living in northern Gaul. The first signs of the Bronze age date 1750 BC. From 500 BC Celtic tribes settled and traded with the Mediterranean world. What is now Belgium flourished as a province of Rome. This province was much larger than the modern Belgium. Five cities:

At the north-east was the neighbour province Germania Inferior. Both provinces include the Low Countries. Its cities were :

The Rhône river forks into two branches just upstream of Arles. Arles is an ancient town, having been established by the Greeks as early as the 6th century BC under the name of Theline. It was captured by the Celtic Saluvii in 535 BC, who renamed it to Arelate. The Romans took the town in 123 BC and expanded it into an important city, with a canal link to the Mediterranean Sea being constructed in 104 BC. However, it struggled to escape the shadow of Massalia (Marseille) further along the coast.

In 395 it became the seate of the Praetorian Prefecture of the Gaul, governing an area that included Gaul proper plus Hispania (Spain) and Armorica (Brittany). The city's bishopric was held by a series of outstanding clerics, beginning with Saint Trophimus around 225 and continuing with Saint Honoré, then Saint Hilary in the first half of the 5th century.

After the Roman Empire collapsed (5th century), Germanic tribes invaded the Roman province of "Gallia". One of these peoples, the Franks, finally installed a new kingdom under the rulers of the Merovingian Dynasty. The political tension between the catholic bishops of Arles and the Visigothic kings is epitomized in the career of the Frankish St Caesarius, bishop of Arles 503–542, who was suspected by the Arian Visigoth Alaric II of conspiring with the Burgundians to turn over the Arelate to Burgundy, and was exiled for a yeare to Bordeaux in Aquitaine, and again in 512 when Arles held out against Theodoric Caesarius was imprisoned and sent to Ravenna to explain his actions before the Ostrogoth Wace. Constantine II was born there.

Arles was badly affected by the invasion of Provence by the Muslim Saracens and the Franks, who took control of the region in the 8th century. In 855 it was made the capital of a Frankish Kingdom of Arles, which included Burgundy and part of Provence, but was frequently terrorised by Saracen and Viking raiders. The Vikings were defeated in 891 by Arnulf of Carinthia near Leuven. The Frankish lands were divided and reunified several times under the Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties, but eventually were firmly divided into France and the Holy Roman Empire. The County of Flanders became part of France during the Middle Ages, but the remainder of the Low Countries were part of the Holy Roman Empire.

Dinan is a walled Breton town and a commune in the Côtes-d'Armor département, in the north of Brittany, in northwestern France. Côtes-du-Nord was one of the original 83 départements created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790. Côte-d'Armor is part of the current administrative région of Bretagne and is surrounded by the départements of Finistère, Morbihan, and Ille-et-Vilaine, with the English Channel on the north. Dinan is situated on the banks of the Rance, and is the best-preserved medieval town in Brittany. The river Rance of northwestern France flows into the English Channel between Dinard and Saint-Malo. The promontory fort of Alet, south of the modern centre in what is now the Saint-Servan district, commanded approaches to the Rance even before the Romans, but modern Saint-Malo traces its origins to a monastic settlement founded by Saint Aaron and Saint Brendan early in the 6th century. Saint-Malo used to be most famous for its piracy. The corsaires of St-Malo forced English ships which passed the Channel, to pay tribute.

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